nyankat
Faint rays of light filtered through the weatherworn wooden shutters of the inn room's windows, tunnels capturing dancing dust particles within them that seemed to only exist so long as they stayed within the rays' confines. Days in these parts of the Isles were never really cold, even in the early morning, but for those who'd grown up here, the humid freshness of dawn—before hot humidity had gotten its chance to make everyone’s clothes stick to their skin, or made them long for a dip in the beach to wash it all off—was a unique source of comfort. Sensory food for the soul. Or so the Masaku would usually speak about them.
Under a tangle of threadbare bnkets and a stained comforter whose mysterious scent Esmeralda chose not to guess the potential origins of, ze rolled to zir side to palm around for zir gsses. Colorful Masaku cussology rolled right off zir tongue by pure instinct just as ze heard the gsses click against the floor and slide off somewhere unknown. Great.
Ze had never liked these "winter" mornings, zirself. Not really winter, of course, but just what the general season was called because that's what the Nazari—with their actual winter with the stuff the Masaku had named “white shit”, and the months-long bouts of depression that like half the popution went through—had called this grouping of months. It was the the Nazari had then pushed the technology on their colonies, as part of repcing their traditional sor calendar system. Thankfully, it only took zir a few moments on zir hands and knees before zir hand found zir eyes and zir eyes found zir face once again.
The disruption, unfortunately, had made Esmeralda drop zir guard. Ze couldn’t fault zirself. It was an unfamiliar room and a disrupted process. And so, when ze rose, it was facing a small but distant-enough mirror hung from the back of the room’s door. Distant enough for zir to catch a full-frontal view of zir before ze was prepared for it. Zir breath caught in zir throat.
Eyes closed.
Slow deep breath in. Slow breath out.
Esmeralda made zirself instead turn to the battered chest at the foot of the bed, where ze'd apparently shed all zir clothes the night before. Slowly. Intentionally. Ze frankly didn’t even remember the night before anymore. Hopefully it was fun and that version of zir that no longer exists was able to move on from this world in peace and fulfillment.
Focus.
Rummaging through the bundle fabric, ze fished out the short stay that was Important Piece Number 1 in zir preparation for the day. Ze only had to of these. One of zir siblings had sewn it for them long ago, after a series of experiments in what would work best for what Esmeralda really needed. Zir sibling had worked so hard to get it to fit just right. To make it so instead of functioning to press zir breasts up into appealing cleavage, it would keep them ft. Ze would never really be able to get anything quite the same again—zir sibling was long gone, now, after all. Along with so many others—and so ze maintained them and repaired them with great care.
Wearing these every morning was a sacred ritual; more important than breakfast, or that first sip of water to wash down the fvor of one's morning breath. It required that they control their thoughts much more than usual, discipline away that disconnect in bodily integrity.
First, ze made any necessary adjustments to the ces that would soon be over zir back. Make them ft, well aligned, bigger loops out of the middlemost quartet of eyelets.
Then, arms through the arm holes that would keep everything from sliding down. Ze leaned forward as ze took turns with each hand to scoop the tissue as it tried to make its way to inconvenient pces, and swooping it to its optimal pce to the front: not so far up that it would cleave or overflow, not too far down that ze would lose circution.
The process of tightening was more borious. Small adjustments so long as Esmeralda’s hands still fit, paired with alternating tightening the ces on the back, outer ces to inner ces. Once things were too inaccessible, all ze could really do was squirm.
Finally, ze hooked zir fingers on the now much longer middle ce loops, and pulled—hard—towards the walls surrounding zir. Pulled until it was so tight that they could still breathe mostly-reasonably but no more, and of course no less. The ftter, the better, but ze still needed to function.
Ze felt fortunate, every time, that zir breasts were only so rge. That they only sometimes decided to plot an escape out from above the already high-cut stay. That they were firm enough that ze didn't keep having to redo it to make sure they weren't hanging down too low. Ze felt fortunate to have enough medical knowledge to understand how to do all of this safely.
