Rouge XXV (Patreon)

It took more than a little convincing to get Evanora’s people to believe their god had decided he didn’t want human sacrifices any more. They cast suspicious glances at everyone, including the priestess, and a few of them even threw salt on Evanora, which was apparently supposed to break any spells or curses that might have been cast on her.

Not until Gurang repaired the Western Star did they really start to trust what Evanora was saying, and though Rouge wasn’t at all sure a ship with a hull made of volcanic rock with a granite mast would float, it did. Once the Gurangalongians were on board with the whole idea of not killing other people any more, they actually seemed more relieved than anything, and several of them helped repair or replace the pieces of rigging and sails that had been damaged by Vexxx’s [Tempest].

It was during this time that Rouge and Vexxx logged out just long enough to prepare dinner (and open the gender-reveal box) and when they logged back in, they found that the Star was well on the way to Farewell Island, carrying the abductees home. Rouge was very pleased to actually finish one of the collection of quests that had been accumulating on her quest log, and her poor ostrich nearly deafened the entire island when he saw her standing on the prow of the ship. And yes, ostriches could swim.

When the Farewell Islanders asked how they could repay her for returning their people, she told them she just wanted the Fish-Tossing Family to train the young woman who had also been ‘rescued’ from Gurangalong Island. The last time she saw Evanora, the surprisingly normal-looking priestess had been standing in the midst of a veritable storm of fish, her mouth open in awe, and two hazy, glowing red-orange eyes hovered in the air above her.

Promises kept, the cousins returned to the Star, which set out for Port Carnival, its hold loaded down with items from both Farewell and Gurangalong Island. It was late in the real world, and Vexxx was still under the Silence debuff, which annoyed him no end, so he logged off and presumably went to bed, leaving Rouge, Silus, Codswallop, and the crew of the Star alone together.

Rouge had one more loose end to tie up, so she went to find Captain Jean. As usual, the woman stood at the ship’s wheel. She looked cranky, though Rouge was pretty sure part of that was just her face, but there was an extra edge to her voice when she glanced at Rouge and snapped, “What?”

Ignoring the tone, Rouge leaned against the closest railing and asked, “What are you going to do? Once you find Matilda, I mean.” She saw the look in the black eyes, and quickly added, “She’s my friend, and I came all this way to find her dad for her, so I think I have a right to ask.”

::Yeah!:: Silus added, flapping her wings for emphasis, though she didn’t leave Rouge’s shoulder.

Jean glanced from the agitated bat to Rouge’s face and turned to look at the empty sea ahead of them. “I don’t know.”

Rouge nodded. That was reasonable. “Sure. But you have some ideas, right? Like, are you guys going to stay in Refuge, and find jobs there? I can help with that, if you want. Or are you going to go back to Bright, and be a river ship? Or, now that Shale has been destroyed, will you return to traveling between Port Carnival and the islands? Or, maybe, be pirates again?”

Jean let out a bark that sounded more like a seal than a human. “I’m no lander, nor a pirate, and neither are the rest of my crew. Though, Sca- Matthew may have some different ideas. If the girl is too soft for the sea, he may want to stay with her, at least until she’s grown.” Her fingers tightened on the spokes of the wheel. “Maybe now that he has his memory back, he won’t want to be with me any more. He was Matthew for far longer than he was Scar, after all, and to Matthew, I’m just a retired pirate, and maybe a monster.”

Rouge held still. If she moved, or said too much, she could shatter this moment, and Jean might never speak so freely to her again. It was always easier to tell strangers your secrets, but Rouge wasn’t quite a stranger any more. When nothing more was forthcoming, however, she offered a gentle, “Monster?” that fell into the slap of the waves on the hull like a stone into a still lake.

Jean didn’t glance at her. “Do you think all Selkie look like this? No, they’re sometimes seal, and sometimes human, but never this terrible mix of both. I can’t live with humans, and I can’t seek out the Selkie, either, because I’m both, but neither. I’m a monster. Monstrous to all who see me, except those few who knew me before.”

A lightbulb flashed in Rouge’s mind. “You think Matilda will be scared of you. That Matt will reject you when he sees his daughter’s afraid of you.”

