Work Text:
When she was sixteen, Puffy ran away from home.
She was born with magic that swelled and ebbed with the moon, born with a longing in her soul for some place beyond this tiny village.
“We are earth mages,” her father had said when Puffy, seven years old and aching for a home she could not name, had begged to go somewhere she belonged. “We have always been earth mages, and we always will be. That is our lot in life.”
Her brother, Philza, had understood. “Sometimes,” he’d whispered, one afternoon, staring into the sky, “I get this feeling that I’m not meant to be here.”
When she’d asked him what it felt like, Phil’s gaze had gone distant, fixed on those faraway clouds. “Like I’m meant to fly.”
The aching need she felt only grew stronger and stronger, her father’s rules more strict. They are earth mages. They have always been earth mages.
Puffy was drawn to the water.
Sitting beside the river, feeling the rush of it, helped. It did not take away the pain, the longing, but it eased it. And Puffy realized that she is not an earth mage; she is meant to be with the water.
The only person she told was Phil. He’d understood, whispering to her of running away, of finding what kind of mage he is, too.
It wasn’t until their father beat Puffy nearly black and blue and forbade her from ever going back to the river that she actually ran.
She doesn’t know where Phil is, if he ever managed to leave. She’d taken what money and belongings she could and run, not knowing where to go or how to find what she wanted. Only knowing that she had to try.
It’s been four years. Puffy is still searching.
She’s been following a river for several weeks now. Not to its source, though she’d tried that, hoping for answers; finding nothing but the same pain, always the same.
Now, she’s following it to its end.
There’s a change in the air. Something almost familiar, something strange and heavy. It’s calling to her. Pulling her closer, pulling her to run, finally cresting the hill and stopping short in soul-deep, unfathomably overwhelming wonder.
Sunlight sparkles on an immense expanse of water, blue and white and immeasurably vast. Puffy collapses to her knees, hands clutching at her chest, unable to breathe as tears fill her eyes.
She’s home.
The swelling tides rise to meet her, to greet her, to welcome her home. Puffy walks right in, her magic surging to match the waves, to dance with it. For the first time in her life she feels truly alive, the foaming water soaking her frayed and patched dress.
She is finally, finally home.
~~~
three years later
Scrubbing the decks of a trade ship is a small price to pay for living on the sea.
The work is demeaning- the work is all the ship’s captain was willing to give a woman. But Puffy would rather be out here, surrounded by the ocean, by her home, than live a decent life on land.
She uses her magic in secret, her very heart beating in time with the sea. How could her father ever have thought she could be happy in their village? How could anyone ever have thought she was an earth mage?
And everything is good. Puffy is happy, her core no longer aches with a longing for something she cannot find. She is happy.
And then, they find out.
Puffy is sitting in the hold, her magic forming seawater into beautiful, graceful shapes. She’s too focused; too absorbed to notice the hatch opening, the approaching footsteps, until a hand grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks, hard.
Puffy cries out, water slipping from her control and splattering on the boards. The first mate drags her up by her hair to the deck, throwing her down at the captain’s feet.
“You were right, Captain,” the man snarls. “The demon was hiding down there, using her unholy powers.”
“No,” Puffy gasps. “No, I- I’m an ocean mage, I’m not-”
“You saw this?” the captain asks. He doesn’t sound pleased.
“Yes, sir.”
The Captain looks down at her, pleading and gasping and begging, and turns away. “Assemble the crew,” he says. “There’s to be a flogging.”
The first mate drags Puffy to the mast and ties her hands to it. She whimpers out a no as he yanks at her shirt- it doesn’t stop him from slicing the coarse cloth to ribbons and tearing it off her.
The crew laughs and jeers as Puffy curls closer to the mast, trying to conceal herself, face burning with shame. The captain grabs her by the hair again, yanking her head back harshly.
“This creature stands accused of possessing demonic powers,” he announces. “For this crime she is to be flogged.”
“Please,” Puffy whimpers. “Please, don’t-”
The captain leans closer, disgusting-smelling breath drafting across her face. “You should be grateful I’m not lettin’ the crew have their way with you,” he hisses. “It’s an awful long time they’ve been on the sea with no womanly company.”
Puffy swallows thickly, nodding as tears run down her face. The captain lets her hair go and she presses her forehead against the rough wood of the mast, trying to curl tight enough to cover herself with her arms.
The first lash hits. Puffy tries not to scream, tries to maintain that last shred of dignity as hot blood trickles down to pool in the waist of her pants.
Soon enough, though, she’s unable to stop.