Ideally, ze would be inspecting zir work at this point. But first, ze needed to find zir underwear in the pile; and what would go into it.
This part was both much easier (in its execution), and much more difficult (in what thoughts it surfaced). The ease meant it was over quickly, though. Ze could slip up the tight shorts over zir hips. Ze made a choice not to think of those. The hips were simply there and were the least of zir problems.
When ze faced the mirror again, ze could do it with the relief. Instead of whatever horror ze saw earlier, ze now only saw a satisfying ftness across zir chest and a subdued but reassuring bulge between zir thighs.
The rest of the outfit was uncomplicated. Ze had to make sure it was. Speaking to Marama once, ze compared the feeling of having to go through this ritual every single morning of zir life since zir body began developing to being woken up by being thrown into a pool of freezing water every morning. Or to having hot coals pressed against zir skin. Or, more literally, to having body parts severed against zir will and feeling a contant ck of corporeal integrity, a persistence sense of zir body not belonging to zir, yet being forced to reside in it. And the Captain had nodded, and hugged zir, and ze sobbed in ways ze had never allowed zirself to so far. And he promised Esmeralda he would give zir all the time he could manage to pursue zir research into how medicine could help fix this. That he had seen reports once of people in far-off nds that had ways with elixirs. There were even rumors of elixirs that could help surgeons remove or reshape entire limbs without the dangerous and excruciating and barbaric procedures that were any kind of surgery in these parts of the Isles. The Captain swore to help zir find all of this.
No one who served on the Captain's crew had even the slightest doubt of why every single person on that ship was as loyal as they were.
That was the third fucking round of door-pounding, he realized, as he finally dragged his bedmate’s hand off his breast and squinted his eyes open. How this bet was still asleep was beyond him and he absolutely spent a few moments watching zir chest closely to make sure ze was actually even alive, before politely covering zir breasts with whatever passed for bnkets here and sitting up, legs hanging off the bed without reaching the floor.
Marama's feet nded the creaky hardwood floor and he quickly pulled on his trousers and shirt on without so much as bothering to button them. The whisper after he suddenly cracked open the door came out more like an angry, loud hiss. Honestly, all his throat could really manage right now. “Could you please just fucking stop where’s the fire?!”
He stopped completely in his tracks when he looked up. Any remote sembnce of annoyance was instantly repced by embarrassment, guilt, shame, mortification.
Gan looked him in the eyes, then at his chest, before turning away, “Uhhhh, hey Mara, it’s almost noon and I was getting worried sorry for—“
Oh no. Oh no oh no. Gan really didn’t deserve that, “—no! I mean thank you. I don’t know how I slept that long.” He regained his senses well enough to pull his shirt closed, hugging under his chest to keep it that way until he got to buttoning it. He stared at the floor, “I’ll be right out, I just barely got up now.”
“No no take your time. Esmeralda and I are gonna go down for something to eat if you want to join—“ she just stopped.
Gan just stopped. Marama looked up. She was just staring past him. His first instinct was to prompt him to go on, “to join…”
A flutter of pyful Isle Pidgin tickled his ear, arms around his waist as the buck-naked bet rested zir chin on his shoulder. Ze looked up at Gan and grinned. Marama made a conscious choice to pretend he didn’t know exactly what ze said, and thanked Gan's god in the back of his mind that Gan had been so bad at keeping up with Esmeralda's nguage lessons.
Still, he was keenly aware of Gan and her body nguage. To the Masaku pyfully ciming him as zir own, Gan might seem completely stoic, or even disgusted at such a dispy: she was wearing her Nazari vestments, after all. But to Marama? This was something completely different.
It was at this point that he also noticed the lingering scent. He hadn't had time to air out the room. There was enough of his scent in the air to keep st night's bedmate in a mood even now, and bets weren't nearly as sensitive to it as alephs. Weren't as sensitive as Gan, in particur, was to his scent, in particur.
