Narrow Sea ahead, Blackwater behind.The city's glow has gone dim like a bad dream that still follows anyway. So does the sky.
Rhaenys sleeps in fits behind the tarred tarp, knees drawn up, fingers locked on the blanket's edge.I watch the deck through a slit, counting boots and moods. Crew's tired and careless. That's good, at least for tonight.
Then.
A shape staggers from the fo'c'sle.
Too much ale. Too much sway. He wobbles, corrects, then wobbles again toward our corner.
"Oi," he mutters to nobody. Flea bottom rough. River salt on top. "What's hidin' 'ere then?"
No. Why now?
He thumbs up the tarp.
Rhaenys startles awake: small gasp, eyes huge, hand halfway to her mouth like she's about to apologize to a stranger for existing.
"Easy, little bird," he slurs, grin sour. "Captain'll pay more t' keep ye where I can see ye."
I move before he finishes the line.
I leap onto his shoulder, scramble over the rail, and hook my claws around his collar.
He swats at me slow, drunk-slow. I duck the hand and go higher, scrabbling between shirt and neck. I feel bristle and the stink of sweat. Disgusting.
He grabs for me again.
I snap a short Ember along the seam where neck meets cloth.
A sting-light. Not a show. Enough to say no.
He howls like something stepped on his soul. Hands slap at fire that isn't flame yet. He spins. I cling. He slams into the rail. The cog lurches. Rhaenys squeaks and chokes it quiet because this is the world now.
He grabs me by reflex, fingers on my wing joint and I see red. Fuck that.
Ember again, sharper, right at the collar. Canvas catches for a blink and then doesn't, but the heat kisses skin. A blister pops up mean and fast.
He loses his nerve in one clean snap.
"Get it off get it off!" He tears at his shirt, trips on a coil, and goes over the side with a splash that swallows the last bit of his pride. His scream keeps going after the river closes. Then stops.
Silence breaks like a plate.
"Hoy! Man over!" someone yells from midships.
"Leave 'im," another snaps. "He jumps, he swims."
Boots hammer. Lanterns swing. Faces crowd the rail, shadows jumping on salt-wet wood.
I drop to the deck between them and Rhaenys, chest heaving. My wing joint burns where he grabbed it. I want to curl up. I don't.
Rhaenys crawls out from the tarp, shaking. She looks from water to me to water again. Her mouth works. No sound.
Crew eyes shift: bird- girl- river- bird again. I see the next three seconds like marks on a board. One man reaches for a pole. Another for a knife. Not to kill. To control. To push the unknown back into a box that feels safe.
No.
Heat climbs my spine like someone lit a fuse in the bone.
"Don't," I think at their hands. Useless thought. I make it anyway.
A sound rises in me, thin at first, then clean. Not a cry. Not a song. A pressure release.
The air ripples.
Feathers lift on my back as if a hot wind came from under the deck. Color drops into me. Red that wasn't there takes root. Gray burns to black at the tips. My body decides it's done being one thing and becomes the next without asking permission.
Fuck. Okay. So that's happening.
Soft light started glow around me. Heat shimmers around my wings. The scorch that lived at the edge of my Ember settles deeper.
Rhaenys freezes, eyes fixed on me. Fear first. Then something else. Hope is too big a word.
The nearest sailor flinches back from the glow. "Seven bloody...!"
"Hold," a flat voice says.
The Captain. Broad shoulders, scarred face. Another King's Lander. He lifts a hand and the deck quiets.
The light eases under my skin. I'm still burning. Not out of control. Not wild. Just… more.
Fletchinder. The word sits in my head like it's always been there. Longer wings. Heat shimmer when stressed. Soot at feather tips. I take a breath and it tastes hot and new.
I hop to Rhaenys's shoulder. I'm heavier now. She staggers half a step, then sets her feet without thinking. She reaches up, slow, and touches my chest with two fingers. They come away warm and shaking.
I chirp once. Soft. Not showy. I don't look away from the crew.
The Captain steps forward, lantern low so it doesn't blind her. He kneels to reach her gaze.
"Hello, child," he says, careful. "No one's touchin' ye. Not while ye stand on my deck."
His eyes flick to me. He nods like he's greeting another being. Respect without pretending he understands what I am. At least that what I felt from his gaze.
"Wasn't your fault," he adds to Rhaenys, not loud, not soft. "You breathe."
