Bonnie sat at her desk, papers fanned around her, a fresh candle burning close to her elbow, and her eye patch discarded to one side. She looked up when Cali entered, and something in her expression softened.
“Nice nap?”
Cali felt the heat creep up the back of her neck. “I didn’t mean to?—”
Bonnie waved a hand and pushed back from the desk. “It was only dwarf stew again. You didn’t miss anything worth losing sleep over.”
“Still.” Cali looked again at the unused soup bowl and felt the waste of the time they could have had together.
Bonnie leaned against the edge of the desk instead, arms loosely crossed, and she studied the pantheri. “We haven’t talked about what happened before we left Claw Island—or after. I wanted to give you space, but I also want to make sure you’re okay.”
“You mean Adelaide?” Cali asked, surprised that saying the name didn’t cause her as much pain as it used to when she even thought it. “Or Marina?”
“I could see that Marina caused you no lasting damage.” The captain tilted her head. “But it’s not every day that you discover the love you’ve been searching for is actually a selkie.”
Cali couldn’t stifle a laugh at this. “Not for me, at least.”
The pirate gave her a crooked grin. “I suppose some of us have a higher chance of that than others.” Bonnie’s smile dimmed. “Do you still love her after all this time?”
The question settled into the hush of the cabin, and Cali considered it honestly before answering. “What I felt for her all those years ago was real.” She thought of chestnut hair in firelight, of a slender hand holding her paw around a campfire. “As was the ache of lost love when she left.” Cali allowed herself to pause, as if searching herself for a residual pang. “I realize now that the love and longing softened over time into a love for what we’d once shared.”
Bonnie watched her, but didn’t interrupt.
“I understand now why it couldn’t have lasted and why she had to leave,” Cali continued. “Knowing that is enough to let me move on. I now know that you can love someone completely and still be headed somewhere they can’t follow.”
Bonnie nodded slowly, then she picked up a paper from her desk and turned it over once in her hands before setting it down again, as if she’d reached for something to say and changed her mind.
The quiet stretched until Cali cleared her throat. “You look like you’ve been hard at work.”
“Drawing to clear my mind,” Bonnie said. “Nothing important.”
Cali frowned at the captain. “Just because you do something for yourself doesn’t mean it isn’t important.”
Bonnie’s pinched expression eased. “You’re right. Clearing my mind is important work, especially if it means I don’t bark at my crew so much.”
“I’m sure your crew appreciates it. If they knew, they might start gifting you charcoals and parchment.”
The pirate shook her head and laughed. “I would never tell them, but I wouldn’t mind the supplies.”
Cali wagged a claw at her. “You should tell your crew. They’d be more supportive than you think. Thrain suggested my stories might make a good book.”
“A book recounting your adventures, eh?” Bonnie glanced at the books lining her shelves. “Am I to expect that my crew and I will appear in a book someday?”
Cali bobbled her head back and forth. “Only the parts that aren’t secret.”
“You mean Tris?”
“I mean all of it.” Cali’s teasing tone became solemn. “The ship. The name you bear. I won’t write any of it without your say-so, and if I never have it, I won’t write it at all.”
Something shifted in the captain’s expression, and when she spoke, her voice trembled. “One day I’ll shed it. The name, the secret. One day I think I’ll want the world to know the wholestory.” Her gaze found Cali’s and held it. “When that day comes, I’d like you to be the one to tell it.”
Cali didn’t trust herself to say anything immediately, so she looked down at the desk instead. Her eyes landed on the sketch of The Cruel Mistress, the mermaid at the bow fierce and beautiful.
She picked it up, fighting to keep her voice steady. “This one would make a wonderful cover for a book.”
Bonnie looked at the sketch in Cali’s paws. Then she reached over, and instead of taking it back, she pressed it gently into the pantheri’s grip. “Then it’s yours.”
In that moment, Cali was aware of nothing but the pressure of the warm hand over hers and the fact that tomorrow she would walk back down the dock at Eldu and leave Bonnie behind. Suddenly, it seemed impossible that she’d only known the woman for a short time. It felt like they’d been sharing secrets and stories and candlelit dinners for ages. Yet it also felt like they’d only brushed the surface of everything they had yet to share.
