28
Nightmares turned dreams
S ilence. Unnatural and suffocating. Then, one by one, I watch as Kingdoms fall before me.
Dallene crumbles like sand, its powerful warm sun creating fires in every corner, its castles melting, its waters drying. Jévira submerges under its crystal clear waves to never rise again, its cliffs falling, its marine nature dying. Pearlspire’s walls break like fragile glass, its citizens stepping on sharp pieces of shattered shells, its pearly colors covered in blood. Tidia swallowed by its greed, stained by enormous black waves, the lighthouses and the moon without light.
Darkness.
And then Death. Everywhere. It floods the streets, it fills the air. I see the faces of innocents, so many faces distorted with fear, as plagues sent by all the Gods descend upon them.
Lava scorches the earth, rivers of fire consuming entire cities. The skies ignite with burning storms, violent winds ripping apart what’s left. Enormous waves rise from the sea, crashing down, swallowing lives as easily as a breath.
And then the waters around me turn crimson. A sea of blood. The Nine Seas, once vibrant and full of life, now carry the blood of the innocent. It spreads like ink, covering every corner, every wave stained with their loss.
A scream erupts louder than the destruction, tearing through the chaos. It splits the world apart, a sound that doesn’t just echo—it invades.
My heart clenches and I can’t breathe.
Suddenly, the winds come alive around me, whispering harshly in my ear. “Go. Go to him. Go.”
My legs move before I can think, racing towards a figure amidst the destruction.
The screams continue, the bloodied sea roaring in my ears.
When I reach the figure, my breath catches.
It’s Calico. He’s kneeling in the wreckage, his hands covered in blood, trembling. His face is wet with tears, eyes wide and full of guilt, shaking his head like he’s lost.
“I had to…forgive me, I had to,” he says, voice broken, haunted. His hands soaked in blood.
I reach out, my hand trembling, and in the exact moment I touch his face, my eyes snap open.
The world shifted violently. I was gasping choking on the air, my chest tight and heaving. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t catch my breath. Sweat slicked my skin, every part of me was shaking as if I didn’t know yet if I was still living in the nightmare.
I bolted upright with my heart pounding in my chest, and stumbled out of the bunk bed.
“Donna?” I heard Ela muttering in her sleep.
“I’m all right. I’m all right, go back to sleep.” My feet moved on instinct, leading me up to the deck where I could breathe properly, where the air felt real again.
And the moment I stepped out into the cool night, I saw him.
Captain Calico Pierce, tied to the mast with ropes, his head down, eyes squeezed shut. His face was twisted in agony, as if he was reliving some horror I couldn’t see. His entire body strained against the ropes, moving as if he was trying to break free.
I rushed to him with my heart still hammering in my chest.
He did not respond, didn’t move beyond the involuntary struggle. I tried shaking him, I called his name desperately but it was useless. He was lost somewhere deep, unreachable.
The ropes were too tight. Gods, who did this? What was happening? Was this another nightmare?
My fingers trembled as I tried to pull at the knots, but it was hopeless. And suddenly, as I touched his hands, thunder rumbled faintly in the distance, like a warning from the heavens. Maybe I shouldn't wake him up? But he seemed in so much pain.
I grabbed his face, desperate trying to reach to him. “Calico,” I begged, shaking him harder. His skin was cold under my palms. Suddenly, a raindrop landed on my cheek, soft at first. And then another. As I touched him again, the rain began to fall in earnest, slow and steady.
“Captain!” I whispered with force. Thunder rolled closer now, the wind picking up, and I looked up to the sails watching as they moved forcefully.
My hands trembled as I pulled at the ropes once more. The harder I tried, the more the storm grew and the heavier the rain fell.
“Captain.”
And then, all at once, he gasped—his eyes flew open, wide, panicked, as if he was just coming out to the surface. His breaths came in ragged desperate gulps, and I kept tugging at the ropes with the sound of my heart beating too fast.
“It’s over,” I murmured. “It’s over.”
I struggled with the ropes, fingers trembling as I fumbled to release him. The rain poured harder now, drenching us both. Calico’s chest rose and fell rapidly, his breaths shallow and uneven, as if he was still clawing his way out of the nightmare. His eyes were on me, confused but soft, as if he was thinking that perhaps I had just saved him from something, even if his mind hadn’t caught up yet.