Wood creaked beneath Jean’s fingers.

Rouge leaned back, staring at the sky. Idly, she reached out with [Sky Writing] and turned a fluffy white cloud into a dark, squat, vaguely humanoid shape. “One of Matilda’s best friends is something called a Duergar. She used to be a perfectly normal Dwarf until some evil mages twisted her and her family into dark creatures who were meant to do their bidding without question. She and Matilda love to have tea parties.”

Jean turned to look at her. Rouge went on.

“She’s also friends with a former elf who looks like some kind of reptile, though we haven’t figured out exactly what he is, yet. Then there are the animals. Polly can’t decide if she’s a parrot, an anteater, or a peacock, and Cavi is something like a capybara with a squirrel tail. Honestly, he’s the most normal, though it’s really funny how his expression never changes, but his tail goes wild when he’s excited about something.”

Finally, Rouge dared to turn and meet Jean’s eyes. The former pirate was watching her avidly.

“Matilda also misses her dad very much,” Rouge said. “She doesn’t remember her mom at all, but she’ll tell you stories about how her dad used to read to her every night he was in port, and he always did all the voices. He let her put him in a dress, and do his hair, even though it was too short to do anything except stick straight out in a dozen little pony-tails. Now that it’s long, I bet she’ll have his hair in braids within a day of him coming home.”

Jean’s eyes were huge, a little white showing around the large, black irises.

“Matilda has a heart as big as this ocean,” Rouge finished. “She can handle letting in one more stranger. Though,” she said, very, very carefully, “I may be able to help you be a little less strange, if you want.”

Waves hit the hull. Slap. Slosh.

“How?” Jean asked, hoarsely, and Rouge forced her face to remain relaxed even as Silus whooped into her mind.

::You’ve got her now, Rouge!::

::Oh, yes,:: Rouge sent, silently, though outwardly she just tilted her head and said, “Do you know the goddess Gina?”

The black eyes narrowed. “I do. We follow-”

Rouge nodded. “Zovina. I know. But Gina and I, we’re like this,” she held up her crossed fingers, “and I asked her to have a little chat with Zovina.”

Actually, she’d asked Bridget to create a minor programming miracle, but there was no need to explain that to Jean.

“You said Shale did something to your sealskin, right? And that’s why you look the way you do?” Rouge resisted the urge to lean forward, fixing her eyes on the cloud overhead again. It changed into a fluffy white seal-shape, balancing a ball on its nose.

Jean nodded, jerkily. “The boat had tipped. Everyone was in the water. The storm was strong. Sc- Matt was still weak, and Horatio was little. I was putting on the sealskin so I could save them when Father shot me. With a cannon.” Her lips parted, showing her sharp teeth. “That was when the lightning struck. It hit the cannon, killing him, but he had already ruined my coat.”

She released the wheel, reaching down to pull up one side of the long tunic she wore. It revealed a ragged hole in the fur covering her body. There was scar tissue there, but it was normal human scar tissue, pink against brown, normal human skin. “The flipper was nearly torn from the rest of the skin. My leg stayed a flipper, part of my side and chest are human, and the rest is,” she dropped the cloth and swirled her hand in front of her face, “this.”

“What if,” Rouge said, “Gina could repair your pelt? With Zovina’s help, of course.”

Zovina, it turned out, was in much the same position as Gurang. There were only a few Selkies, and since they were almost the only ones who worshiped her, she was weak. Too weak to repair the damaged skin on her own.

Jean’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Her voice was hoarse. “I- If Zovina agreed, that would be… fine.”

Zoey grinned and opened her character sheet.

Focusing on a new line that read, ‘Miracles: 1’, she spoke aloud for Jean’s benefit. “Great Goddesses Gina and Zovina, I, the Saintess of Gina, ask that you grant me this miracle. The Selkie Sealskin belonging to Jean Silver, captain of the Western Star and devout follower of Zovina, has been damaged. Please return this Selkie Sealskin, and only the Selkie Sealskin, to the state it was in one second before the damage occurred.”