She tries. The first breath jerks. The second lands. She swallows and manages, "He came." The Dornish warmth scratches through the soot in her throat. "I didn't.." She stops. Shame bites. Gods, she's four. My anger spikes just over that thought.
I lean my head into her jaw and vibrate a low trill that says mine, mine, mine in a language nobody taught me. Her shoulders drop half an inch.
From the rail, a deckhand spits into the river. "Bloody fool jumped," he grunts, like he needs the words to stick. Another mutters, "Lost his wits," then looks away from the glow coming off my feathers because men are afraid of new fires that could easily destroy their only source of life.
The Captain extends an arm, palm up, slow as a tide. "Come on then," he says. "Up you get. We get ye some water. Bit o' bread. Then ye sleep where no one troubles you."
Rhaenys looks at the offered hand. Looks at me.
I nod. It's the only thing I'm good at tonight.
She sets her small dusty fingers in his callused palm. He rises with her, careful. Doesn't yank. Doesn't crowd. He angles his body between her and the gawkers without making a speech of it.
"Back t' your ropes," he throws over his shoulder. "Ye want to arrive or drown?"
Boots remember their jobs. Lanterns swing away. The river takes the man who jumped and turns him into a line in a story no one will want to tell.
We move across the deck. I keep a little flare behind my eyes because it helps. Heat rolls when I breathe deeper. Not out of control. A tool I don't know yet.
Rhaenys stumbles at the mast step. The Captain steadies her. "Easy, little one," he says. "Cap'n Garrad. That's me." He jerks his chin at the fo'c'sle. "This way."
She blinks at him through soot, voice a whisper. "R- Rhae." She swallows like the name is stuck. "Rhae is fine."
"Aye," he says. "Rhae it is."
He opens a low door to the storage nook by the fore bulkhead, close to men, close to light. He knocks a crate aside with his boot to make space and sets a folded sail for a pallet. He moves slow, like he's handling a cracked bowl.
Rhaenys slides down onto the canvas. She's shaking harder now that there's a wall behind her. That's how it goes; the brave leaks happen when the danger steps two paces away.
I settle on her knees. New weight. New heat. My feathers throw a faint glow across the boards, enough to shame the shadows into shrinking.
The Captain pours a cup from a water cask, stops, looks at me like he's asking permission to approach. I don't puff up. I don't bare anything. I tilt my head, which is the bird version of okay, I guess.
He passes the cup. Rhaenys drinks too fast and coughs and then drinks again, slower, because somewhere a woman named Elia taught her how to do basic things right.
The Captain puts a heel to the door. It closes with a solid thump. He doesn't latch it, but his body in the jamb is a latch of its own.
"Listen," he says. "No man touches a child on my ship. I find 'im, he swims. That's enough."
Rhaenys nods once. She glances at me. I meet her eyes and think: here, here, here. The shake in her hands eases a fraction.
Captain Garrad watches the heat shimmer around my wings like a man considering a new kind of thing. "Never seen the like," he admits, low.
No argument.
He shifts his gaze back to Rhaenys. "Sleep, Rae. Dawn's a stubborn bastard. He comes anyway."
He leaves on that, pulling the door to, not quite shut. A line of lantern light paints a strip on the planks.
I let the glow fade to a warm hum. The color stays, deeper red along my neck, soot-black edging my wings. My body feels taller, stretched, tuned. The joint he grabbed aches, but it's a clean ache. Earned.
Rhaenys scrubs at her face with the back of her wrist and turns the smear into new shapes. "Velmir," she whispers, the first time she's said my name since the bells. It breaks something soft in me. "Stay."
I make the little chirp that means yes and always and try me.
Her breathing slows. One hitch. Two. Then the long pulls of a child who found a wall and will use it to keep the dark from walking in.
I keep my eyes on the door, wings slightly tensed, ready for anything that comes through.
[New Form: Fletchinder]
[VIT +1 | AGI +1 | FVR +1]
[Skill: Flame Body - passive heat field when stressed]
No fanfare. No fireworks. Just a better shape for the job I already had.
Outside, the crew argues in stage-whispers about the man who jumped and about the strange bird. Someone says he'll wash up. Someone else says what the hell was that bird? Fire bird?
King's Landing burns behind us. The cog pushes forward because that's what cogs do when men put their backs into work.
I keep my fire small and my promise big.
Try me again, world. And I will do what I could.