I knelt there, soaked to the bone, rain pouring down in steady sheets, cold but not enough to mask the heat rolling off my skin. His lips parted, both of us were gasping for air, rainwater dripping from our mouths.
The night was thick with the smell of the sea, salty and damp, the wind whipping my hair around my face, clinging to my wet cheeks like the tendrils of some relentless tempest, and for a moment, the world seemed to shrink until it was just him and me in the storm, tied together by breath and fear.
Finally, I got the last knot undone, and his arms fell free.
“Are you all right?” I asked, my voice shaking as much as my hands.
I had just managed to free him from the ropes and he was sitting there, breathless as if he had come back from a battle against the sea itself, with his back pressed against the mast, and without making any attempt to move.
He was staring at me, his eyes running all over my face. His chest rose and fell like the waves, hard and fast, and I watched as the rain traced paths down his jawline. His pupils were blown wide, dark as the ocean at night, and I could barely make out the blue of his irises anymore. And then I knew, that potion he took every night to help him fall into a deep sleep, was still in his system.
He blinked. “Love.” His lips started to curl into that maddening smirk of his, and asked playfully between breaths, “What did I miss?”
I wanted to hit him, wipe that grin off his face.
“What was that about?” I snapped gesturing to the ropes.
He let out a low chuckle, and said so casual despite the storm raging around us, “I love me a good rope. Don’t you?”
“This is a serious matter,” I said giving him a light shove. “What happened? ”
He sighed, running a hand through his soaked hair. “I had Efren and Jonah tie me up. The nightmares have gotten worse. Last night…” He laughed a little as he continued. “Last night got so bad… I tried to jump overboard.” He kept laughing softly, and I knew he was still trying to make of this a joke, but when he looked at my concern face, he looked away as if he was suddenly ashamed. “I was sleepwalking, it seems.”
Shock jolted through me. “What about the potion. Not even Alastair’s potion works?”
He laughed again, leaning in just enough to make my heart pound. “Does it seem like it works, love? Step a little closer, maybe you’ll see better.”
I watched how every drop of rain slid down his skin. He looked lost and found all at once, and for a second, I wondered if I should speak, but the words caught in my throat.
His hand moved slowly towards me, as if he was testing the space between us. Fingers, strong and scarred full of ink, reached out and brushed the wet strands of hair clinging to my face. He was so close now, so impossibly close, that I couldn’t tear my gaze away.
“Don’t you want to step a little closer?” he whispered with wide eyes, his pupils extremely big. “I really want you to step closer.”
He was drugged, I knew he was still under the effects of that potion but still, my heart pounded relentlessly and unforgiving.
“What happened?” I asked so softly, perhaps afraid of breaking this moment. “What did you see? ”
“What I always see,” he murmured.
The rain fell heavier, the drops running down my neck, but it was his touch and words that I felt the most. “But this time I could…” His fingertips ghosted along my skin as he gently tucked my hair behind my ear, and continued whispering, “Why could I touch you this time?”
The simple act and question were enough to make my chest tighten, every breath harder to take.
“Running to me in that dress… long auburn hair dancing so beautifully with the winds. Staring at me with that look—the one only you have…” His thumb brushed my cheek. "A sweetness I never imagined I could deserve."
My heart stuttered, trembling like the waves when they finally crash after fighting against the pull of the tide. And I wondered, I really wondered if this was it, the crash after having fought all these days against this awful pull.
“Tell me… Did you invent it just for me? That look of yours?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but the words didn't come out. So he said, “Could you lie to me, if perhaps the answer is no? Just this once. I would never ask you to lie again. Never. I’d believe any lie from your lips tonight… just tonight.”
I didn’t know how, but I managed to whisper his name. Maybe to remind myself that he was under the effect of that drug and didn't know what he was muttering between those soft laughs, maybe to beg him to stop talking, or to beg him to continue, or just maybe to beg him to move closer if that was even possible. I didn’t know, but... “Calico. ”
“Don’t.”
