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monstrousdesirestudy · 2 months

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So I forgot that Ao3 makes it so that you need an invite to join and they are telling if I’ll get the invite AUGUST 4th. So. I’m posting my lesbian pirate x selkie romance here lol.

Prologue

From the bobbing ship deck, a small child watched as her home burned. She had long since stopped sobbing, though the tears continued to run freely down her cheeks in silent trails. Flames engulfed the shore, so brilliant and bright it hurt the child’s eyes to watch. But she dared not look away. Not from the smoke that choked the sky, from the monastery which could hardly be seen as it was swallowed whole by fire. Not from the bodies of the clergy that lay limp and still on the dark sand, between the thick copses of trees.

The acrid smoke tore at her throat, the tender skin of her wrists raw from the rope biting into them. A scream was building inside her small body, expanding in her lungs and crashing against the back of her clenched teeth like waves breaking against the cliff sides. The child dared not make a sound.

There, just behind the crumpled body of Brother Eamon was the tree she used to climb at least once a week. Flames consumed it, eating at its pine foliage and thick truck before the great tree snapped with a tremendous crack, hurdling to the ground. She had never seen bodies so still, not even while they slept. Eamon had always been a restless sleeper, tossing and turning in his narrow cot. He had never been this still before. Nothing more than a lump of rumpled robes.

All those busy clergymen who had hustled to and fro within the monastery like bees in a hive, their robes flapping around them as they chastised her for stealing from the kitchen or tended to the herb garden, just. Gone.

Beneath the roar of the fire, she could hear a low, unearthly, groan building. She caught glimpses of the monastery through the shifting veil of smoke and fire. Was it a trick of the heat, her own eyes failing her, or was the structure actually shuddering?

A heavy hand speckled with blood and ash clapped her shoulder, causing the child to flinch. She hadn’t even heard the man walk up behind her.

“Come, boy,” the man commanded.

She didn’t move, not yet. Not as she watched the monastery where she had been taken in as a small child collapse. It died much in the same way the clergymen had, giving one last painful breath before folding in on itself and toppling to the ground in an ungraceful heap.

“Come,” the man said again, this time with impatience.

She followed, but even as the ship began to sail, she did not take her gaze from the island. She did not look away when the island became small and inconsequential. She did not look away when the island had all but disappeared on that long, lonely horizon.

Chapter 1

There were many places that Síleas could be found: hunched over a table assessing maps and coordinates in her captains quarters; tangled in the unwashed sheets of a random wenches’ bed, her face buried between buxom bosoms or twitching thighs; at the bottom of a bottle, slumped wherever her drunk carcass decided to fall. And since their raid had gone rather successfully that week, if she did say so herself, she would no longer be relegating herself to the perfect, wretched, confines of the Luath.

Tonight—and for a blissful, agonizing, week— she would be free from the unwashed stench of her crewmates; from Cabbage’s poor excuse for cooking; from Crux’s rattling cough that kept everyone up on the ship, no matter their vicinity to his hammock.

She would also be free from the wide open world all around her, the smell of cannon powder coating her nostrils, and the salty wind against her burnt cheeks.

Sìleas stopped short at that thought and peered around her small room, grimacing. It was a room she commonly got at the Fat Goose Inn while they all marauded around the island, drinking, fighting, and fucking themselves into enough trouble that someone inevitably drove them out of Perthlochry and back onto the Luath. Tavern owners who had enough of the gambling sessions her boatswain Santino hosted, and cheated at; the drunken fights her powder monkeys and gunners wound up in, because they were still riding the highs from raids; angry citizens whose wounds got worse after seeing her surgeon Twoosies. And then there were the hefty unpaid tab bills that she and her first mate, Asher, racked up. Even with purses fat with stolen gold, it could never amount to how much they drank together.

Sìleas considered herself lucky she could even count on room and board at the Fat Goose because of her piss reputation, however, her schmoozing of the inn owner’s wife Maggie had helped her considerably. Then again, it wasn’t always a given: she had been tossed out in a fit of jealousy a few times after being caught with another woman.