He stopped himself from ruminating further on what Gan might be going through and did what, in all his brilliance, was clearly the best course of action.
He put on his best, confident smile. As if nothing unintentional or untoward was going on. To keep up the charade. To do what he had decided, all on his own, would be best for Gan in the long term.
“I’ll join you both shortly. Let me just, you know, wrap up here and get dressed. See you soon.”
He turned to st night’s lover and murmured, audible to Gan, something flirtatious in Isle Pidgin. Gan wouldn't even need to understand the words themselves. Just another brick in a wall he kept building between him and Gan. And then, he just closed the door on her face.
Marama listened for Gan’s heavy footsteps to move away. He was frozen in pce, holding his breath for what felt like forever—because it took forever for Gan to finally go. It took a deep, controlled sigh to ground him through it.
His pymate was feeling up for more fun—and why wouldn't ze? The air smelled divine—but any sembnce of desire had long left the Captain, and he made his best attempt at a polite thanks-but-no-thanks. It probably confused zir after his little pretend-flirtation, but it was respected easily enough. They both dressed in silence before Marama let his guest leave ahead of him. All the better to have a moment to himself so he could fucking scream and cry into a pillow and let it all out as best he could, in the privacy of his own space. Let it all out here so he could keep his cool ter.
It might have taken longer than he hoped, but he eventually joined the other two at a table in the main tavern area, where he ate a hearty breakfast as the others drank their post meal coffees. None of them spoke, the entire time. Gan didn’t do much at look at him. Esmeralda looked like ze was off in some distant world in zir head. Marama couldn’t remember the st time he’d felt so awkward around his crew, but was also wondering what had caused Esmeralda to join the awkward turtle club.
Either way, it was Marama who shattered their fragile peace, setting down his own empty coffee mug as he rose, “alright, you two. We have work to do.”
Blissfully relieved for not having to try to cut through that tension, the other two immediately nodded and rose, before they all went out to deal with the next thing they were here for. The thing Marama allowed himself to be excited about, to change the mood a little.
This morning was definitely more awful than usual, but having to walk between these two stubborn dorks was actually making everything worse.
They were all headed to the local "market" (not the one in the square, Marama had said with a dramatic wink, the night before), and not a one had said a single word since the Captain had led them out of the tavern by literally walking out without so much as looking back.
Gan was, as was often the case, absolutely unreadable when she didn't want to be read, though that was a message in and of itself. Esmeralda had been sailing with these two for several years now and seen them through whatever mess of a retionship they worked through, and whatever mess they nded into.
They had been disgustingly saccharine with each other for a solid few months when Esmeralda first joined the crew. It’s the most happy and alive ze had seen either of them the entire time ze had known them. And then it all just kind of… stopped. There wasn’t a fight. They never stopped being friendly to each other. They just stopped being together and that was that.
Neither of them ever really talked to zir about where it all ended up and ze could only piece things together and take wild guesses but the only concrete thing ze had was that these two were absolutely terrible at talking to each other about whatever's going on she wherever they ended up in. Also that it was probably the Captain's fault because it usually was. Esmeralda refused to bme Gan for something like this.
It was incredibly annoying to witness every time they had one of these moments where everything got inexplicably awkward between the two. It also somehow fell on Esmeralda half the time to knock them out of it. So ze did the thing neither of these two damn cowards would and broke the silence with the most inane shit ze could think of, "So! Where's this market? We've been walking for a bit. And what were you even trying to find there?"
Marama suddenly smiled. He didn't turn, of course—that would involve turning towards Gan to some capacity—but he did respond, "there's a shop here I caught wind of recently, who's had some dealings with traders from all the way in Eastern Zhuan. Among those goods is one particur mixture some apothecary academics have been producing—or really, experimenting with." He guided the group around a corner, towards a narrow alley where they fell into a column rather than standing side-by-side, so ze couldn't see his face anymore. "I think you'll by pretty interested in it, Esmeralda. It was hell to get any useful information on it, though."
