Ships That Pass in the Night

“Hurry up.” Falanyel grumbled at the man behind her. “I wanna get home.”
“What’s got your panties in a twist?” The washed up sailor asked from behind her. “Here I am, tired after a hard day’s work, and you can’t even slow down your pace a bit?”
What had her panties in a twist was that, somehow, this, this stranger had landed a temporary job working for Baynham the blacksmith, and now worked in the same vicinity as Hardin, Falanyel’s future husband. Of course, Hardin didn’t yet know she was going to be his wife, but that’s why Falanyel was always over at the forge, trying to help him come to that conclusion. Now, in a most unprecedented turn of events, a man whom Falanyel had little patience for, let alone compassion, was always hovering around her man when she just wanted a little alone time.
It was entirely inappropriate for a woman such as herself to say, but she believed the term to accurately describe Samhan would have been “a cockblocker”.
“Oh and I’m not tired myself?” She shot back at him. “You’re a big, strong man; put those muscles to use and move your backside down the beach.”
“By the dead, you are something else.” He chuckled, oddly impressed with her misanthropy.
Falanyel chose to ignore him. In the time she’d known Samhan, which wasn’t long, granted, she’d gathered that he held a certain amount of respect for her. She was purposefully cold and irritable with him, and for some incomprehensible reason, Samhan seemed to like that. And what that meant for Falanyel was that she could never really get under his skin, which, in turn, got under her skin even more.
Huffing, the girl marched off down the beach, beelining for the lighthouse.
“You really can hold a grudge, can’t you?” Samhan asked as he caught up to her, voice curious.
“Yessir.” She replied curtly. In truth, it wasn’t the whole sea-monster on the beach incident that she hated him for, but Falanyel felt it best to let him believe it anyways. The less he knew about her affections for Hardin, the better.
“Hmm, so there’s no way for me to win back your favor, is there?” He wanted to know.
“You can go back to the sea from whence you came.” She suggested.
Samhan laughed playfully. It was deep and rumbling, like a distant thunderstorm. “I’ll take that into consideration, Falanyel.”
Falanyel offered him a sarcastic expression. “Will you, really?”
“Well sure, I imagine I’ll head out to sea eventually. Once I get a boat, you know.” He reasoned.
“We have a boat at the lighthouse, I can lend it to you.” She offered. “It’s a little racing dinghy, from back in the day. Might need new sails though, it’s pretty old.”
“Don’t know how much good a racing dinghy will do me.”
“You said you’d head out to sea once you got a boat.” Falanyel pointed out. “I’m offering you a boat, so are you a liar or are you going to take the dinghy out to sea?”
Samhan chuckled lightly. “Perhaps I should have been more specific about the boat.”
“So you’re a liar.” Falanyel couldn’t help but crack a smile herself; she’d bested him. “I see now.”
“It’s not very ladylike to go around calling people liars, you know.” The sailor commented.
“What do I care for ladylike?” She asked offhandedly.
“Isn’t that how you ladyfolk go about fetching husbands?” He asked. “By acting ladylike?”
Raising her eyebrow, Falanyel tossed him a skeptical look. “Do you see any eligible bachelors around?”
“Oooph.” Samhan feigned receiving an arrow to the chest. “You wound me, Lady Featherfall.”
Falanyel giggled despite herself. She wasn’t a very grouchy girl by nature, and she had to admit, what Samhan said was funny, even if he was a cockblocker.
“Is that a smile I see?” He asked, smirk creeping from the corner of his mouth.
“They’re not so rare.” She shrugged, trying to brush his comment off. “I smile all the time.”
“Uh-huh.” Samhan replied, clearly unconvinced.
“So what do you and your father have a racing dinghy for anyway?” The sailor wanted to know.
Falanyel, however, didn’t much process his question beyond a series of sounds. She was instead fixated on a strange figure a few hundred feet down the beach, washed up on the shore. Whatever it was, it was big, and it was probably dead too.
“What’s that?” She asked, curiously.
“Probably a fish of some sort.” Samhan replied, clearly uninterested.
As they continued to approach the mysterious debris, Falanyel began to realize that there was absolutely no way that was a fish.
Fish didn’t have fingers.
“It’s a person.” Falanyel muttered in horror. The man, and she was just guessing based on size really, was colored a sickly grey, where he had skin. The decaying muscle was mostly blackened, almost charred, and the bones, strangest of all, were dark as pitch. At thirty feet away, she could begin to smell the death on him.
“By the dead.” She whispered, hand coming up to cover her mouth and nose, half in shock and half in disgust. The dead man lay with his face down in the sand, back exposed to the salty air while flies whirred around his body and a spare maggot or two could be seen crawling out from under the folds of his flesh and muscle.
Upon witnessing that display, Falanyel lost her lunch on the sand.
“We should go back to town.” Samhan suggested, voice somber, not even bothering to shame her for having such a strong reaction to the sight.
Falanyel nodded in agreement. She’d never seen a dead man before, but something told her that the scene before her wasn’t ordinary.