The room was sparse and worn, but clean enough for it to be a reprieve from her quarters in the Luath, which had begun to take on a stench and needed to be aired out for a few days. Her room had a rickety, wooden chair in the corner; a lumpy but decently-sized bed against the wall; and a bedside table with a melted candle that had fused itself to the surface after years of use. If she managed to find herself in Maggie’s good graces, Sìleas knew she could have a hot meal, on the house no less. Tonight it smelled like some sort of stew and fresh, chewy bread. The cook wasn’t superb, but was certainly better than Cabbage.

Her trunk sat in the corner, ragged like a defeated stray dog. For a moment, Síleas felt an overwhelming urge to tear through the trunk’s innards to find her tin box of cigarillos, buried somewhere under her clothes. Tension crept into the back of her neck, a tremble settling in her hands. She needed a drink; no–she needed to get drunk.

It was always like this after docking. She couldn’t really blame her powder monkeys and gunners for being lawless animals constantly looking for a fight; being on land after long durations on the Luath made her agitated as well. The crew knew to scatter like the roaches they were after pulling into the harbor, far from her dour mood. All except Asher, who weathered her surly glares and grunts. Asher knew that Síleas’ mood was not long-lived and after enough ale and port, she would be back to yelling shanties at the top of her lungs and howling with laughter at bad jokes. It didn’t hurt if a few beautiful women were involved as well.

A knock on the door shook Síleas from her thoughts. Answering it, she found Maggie on the other side.

Ah, Maggie.

Maggie brushed the fringes of her brown blonde hair from her face with fluttering hands. It was as if she couldn’t keep them still as Síleas grinned and leaned up against the door frame. Maggie’s hands oscillated between her hair and her skirts, where she wiped her palms against the stained fabric, trying in vain to smooth them.

“Ah, I see you’re settling in well,” Maggie said, clearing her plump throat. Her eyes darted from Síleas to the room behind her. The perpetual flush in her cheeks darkened.

“Mhm. All thanks to you,” Síleas replied. Maggie stammered out an incoherent sentence, her hands even more restless as they twitched at her hair and clothes. Síleas’ amusement rose. “Where’s Robert?”

Síleas already knew where Robert was: far, far away from the inn, oblivious–or perhaps, uncaring–of his wife’s actions. Robert often left Maggie in charge of the inn while he went to trade for booze and metal goods in the Arasen desert. It left Maggie exhausted as she was to now look after the business of the inn on her own, on top of chasing their three children. It did, however, afford them to have their trysts without having to sneak around and, more importantly, provided Síleas free room and board. Not that Robert was perceptive enough to spot anything so clearly under his own nose.

“Another one of his trips to visit the Yurukhan. He shouldn’t be back for another fortnight,” Maggie said, feigning casualness, but Síleas could see the bright gleam in her eyes. It was a look she knew well, one that normally led to them closing the door and retreating to the darkness of her bedroom, but Síleas found that tonight it made her stomach ache.

Maggie had once been a beautiful woman–she still was a beautiful woman, but life and all of its responsibilities had lay claim to her body: deep-set lines bracketed her pursed mouth and cut between her furrowed brow, her face appearing to sag with a defeated weariness that dulled her brown eyes. She had once asked Síleas if she could leave with her on the Luath, to never come back to the Fat Goose or her children or her husband. And in a moment of weakness, that was less of a moment and more a habit, Síleas had talked her out of it. She wouldn’t have liked it, Síleas had argued, the ship was disgusting and full of farting, vulgar men. It was too dangerous, too uncomfortable.

But the truth of the matter was, if Maggie was with her on the Luath, where would Síleas stay when they docked? She had enough enemies in Marauder’s Cove without adding Robert to the ever-growing list, who would invariably be furious that his wife had upped and left him with their children and the inn. The reality that presented itself in that turn of events was a bleak one: Robert in a probable fit of rage burning down the inn to free himself of it once and for all, and Maggie everywhere on her ship, around every corner. Síleas knew she’d never have a moment to herself after that. Maggie would be waiting for Síleas in her captain’s quarters with hopeful eyes that Síleas couldn’t bear to look at: hopeful that she’d stop drinking so much, stop fighting so much, stop slinking around and fucking so much.