He was clearly pleased with himself. He'd been tight-lipped about this whole thing ever since he first mentioned it to zir and refused to even hint what it was all about, as if it was some big surprise he would spring on zir that he wanted her to squeal with glee about. And it was really fucking annoying. The Captain meant well, of course, and this may very well be a huge thing that ze really would squeal about and nerd about and demand that they travel all the way to East Zhuan about—a journey that would involve them navigating their way halfway across the Isles, getting through the Motari city-states that acted as a buffer between the main Isles and the Westernmost edge of the continental Zhuan Republic, and then crossing the entirety of the Zhuan Republic, mostly overnd, to reach whatever city within it had been doing this mysterious research.
He got like this whenever he thought he had some great idea. It was kind of endearing. Esmeralda smiled at the thought. It was ok if this was mostly a thing for Marama’s own happiness. It showed he at least cared.
“Alright you two, we’re here!”
Any hint of discomfort or awkwardness was completely gone now. He was just very excited, as he looked around and held the tattered fp to a small, enclosed stall to the side at the end of the alley open for the others. He gestured for Esmeralda to go in first, and then the rest of them followed.
The shop turned out to be an apothecary: a long counter stood across the way from the door, with only a narrow space behind it, and a wall to wall cabinet with small wooden drawers where individual herbs and medicines would usually be kept. As they entered, a local bet eyed them with suspicion.
It was annoying to do things this way but they had all agreed it would smooth things out in their trickier dealings on the isnd if Esmeralda took the lead—it would be a signal that they were retively safe people. It wouldn’t make the residents trust the obvious Nazari right away, but it would suggest that they might not be the worst of them. An ethnic character reference of sorts, for all that was worth.
They also expected it to py out the same way a lot of times: Gan was still rge and intimidating, Marama looked like he was about to collect your back taxes, and Esmeralda like ze could be a traitor, or there against zir will.
Esmeralda opened again, in zir own Pidgin, smiling at the bet merchant behind the counter while ze was still processing the scene that just presented itself before zir, “Hiya. I’m here on a ship with my Captain,” ze gestured aside, “and he said you had something I might be interested in, among your wares?”
The merchant gnced between them both, “That so? And you’re these soupes’ interpreter?”
“No, ze’s my ship’s doctor.”
Marama stepped forward and leaned on the counter, catching the merchant off guard, “I heard word from a little bird that a certain shop in Shadowbrook got its hands on a particurly interesting medicine mix from East Zhuan.”
The apothecary simply crossed zir arms, unimpressed, “I carry many medicines. Several likely from around there. You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
Marama’s pitch dropped, his tone much more serious, “one might say it… makes one’s patients dead enough for a while.”
The merchant’s eyes widened, “how did you—“
“—Do you have it or not?” Marama cut zir off, looking straight in zir eyes.
“Such a medicine sounds like it would be terribly dange—“
“I don’t care. I’m here for it, and I’m not here to get you in trouble. Will this cover it?”
He dropped an entire sack of coin on the counter, some of it spilling out. The merchant stared down, entranced.
Marama snapped his fingers and snapped zir out of it.
The merchant hurried over to the side of the counter and opened its door, looking around at the windows, “Come in, quickly,” then ushered them through a side door, to a cramped, dark room at the back of the shop. Marama squeezed past the others to join the merchant who was already at the back of the room, reaching for a particur drawer. Unbeled like all the others.
The apothecary pulled out the drawer carefully. Fun it, ze fetched a single paper sachet, with the edges folded over to keep some kind of dried herbal mix inside. Ze handed it to the Captain.
He turned it over in his hand, carefully, as if holding the world’s most delicate thing. “So how do you… use it?”
The merchant looked at Esmeralda, ”I assume this is for your doctor?”
He nodded.
“Grind this carefully and slowly into a paste with a small amount of water, when it’s time to use it. Dissolve the paste in boiling water and have the patient drink it warm. The entire thing. This is just one dose—it’s all I could get.” Ze looked down at the empty drawer, and turned to slide it back in.