By the end she’s lost count of how many lashes she’s endured. She’s half-conscious, clinging to the coarse rope tied around the mast, all thoughts of modesty long forgotten as she sobs from the pain. The captain yanks her head back again, saying something loudly to the crew that Puffy- shaking and delirious- can’t understand.
The rope is sliced away from the mast, tied tighter around her hands. She’s too weak from blood loss and pain to struggle as she’s dragged across the deck, heaved up onto the railing.
Puffy catches one last glimpse of the ocean before she’s shoved, hard; before she falls, hitting the icy water hard enough to lose her breath, and seconds later, her consciousness.
Her back is on fire.
Puffy rolls over, coughing up water, curling up and nearly screaming as her back tears itself open. It hurts, oh gods it hurts-
When everything settles into a miasma of pain and heat and salt, Puffy blinks, pushing herself upright slowly.
She’s on an island, sprawled on a stretch of coarse sand. The terrain beyond is rocky, with no vegetation in sight.
She’s alone.
Puffy sits up, instinctively curling her arms up to cover her chest, even there’s no one there to see. Her hair is drying in the sun, frizzy and caked with salt; her pants are stiff with brine and blood. The waves wash over her feet- her boots are gone, she realizes.
She can barely move. Every time she tries, her back burns with pain, scabs cracking and blood trickling down her skin. But she can’t just sit here in the sun and do nothing-
Puffy grits her teeth, and gets up.
Several days later, Puffy is getting desperate.
There’s no food. Clean water she can get, thanks to her abilities; but not food.
And just this once Puffy almost wishes she was an earth mage; wishes she had her father’s ability to create shelter from the ground. The cold at night is unbearable.
And she knows that the captain meant for her to die. She knows that it’s a miracle she’s alive, that the ocean brought her to an island instead of taking her life.
She thinks she would rather have drowned than sit here, slowly starving to death.
There’s one last place to check, and the only reason she hasn’t tried is that it looks like an impossible climb.
There’s no other option. She has to try.
Miraculously, the deep wounds on her back aren’t infected and have started to heal. They’re not hindering her movement much as Puffy starts searching for footholds, pulling herself slowly, painfully up the rocks.
She barely makes it a few feet before a rock shifts under her hand. Puffy’s not able to pull back in time before the rock comes loose, dislodging her grip. She panics, frantically scrambles to find another handhold, but her other hand slips-
And Puffy falls.
And for an instant- suspended, weightless- she thinks of her brother, and wonders if this is what it feels like to fly.
Then she hits the ground, and the rock hits her leg, and Puffy screams.
~~~
Niki was exiled from her pod for what she thinks is a very, very stupid reason.
So what if she likes spending time on land? It’s fun, walking and mingling with humans, learning their language. Sure, it’s dangerous, but she’s always been careful. She knows hiding her pelt makes it too vulnerable, so she wraps it around her waist and ties a skirt over it to hide it.
She avoids trade routes, swimming from island to island. Which is why it’s a surprise when she surfaces near an empty heap of rock, far off the trade routes, to hear screaming.
Niki shimmies out of her pelt quickly, barely pausing to wrap it around her waist before hurrying further inland.
The person who screamed is a woman. A human, Niki thinks, missing the sharpness of selkie teeth. Her lower left leg is crushed under a chunk of rock, red blood pooling around it.
Niki kneels beside her, worrying. She doesn’t- she doesn’t know what to do. How to fix this. She doesn’t have magic like some of her pod did, she’s only got a bit of healing knowledge-
She has to try. She can’t let the woman die.
The woman blinks, taking a sharp breath and trying to scramble away. She cries out again and goes still, hands flying up to cover her bare chest.
“Who- who are you?” she breathes.
“I’m Niki. I’m-” She hesitates. “I’m a friend. Are you…”
“Please,” the woman whimpers. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, I want to help,” Niki says. “Can I help you?”
The woman stares at her for a long minute, eyes wide and scared. Finally she nods, hands staying pressed over herself.
Niki touches the rock carefully. She doesn’t try to move it yet, just looking to try to see how bad the damage is.
“It looks like the bone is crushed,” she says quietly. “I don’t know… I don’t think this can be fixed.”
The woman takes a deep breath, expression stony. “Help me sit up,” she says.
Niki does, breath catching at the sight of the thick scabs that cover the woman’s back. The woman silently pulls a knife from her belt and slices apart the leg of her pants, pulling up the fabric. Her face is set in a stony mask.