Maggie stepped closer, trailing a finger up Síleas’ shirt, her knuckles chafed from continuous handling of boiling-hot laundry. She forced herself to stay still, to not put distance between them, as Maggie raised her head and gave a coy smirk. “So, you can stay for however long you like. No need to rush back to the Luath. Hope you’re not too tired from your travels.”

It was now Síleas’ turn to feign casualness as she shrugged. “I could definitely eat.”

Maggie’s face fell, her eyes dimming briefly, before she nodded and found her momentum again. “Of course, you must be half-starved after all your travels,” she soothed, her fingers playing with Síleas’ shirt strings. “We can go down to the kitchen and fix you some supper right quick. I’ll join you–”

A loud raucous crash came from downstairs and both Síleas’ and Maggie’s heads swiveled towards the cacophony. Baritone voices were yelling, arguing, the noise cut by the adolescent squawking excuses of children. Children that Maggie immediately recognized.

“What is going on down there?” she yelled, bolting down the hallway and leaving Síleas behind, forgotten.

Síleas huffed a relieved sigh and darted back into her room to grab her cigarillos from her trunk. It took a moment too long for her to find the tin before she rushed from her bedroom, almost forgetting to lock her door.

The fighting downstairs was still ongoing, only now Maggie’s voice had joined the pandemonium. As Síleas crested the staircase at the end of the hallway, she pieced together the scene within the dining room: three, large men, dirty and tired from their travels, were yelling at Maggie with aggressive, jabbing fingers. She stood firm, a barrier between the men and her two eldest boys, who hid sulking behind her. The drama didn’t seem to affect the other patrons within the dining room, who either watched with detached amusement or kept their heads down in their drink and food. From the chaos, Síleas could pick out snippets of the argument, something about Maggie’s children trying to pilfer from their coin purses; which, having known Maggie’s shithead children for some years, Síleas could absolutely believe. Perhaps they were the way that they were because Maggie was more concerned about keeping the inn up and running than raising her children; or perhaps it was because all sorts of dubious figures–herself included–came and went at the Fat Goose while the children grew up. Síleas was suddenly struck with the memory of teaching the middle child, whatever his name was, how to play pinfinger when he couldn’t have been older than six. In her defense, she had taught him with a dull butter knife. Nothing the child could have really hurt himself with.

Apparently the accusation was not far-fetched for Maggie to believe either. As Síleas crept down the stairs, careful not to draw attention to herself, Maggie turned on her boys. Síleas kept close to the wall as she reached the bottom of the staircase and slunk to the left, behind the fighting group. Maggie had turned her back towards the men, new lines drawn in the sand as the men and Maggie began yelling as a unified front at the boys, who had long since given up on their martyred, silent-suffering appearances and shouted in return.

Síleas was so close to freedom, the door a stone's throw from her. She knew that once she left the Fat Goose, it would be easy enough to find Asher and begin their night of revelry. Perhaps she could convince the owner of the Smoking Fox to let them in; she had plenty of gold this time around to cover her outstanding tab. Their ale was cheap and the barmaid was a young woman who thought Síleas was charming, charming enough to fill her glass to the top every time.

Without warning, her stomach growled and Síleas hissed in frustration at the reminder. She hadn’t lied when she told Maggie she could eat; the smell of stew, with whatever mystery meat they put in it, permeated the air. But if she stayed any longer Síleas knew that she would be spotted and pulled into the mess or made to stick around. At the moment, she would have rather danced with Jack Ketch, which meant she would have to skip supper, to her chagrin.

Síleas weaved around the last table, her hands quick as she snatched a piece of bread from the plate of a pock-marked patron who was paying more attention to the escalating scene than her. While it wouldn’t satiate her, it was enough to take the edge off her hunger. Besides, Síleas tried to reason with herself, drinking on an empty stomach was much cheaper.

With the hunk of bread clamped between her teeth, Síleas opened the inn door and escaped into the night without a backward glance.

Read the rest of the first chapter on Ao3 here!

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