Gretta shoves a mop back into my hands. "Inspiring, isn't it? Now get back to work, gnome."
Night falls, and I discover that bunk room six is where dignity goes to die.
The cabin is roughly the size of a generous closet. Four bunks are stacked along the walls, leaving a center aisle so narrow I have to turn sideways to walk through it. My bunkmates are already present.
There's a goblin with one ear and a permanent squint. A scaled creature of indeterminate species sleeps with their mouth open, tail dangling off the top bunk. Across from me, a man so large and hairy I initially mistake him for a bear stuffed into a hammock. He fills the entire thing and spills over the edges, and the smell suggests personal hygiene is more rumor than practice.
The smell hits me when I cross the threshold. It's layered with salt, sweat, something fungal, and an undertone that I think might be rotting fish but could also just be the goblin.
I sit on my bunk, the bottom one, because of course it is, and stare at the ceiling six inches above my face.
"This," Peeble whispers from my collar, their voice vibrating with outrage, "is unacceptable."
"Go to sleep, Peeble."
"Sleep? In this? I have standards, Kaelren. I may be a beetle, but I am a beetle ofrefinement. The air quality alone is a violation of basic decency. Is that man composting? He smells like he's composting."
"Peeble."
"And the rocking. The constant rocking. Back and forth. Back and forth. My thorax is not designed for this. I'm going to be—oh no."
"Don't you dare."
Something warm and wet slides down the inside of my collar.
"Oh," Peeble says, in a voice of tremendous relief. "Oh, that's so much better."
I close my eyes. I count to ten. I remind myself that I need this beetle alive because they are the only creature in existencewho remembers all seventeen iterations, and without them I will never find Elle.
The hairy man rolls over with a groan that shakes the bunk frame. "Hey, shorty. When we hit port next, you reckon they'll have a tavern with females? I haven't had company in four months. A male has needs."
"Six months for me," the goblin says. "The last port, the lady took one look at me and locked her door."
"Can't imagine why," Peeble mutters against my neck.
I lie back, and sleep eventually takes me.
I close my eyes in bunk room six, serenaded by the hairy man's snoring and the gentle slosh of Peeble's earlier contributions cooling against my skin. When I open them, I’m somewhere else.
I'm in a cabin. A large one that is spacious, well-furnished, with heavy curtains drawn across a row of windows that span the entire back wall. Moonlight bleeds through the gaps in the fabric, painting silver lines across the wooden floor. The bed I'm lying in is wide and soft, with sheets that actually smell clean. A captain's hat hangs on a hook by the door. Maps are pinned to the walls. A half-empty bottle of wine sits on the desk beside a pair of boots.
This is the captain's quarters.
I sit up, disoriented, trying to understand how I got here. I check my hands. Long fingers. Not stubby dwarf digits. I touch my face, the real one, with its actual bone structure and correct proportions.
I'm back in my own body.
Except, not quite. There's a doubling to my awareness, a layered quality to my thoughts, like two sets of consciousness occupying the same space. I'm here, but so is he. This iteration's Kaelren. I can feel his presence alongside mine, simply coexisting. Like I've slipped into the passenger seat of a body that's already being driven.
I'm along for the ride, aware of everything. I can feel what he feels. Think alongside what he thinks. We've merged, and the seams between us are so thin I can't tell where I end and he begins.
The covers shift.
I look down. Something is moving beneath the sheets, sliding upward between my legs with slow, deliberate purpose. My body, his body, our body tenses.
I pull the covers back.
She's there. Naked, her skin gilded by the moonlight, red hair spilling across my thighs. She looks up at me with an expression that is equal parts mischief and hunger, her lips curved in a smile that has been the ruin of every version of me across every iteration that has ever existed.