Just as she began to shift her weight on her back foot, ready to turn around and head back to town, she saw, from the corner of her eye, the dead man’s hand twitch.
Yelping in surprise, Falanyel jumped backwards a good two feet.
“Flames, Falanyel, what was that?” The sailor asked incredulously.
“The thing!” She pointed at the dead man, hand shaking wildly. “It moved!”
Samhan shot her a strange look then looked back at the corpse with a scrutinizing glare.
For half a minute they waited for it to move again.
“I swear it moved!” She exclaimed, still frozen in place.
Samhan looked at it again, then back at Falanyel. “I don’t think it did. Perhaps the shock is getting to you? We should get out of here.”
Falanyel nodded, stepping forward in the direction of town. It must have been a trick of the light, a hallucination. There was no way she’d seen a dead man move.
As she started to begin the trek back to town, Falanyel began to feel nauseous and lightheaded, her thoughts muddled and her head dizzy. She couldn’t focus her eyes on anything, and it was only as she saw the dots in her vision that Falanyel realized she wasn’t going to make it. She began to kneel, trying to lie herself down, but before she could do so, she lost consciousness.
“Falanyel?” Samhan’s voice asked from above as she drifted back into the waking world a few moments later. “Are you ok?”
Looking up, she was met with the sailor’s strikingly blue eyes, furrowed in concern. She nodded weakly.
“You don’t seem ok.” He pointed out. “Can you stand?”
Falanyel took the arm he offered her without protest. She tried hefting herself upwards, but when the dots began to return, she shook her head and said, “Nope, nope, nope.”
“Ok, ok.” Samhan conceded, voice understanding. Running a hand through his charcoal colored hair, the sailor sighed. “I’ll carry you back, how’s that?”
“Carry me?” She asked, unsure. Wasn’t there another option?
“Yeah, we’re still not far from town. I can make it there.” He reasoned as he kneeled next to her, slipping his arms under her knees and waist.
“Hold on, will you?” He requested, voice strained as he lifted her up.
Falanyel didn’t much want to be dropped, so she complied with his request, wrapped her arms securely around his neck, and looked skeptically down at the ground. It was only a four or five foot drop… Not that far, right?
“You’re fine.” Samhan groaned, as if reading her mind. “I’m not gonna drop you.”
Looking back at him, she was met with a lazy smirk and cool blue eyes. “They wouldn’t have let me on doing blacksmithy work if I couldn’t lift a hundred or two pounds.”
“I am not two hundred pounds.” She whispered back at him, annoyed that he was commenting on her weight.
“I wasn’t saying that you were.” His face was pleading, as if he realized his mistake. Then with a small grin he added, “But if you were, I’d still be able to carry you.”
“It’s no wonder you’re single, if you always talk about a girl’s weight.” Falanyel commented as he carried her back to town.
“Who said I was single?” He countered, raising a challenging eyebrow.
“You’re not single?” Falanyel blushed, embarrassed by her assumption. She’d just guessed he was, he acted like every other single man she’d known.
“No, I am.” He laughed, amused by her small amount of humiliation. “But I never said that I was until now.”
“Well, you don’t wear wedding tags.” She offered, trying to mask her assumption as having some merit.
“So you checked, did you?” Samhan wanted to know.
“Well, no, but…” Falanyel scoffed, trying to cover the fact that she was really quite flustered. “Just a minute ago you were being all offended at not being called an eligible bachelor! You are single, aren’t you?”
“I am, Miss Featherfall.” He said, voice confident and bold. “And if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were propositioning me.”
Falanyel stared at him with a gaping wide mouth before she countered, “How are you so playful right now? After what we just saw? Flames, I can’t even walk!”
“Well, for one, you don’t make it as a sailor without a strong constitution.” He reasoned.
“I wasn’t talking about that.” She grumbled. “How are you not troubled, like, emotionally?”
“Maybe I am.” He said quietly. “Maybe that’s why I’m being so playful, because I don’t want to admit how much it disturbed me?”
“It’s ok to be disturbed.” Falanyel assured him. “I don’t know why you men insist on not showing your feelings, but you know it’s ok to have them.”
His eyes flicked from the horizon in front of him to her face, then back to the horizon, expression unreadable.
“Is it?” Samhan wondered, voice barely above a whisper. “Are all feelings ok to have?”
“It’s ok to be scared.” She offered. “Necessary even. It’s quite a valuable emotion.”
“It wasn’t fear I was referring to.” His voice had turned hard, distant. Whatever was on his mind, it was dark. In that moment Falanyel would have given many things to know what was going on behind those icy eyes.
Feeling as if she were intruding upon a private moment, Falanyel remained quiet, afraid to interrupt his internal dialogue.
Samhan, for his part, stayed quiet until the town began to come into view, which, fortunately enough, was not long. Once they did start to approach the town limits, the sailor commented idly, “Hey, isn’t that Hardin?”
Falanyel was on her feet in no time.