“And what can I expect after that?”
“In about two hours, the patient will slowly stop feeling pain and feel quite drunk, then lose consciousness.” Ze smiled at Esmeralda, “Depending on what you’re doing, you’ll still have to work fast. The patient will stay unconscious for a couple more hours after that, with their blood flow and breathing slowed. They will not awaken no matter what you do to their flesh. When they do awaken, they’ll have no recollection of anything since around the time they actually drank it.”
Esmeralda’s jaw was hanging sck. Ze looked at the Captain, incredulous, “is—is this all true?”
He grinned wide, showing his teeth like someone who’d finally dropped his hand of cards on to the table and was about to sweep over his winnings after suckering a table full of overconfident marks. “Based on where I got the information? Without a doubt. It’s retively new, but it’s been getting used for years over there. It works.”
The merchant nodded, “There’s a city full of surgeons now who work slowly, whose patients stay alive and are happy and comfortable after their ordeal is over.” Ze sighed, “Still, this had to be smuggled out. The Republic has refused to allow them to share what’s in it, or even export it.”
“Captain this could save so many lives, it could—“
He cut Esmeralda off, directing his attention back to the merchant, “Thank you. I assume you consider our business done?”
Confused, the merchant almost spoke up for Esmeralda, but ended up just nodding, “Y-yes. Thank you for your business.”
“And do you know where I might be able to get more?”
At this, the merchant’s palms went up and ze shook zir head, “Unfortunately, I don’t think I could manage to get my hands on that again. It was too unique a circumstance. I doubt I’ll even see that particur smug—trader again. You’d need to go to the source.”
Marama sighed, “and I don’t suppose you know what’s in it, do you?”
Ze shook zir head, “No, like I said. It’s locked down. This was a one time chance.”
He nodded.
“Very well. We’ll be off then, pleasure doing business with you.”
“Likewise, Captain.”
Once they had made their way back outside, retracing their way back up the alleyway, Marama reached back and handed the sachet to Esmeralda, “here, this is yours.”
Ze took it, feeling the delicate paper in zir hand, hearing its crinkle against the complex mix of dried, curled herbs inside it. Ze held it up towards the sun to get a better look.
Marama continued, “now all we need is another doctor.”
Another? “Captain? You don’t intend me to use this? I’ve been performing surgeries for years. In perfectly capable of doing things even without the help of a miracle drug.” Frankly, ze was as confused as ze was offended.
Before they left the corridor, the Captain turned to zir and his hands went to zirs, squeezing gently, “I have more faith in you than I do any doctor or surgeon I have ever met, and likely will ever meet. But even the greatest surgeon can’t perform a double amputation while unconscious, much less on zirself. Right?”
Esmeralda frowned, what the hell was he talking about? Ze was perfectly healthy and never went into fights, the odds of them needing to get anything amputated were slim to—
And then the realization hit zir, and zir hands flew to zir mouth and the sachet almost went flying and it was a good thing Marama caught it. And it was a good thing Gan was behind Esmeralda to catch zir when zir knees buckled underneath zir. The entire world felt like it was spinning, like it had fallen out from underneath zir, and the tears came forth like a summer storm, and zir every breath felt like a convulsion. Not only would ze be able to have surgery to fix one of their greatest sources of distraction and stress and suffering; but they may well turn out to be the first person in the world to do so, electively.
Gan and Marama both held zir until it the sobbing convulsions passed, zir face buried in the Captain’s shoulder as he stroked zir hair in silence.
When it was over, ze realized ze had become more aware of the tightness of the stay around zir chest. It would be like that from that moment on. Because when you think something is impossible, it’s easy to suppress these thoughts. To simply make oneself forget about them. Much like one does not spend much time worrying about being unable to fly: it’s so farfetched that there’s no genuine emotional attachment to it, though a credible prospect of becoming able to might lead to a deep obsession.
Esmeralda wanted nothing more, once those floodgates opened, than to never, ever wear a fucking stay again.