And the moment he put his fingers above my mouth, I felt like everything was on fire.
The deck was burning beneath us, the entire ship consumed by flames. The air. The sea.
Thalassa, your seas were burning. Couldn’t you see?
I needed someone to please quench these flames before they devoured me whole, because I now knew I couldn’t leave this world without first tasting his kiss.
His breath was uneven, ragged, mingling with mine in the cool air, the space between us shrinking to something almost unbearable.
His lips were so close, just a breath away, and I could feel the heat of him, even in the cold rain that clung to both of us like a second skin. And I really wanted to… I really, really wanted to—
“Leo.”
“What?” I asked.
He so delicately lowered his fingers from my lips, and whispered again, “Leonardo.”
I was very confused, and I knew he could tell by my expression because suddenly, he was saying, “My name.”
“What are you—”
“Can you please say it?” he interrupted. “Can you? I said please, isn't that how you like it?” He was smiling again, and my stomach turned upside down.
“I don’t understand,” I muttered, still so close to him.
“Will you think me mad if I tell you? ”
I shook my head.
“I don’t want you to laugh.”
“I won’t.”
His smile grew, so beautiful and sincere that I almost reached out to touch it to see if it was real.
“I had a cat. Small but fierce, with a patchy coat of orange, black and white.” He stopped himself, searching for something on my face, maybe to see if I was paying attention, so I nodded for him to continue.
“He was my only friend. Defended me when I was just a lonely boy. Everywhere I went, he was there. And everything I didn't dare to say, he meowed.” His words slipped away with the wind between his laughter, but I could hear him perfectly above the sound of the rain.
“He prowled like he owned the place, like he could steal whatever he bloody pleased. When I’d go hungry, he’d bring back scraps like a thief in the night. When the bigger lads tried to rough me up, he would come out of nowhere, claws out, hissing like a beast twice his size. More than once he saved me. It was like he knew that we were both alone, both fighting just to make it through. And I swore that I would make something of myself one day. I’d be fierce like him.” He was gripping my arm as he kept talking, his rings digging on my skin, it was as if he needed to know that someone was really there, listening.
“One day, he didn’t come back. I waited and searched everywhere, but nothing. So the first time I set foot on a ship, and saw how many people worked and lived only answering to the sea, I knew I wanted to be heard like that brave little bastard.” He closed his eyes and sighed, resting his head on the mast. “I wanted to be like my calico cat.”
My heart shattered.
A few seconds in silence passed until he smiled again, and his grip on my arm began to loosen when he said, “I lied, love, I do want you to laugh. Please laugh.”
But I was crying. I could feel the tears running down my cheeks with the rain.
And now he was the one laughing, with his eyes still closed. “You’re crying, aren’t you?” “No.”
“Liar.” He kept laughing. “Just like me.” And immediately after the words left his mouth, his face transformed into tremendous sadness, as if he had suddenly remembered something horrible. “I’m sorry I lied,” he whispered. “Would you ever forgive me?”
The mast groaned under the weigh of the storm, the ship lurching slightly. What it felt like minutes passed and he kept his eyes closed. His breathing started to calm down, his face relaxed, and maybe that was what got me moving to get up. But suddenly, his eyes opened and his hand flew to grab my arm. “Don’t.”
“You were asleep,” I whispered. “You need to close your eyes again. ”
“I need more of that drug,” he breathed the words quietly. “I don’t want to go back.”
My heart broke at the deep sadness that lingered in his eyes. I had never seen him like this, or maybe I did, in Marble’s Rest. On those stairs that plunged into the sea before I went down them. Somehow this was the same captain, vulnerable and afraid, but now, what I saw before me was something much more fragile.
“Don’t make me go back.” His shoulders hunched ever so slightly, like the weight of something tremendous had finally broken him down, and his hands trembled despite his efforts to hide it. And maybe it was because of the rain, but his eyes… His eyes were haunted, filled with a fear that twisted something deep inside me. It was as if the seas themselves had drained him, leaving only this shell of the man that stabbed me with a smile in that church back in Tidia. My heart ached with each second I looked at him, trying to find an answer to give him that wouldn't make him even sadder than he already was.