Bridget had coached Rouge through the words she needed to use to make this work. A ‘miracle’ was simply command-line access to one or more digital gods. If she was unclear, the not-very-complex (yet) app that was Zovina might not understand what Rouge wanted. If that happened, Zovina could crash, or she could create an exception, which would be passed to the runtime system, and nothing would happen at all. Rouge had to specify the NPC, the item, and the desired result in crystal clear terms.

There was a flash, like the whole world flickered around them, and Jean collapsed to the deck with a yip and a squelch. Rouge leaped forward, hand outstretched to help the woman, but saw instead… a seal. It was large, with dense brown fur and liquid black eyes that stared at Rouge in terror and astonishment. It was also wet, like it had just emerged from the water, and the wet rags that hung from its body were what had produced the squelching sound. One of its flippers was peeled back, revealing furless skin on what might possibly be a human thigh, if someone squinted just right.

The seal raised one of its front flippers, staring at it, and then the animal split down the middle. From the gap on the leg, to the base of its throat, it divided, and a woman stepped out of the center of it, throwing the empty head of the skin back off her own, as she pulled her legs and feet from flippers that weren’t long enough to hold them. The skin puddled to the ground, wet but intact, and a stranger stood there beside it.

Her hair was long, mottled brown and black like the seal’s fur, and her skin was the same deep brown. Her eyes were still black, but their irises were no larger than anyone else’s, and when she smiled, her lips were soft, and her teeth flat. She was attractive, but not pretty, rough around the edges like a piece of broken driftwood that had been tossed around in the waves for so long that you could see where the jagged edges were, but they’d been softened by time and erosion into something almost artistic.

A sound came from behind Rouge, and she turned around, seeing Bonny there, staring at Jean like she was seeing a ghost. A ghost of someone she loved, whose absence had been sorely felt, but still a ghost, and therefore faintly terrifying. Turning her head, she shouted, “Scar!” in a voice that almost didn’t tremble at all.

Everyone came running. Horatio, who, as usual, had been mopping an already-clean deck, was first, and he froze behind his sister, big eyes locked on Jean. Scar and Grace came together, popping out of the dark square that led into the bowels of the ship like two jacks abruptly freed from their box.

Scar - Matthew - froze when he saw Jean, eyes the color of the clear blue sea opening wider than Rouge would have thought possible. The couple stared at each other, and then they both smiled. Matthew whooped, and ran to Jean, picking her up with an ease that actually surprised Rouge a little, given that he was thirty levels lower than she was. He spun her around, and she leaned down for a kiss as Bonny grasped the spinning wheel of the ship.

Rouge decided that was probably a good time to leave. She’d done her good deed for the day, and she needed some sleep. She could feel the creeping tiredness that hid behind the artificially induced awareness of Veritas Online, and knew she’d be exhausted when she opened the lid of her pod. Climbing up the stairs to the quarterdeck, she was greeted by Wally, who shoved his head in her hair on the shoulder that wasn’t already occupied by Silus.

Who had been unusually silent.

As Rouge reached up to pet Wally’s long neck, she silently asked, ::Silus? Are you all right?::

Silus was still, and her voice was small. ::You really are a Saintess, aren’t you?::
Rouge couldn’t tilt her head in confusion, since she’d squash Silus or Wally’s head if she tried, but she felt her brows knit. ::Sure,:: she said. ::You knew that.::

::But you just changed the world,:: Silus said, voice trembling. ::I saw it shift. Not just Jean’s sealskin, but the whole world. How did you do that?::

Rouge winced. ::I didn’t. Gina did. I just asked her for a favor, and she did the rest. I’m still just me.::

Silus’ little body relaxed a little. ::That’s right,:: she said, though she didn’t sound quite convinced. ::Gina did it. Because she really likes you.::

Rouge nodded, gently shoving Wally away enough that she could make her way over to her stack of blankets. When she laid down, Wally settled in right beside her, laying his head on her chest. She smoothed the soft feathers of his back with one hand while her other hand tenderly patted Silus. ::Right.::

Rouge’s eyes were almost closed, and her mental finger hovered over the Logout button when Silus asked, ::Would she do that for anyone? If she liked them enough?::

::Hmm? Sure,:: Rouge said, and logged out.