“I- I think you’re right,” the woman says after a second. “It’s…”
Her face pales, and she slumps. Niki catches her easily, lowering her gently back to lie on the rocks. Hesitantly she unwraps her pelt from her waist, folding it and placing it under the woman’s head.
“What can I do?” Niki asks softly.
The woman presses the knife into Niki’s hand. It’s sharp, the handle carved of shell or bone, she thinks.
“I… I need you to, to cut it off,” the woman says weakly.
“What?” Niki nearly drops the knife, horror flooding her veins. “No, I- I can’t-”
“You have to. It’s not worth my life to try to fix it.” The woman drops her head back on Niki’s pelt, hands falling to rest on her stomach. “Cut… cut just there where the rock is. Use the cloth from my pants to… bandage it. I’ll probably pass out, just… just do it quickly.”
“You… have done this before?” Niki asks hesitantly.
The woman nods, staring at the sky, hands closing into fists. “Worked on a trading ship,” she says. “Just- just do it.”
Niki hesitates a moment longer. “What’s your name?” she whispers.
For a second, the woman’s gaze meets hers. “Puffy,” she says quietly.
“Puffy,” Niki repeats. Carefully she sets the knife to Puffy’s leg, just at the rock. “It’s going to be okay,” she says.
~~~
When Puffy wakes up, she’s cold.
Pain shoots up her leg in ragged spurts. She’s so, so cold.
She blinks at the sky, dark and star-strewn. There’s a crackling sound nearby, and she turns her head to look at the fire burning on the beach beside her.
“Puffy- Puffy, hi.” A woman leans over her, tucking pink-purple hair behind her ears. Puffy blinks at her- she doesn’t think she’s ever seen this woman before. She would remember that… “Are you awake? Are you- I mean, no, I know you’re not okay, but…”
“Wh…” Puffy tries to sit up, but her arms are shaking too much. There’s something soft and thick draped over her, but it barely helps with the cold. “What happened?” she whispers, voice rasping.
“I- I thought you were going to die,” the woman whispers. “I did just what you said, I used the cloth to bandage the- the wound- and then I went and gathered some driftwood and I made a fire. I hope that was right?”
The… oh. Oh.
Puffy fell. Her leg was crushed.
Niki cut it off.
“That- that’s probably right,” Puffy rasps. “Can you… bring me some water.”
“I don’t have any clean water and- and I don’t think humans can drink seawater-”
Puffy’s too dazed and tired to try to process the humans part of that sentence. Her core swells weakly, drawn to the ocean.
“Please,” she whispers.
Niki hesitates a second longer before hurrying away, coming back with a half-shell full of water. Puffy cautiously pulls on her magic, careful not to strain herself too much, cupping the purified water in her hand. Niki hurries to prop her upright, and Puffy tips the water into her mouth, sighing with relief.
“Better?” Niki asks softly, as Puffy drinks a second palmful.
She nods, letting her head rest on Niki’s arm. Already her magic is working through her body, easing away some of the pain and the weakness.
The soft thing on top of her looks like a fur cloak, soft and gray. Puffy lightly runs her fingers over it, and Niki flinches slightly against her.
“So- so you’re a mage?” Niki says after a second.
Puffy nods. “My crew found out,” she whispers. “The captain flogged me and threw me overboard. I was supposed to die.”
Niki’s breath hitches. “How barbaric,” she breathes.
“How- how did you get here?” Puffy glances around. There’s no sign of another ship… and Niki’s wearing even less clothing than Puffy is, which to be fair isn’t saying a lot.
Niki hesitates. “I… I’m a selkie,” she says after a minute.
Puffy glances down at the fur. “This is yours,” she breathes.
“It is. And I… I’m taking a chance on trusting you, but you…” She pauses, gently rubbing one hand up and down Puffy’s arm. “I saved you, so I… think I can trust you.”
“I can’t exactly tell anyone stuck on this island,” Puffy says with a shaky laugh.
“I… yeah, but I don’t plan to make you stay here.” Niki shifts. “I’m going to find a way to get you back to the humans.”
“Oh.” Tears burn behind Puffy’s eyes. “I… I don’t know if I want to go back,” she whispers. “The ship was the only work I could find. I have to be on the sea.”
Niki hums, still rubbing her arm. “I certainly understand that,” she says quietly. “We can find a way.”
Puffy’s breath hitches. “We?” she whispers.
“Well, yeah. I’m not going to leave you now, after all this.”
“Oh.” She leans more heavily against Niki, trying to relax despite the pain. “Thank you.”
Niki squeezes her arm gently. For a long time they sit there in the darkness, watching the firelight, and Puffy thinks that maybe… maybe it’ll all be okay.