His eyes were so dilated and his heart was beating so fast, that I was afraid I couldn't give him any more of that potion.
“I don’t think I can give you more.” My voice broke.
But he just laughed. “What did I tell you about that look?” He drew me closer again. Our noses almost colliding.
And I didn’t move. I couldn’t .
It was like I was trapped, caught between the storm raging around us and the one in his eyes, in the way he was looking at me like he needed more… water.
And I understood, because I had been feeling like I needed more air since I first step foot on this ship.
“What will it take to get you to stop looking at me like that? What do I have to do?” His hand moved from my arm to my face. Again. His fingers grazed me so lightly, they could have been a dream.
“Will I have to close your eyes myself?” he whispered as he brushed my wet eyelashes. “But then again, I could never witness how that coral color spreads all over…” His fingers traced down to my cheek. "Here.” Then, softly to my neck. “And then here.”
I froze under his touch, unable to breathe. My heart pounded so hard I swore he could hear it over the rain. And I must have blushed too, because suddenly he muttered, “Aye… Just like that.”
His breath hitched, his lips parting slightly as if he was about to close the little space that was left between us. My heart raced, desperate to hold on to reason, to remind myself that this wasn’t real—he was high on that potion, drugged in this feeling.
I knew this and still, I didn’t move. Was I being selfish?
His fingers, trembling slightly, trailed down to my lips, brushing over them like he was testing to see if they were real. He stared at my mouth, his eyes dark with an emotion that tightened something inside me.
“I’m so lost,” he said in a low, tender voice .
So was I. In this moment, in those eyes, in his breaths, his whispers, in him. Why couldn’t I just pull away?
“What should I do, love?” He hesitated, his gaze locked on my lips, his breathing ragged. I could feel a battle waging inside him—a desperate, reckless need to give in. Or was it just my only battle? Was I fighting it alone?
“Tell me what to do.” The hand on my neck tightened just slightly, like he was grounding himself in me, in this moment.
“I don’t…” My voice was shaking.
He closed his eyes, his thumb pressed against my bottom lip, gently parting it as if he was imagining how it would feel to taste it. Or maybe those were only my thoughts and not his.
And the moment the next words left his mouth, the rain stopped.
“If I kiss you now, will you think of him?”
“What?” I managed to breathe out.
“Will he come between us if I kiss you?”
“Who?”
“Him. The knight. Will he come between us again?”
“Again?” I couldn’t control my intense breathing. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Not really. You’re just… not yourself. That potion is numbing your mind.”
“I'm myself enough to know that I want to kiss you.”
“Calico—”
“I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.” His mouth hovered so close to mine that I could almost… almost …
“Calico,” I whispered again, trying to remind myself—remind him—that the drug was still swimming through his veins, that this was the reason he was acting this way. He didn’t mean it. No matter how much I wanted to.
“Please, you don’t understand in this moment, but tomorrow—”
“I don’t give a bloody damn about tomorrow. Let me have this night. Just this one.” He parted my lip with his thumb again as he spoke in a quiet, soothing whisper, “You can make it a secret for the rest of your days. Hell, you can even erase it from your mind, I don't care as long as the memory remains alive in mine. And believe me, love… it will. Just… let me have this one kiss.”
I closed my eyes, and with all the pain in my heart, I said, “No.”
“No?”
I took his hand in mine and removed it gently from my face. “I’m sorry.”
He let out a soft laugh and closed his eyes as he leaned his head on the mast. “Oh, you beautiful torment… What a delightful agony to die in your hands.”
It was my turn to laugh at his dramatic outburst. “You are not dying, Captain.”
“Then why does it feel like I am?”
He was closing his eyes now with a huge beautiful smile on his face. And I had to smile too, because even at times like this, in complete lack of control of his actions and mind, he was joking.
“It’s just the drug,” I said .
“Aye, it must be.”
And then I stood there, kneeling in front of him watching as he drifted himself to sleep. But when I got up and took a step towards the cabin, I heard him say, “Can you say it? Before you go.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “What?”
“Leonardo. Can you please say it?”
I swallowed a smile, and said, “I hope you can sleep tonight, Leonardo.”