Inescapable (Ach)
The following fictitious events take place in Reality D
Day ten million on the water.
Day ten million of noting that the ocean was often more inky gray or black than straight blue.
Day ten million of solitude, except for occasional encounters with the other boat passengers.
Ach was on a long, lonely boat to nowhere.
Someone stood next to him, disrupting the solitude. While he resented the solitude, he resented the interruption even more. That was his misery, and he was here to wallow in it. How dare anyone interrupt that?
“Hello,” the someone said. The sunset caught auburn curls in the man’s hair and made them glow copper.
Nell, the king of the Pixies, stood beside him. He had soft skin that darkened in the sun and paled again when he spent too much time indoors, as was absolutely not the case on a boat. Nell’s skin was nearly as copper as his hair.
Ach blushed, for reasons he didn’t understand or care to think about. “Oh, hi.” If he thought about why Nell’s presence made him blush, Nell would know the effect his proximity had on Ach’s heart rate, on his robust circulation, on his being.
This would be inappropriate, because while Nell was single and available and had the deepest eyes that sank endlessly into his soul, he was also a friend and Ach wasn’t sure how to handle that sort of line. So far, he had failed at respecting the boundaries of friendship: It was why he was here, to mourn the loss of Spence as a friend and adjust to a future where Spence married his sister, had babies with his sister.
“How are you?” Nell asked, as if Ach’s thoughts weren’t a loudspeaker on repeat.
“Me?” Ach choked on the nothing in the air. “I’m fine. I’m not upset or anything. I was actually…” What did people do on boats? Watch whales, but there weren’t any and Nell, with his animal affinity, would be far more likely to find some than Ach would. You could stargaze on the ocean too, but it was daytime. What was he doing? “Watching the meteors land in the ocean.”
Ha! That was perfect! Meteors didn’t leave any evidence, and if Nell called him on it he could say they’d just stopped showering down on the water around them.
“I see,” Nell said without question. “My favorite meteor is right there.” He gestured to a pigeon, one of the ones they’d brought with on the boat.
“That’s not a space rock,” Ach argued, “that’s a member of the Columbidae family, a gorgeous bird.”
Nell chuckled softly. He angled himself so he faced the ocean less, and Ach more. “It’s impressive that you’re more concerned with space rocks than being a fire fairy at sea.”
“If the boat sinks,” which would be awful, “I’ll drown and be out of my misery. Not that I’m miserable. Did you know pelicans can hold a ton of water in their beaks?”
“A literal ton?” Nell asked. Ach couldn’t tell if that was a challenge or a curiosity.
Either way, Nell was right: The water hardly weighed a ton. “About three gallons,” Ach corrected.
“I did not know that,” Nell said. “I did know they dislike shells in their beaks.”
“Good thing oysters don’t float?” Ach joked, and cringe-blushed, because it was such a terrible joke. He couldn’t think of what else to say, but he knew he didn’t want to talk about himself so he decided to ask about Nell instead. “Are you okay?”
Nell heaved a sigh. “Arguably no.”
He had no idea, but now he was glad he asked. He stepped closer to Nell, wishing he knew how to comfort him. “Why not?”
Nell let out another dramatic sigh. “I’m afraid my dearest Lizzie hasn’t come to visit. I fear the worst.”
Lizzie. Ach didn’t know anyone with that name. Certainly there were no big animals on the boat. “Is that a bird?”
“No, it’s a plesiosaurus.”
Oh. “But…aren’t they extinct?”
“Only in select realms,” Nell said smugly. That meant there were realms where you could go on a boat ride and see a dinosaur. Ach burned to go.
“Don’t tell my mom,” he said.
He wasn’t sure why he said that, but it made Nell laugh which flooded his own cheeks with heat.
“Acheron?” Nell said.
“Yes, Nell?”
Nell wrapped a wing gently around Ach’s back. It was warm, fragile against Ach’s skin, so he took care not to move. “It’s safe to suffer from heartbreak. I wouldn’t judge you any less.”
Wait, Nell judged him often? “You judge me a lot?”
Nell laughed, and his wing rubbed against Ach’s back and shoulders with every movement. “No, your grief is justified. The depths of your feelings do not make me think you are weak, or inferior in any way.”
Nell, more than anyone, likely understood Ach’s grief. Nell’s former husband, Konrad, was now very enthusiastically embroiled in a disgusting affair with Ach’s mom. Ach thought about it, about how close the two of them were, and said to Nell, “That can’t be fun.”
“No,” Nell agreed. “I have often longed for a traveling companion to weather the seas of a healing heart. If you ever feel lonely, you need not be alone.”
Nell was so eloquent, so tender, that Ach saw him suddenly in a new light, in a need not be alone light. What he’d always thought to be unattainable had just presented itself to him in a very vulnerable way.
“Okay,” Ach stammered. They could go on a date. On…a boat? How? There had to be something… “You don’t read. What do you like to do together?”
How could Nell possibly know what he liked to do together with Ach when they had never done anything together in a date way before?
Or maybe he would say things he liked to imagine doing with Ach, like kissing him or feeling him or…
Ach cut his mind off.
Nell smiled his secret, delighted smile. “I read often.”
“Really?” Ach had never seen him read. This was good news.
“How do you think I knew which books to bring to the library? I read several novels a week, though I also enjoy exploring in my free time. Books help with that: classification, social observation, healing wounds.”
Ach leaned against his wing, imagining Nell’s mind in a whole new way. “I never really thought about it before. You, reading.”
Nell tightened his wing around Ach so that it was more of a hug. “We could read together in your room.”
They could do many things together in his room. Most of them didn’t necessitate clothes, not that reading specifically necessitated clothes.
Ach’s face was hot, his mind a chaos of possibilities. “Okay. It’s just over here. It has a porthole so I can tell when it’s morning.” He would have to cover that porthole with a towel or something. “Are you hungry?”
Nell’s lower wing curve grazed the small of Ach’s back. “Incredibly.”
Ach held his bedroom door open and sucked in his breath (and the unruly sparks that charged from his skin) as Nell brushed past him into the room.
“I have about three hundred books,” he rambled to Nell. “I brought them in case I needed them. I hope you like some of them.”
“No wonder the ship is riding low,” Nell teased. He reached into a satchel Ach hadn’t realized he carried, and withdrew a can of hazelnut wafer sticks. Ach could imagine the flavor, the pristine crunch of each bite.
Nell offered him one. Ach took it and ate it greedily. He would have loved to have eaten it sensually, but he was too inexperienced, too self-conscious, to uncertain whether he was reading Nell right.
Too hopeful, and in his experience hopes existed to be dashed.
He reached into the can and took out a second wafer, offering it toward Nell.
He had no idea what he would do if Nell ate it sensually. Part of him hoped Nell would, and part of him was terrified of the idea, of what Nell might expect from him that he wasn’t ready for.
Nell ate it the same way Ach had and then selected a book (A High History of Mythological Creatures) from the shelf. He crossed the small cabin and lay on the wall side of Ach’s bunk.
Carefully, bookless, Ach lay next to him. Their bodies aligned perfectly, side-by-side.
Nell turned so he could make eye contact with Ach. His eyes were gentle, uncertain. “Shall we?”
Tremulously, Ach reached his hand toward Nell’s, tangled their fingers. “We shall.”
They were far from their destination, stuck on a boat on an endless sea, and the air was electric with dreams made real.