#st. elmo's fire | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

antilocaprine · 1 year

Note

for the kiss prompts, frenrey, 36, pls?

(Kiss Prompt List)

Once I thought about this prompt in context of @melonsharks' Pirate!AU, I absolutely had to do it. This was supposed to end shortly after the kiss, with only a brief reference to what happens after, but then I wanted to write the cool climactic scene, and then I realized that the part after the kiss had taken up way more space than the part before the kiss. Ah well. Sometimes it's like that.

(Also, a savvy reader may recognize elements of the climax from a Redwall book, though I'll be danged if I can remember which one. I read all of them multiple times as a kid, so just trust me on this. It was a very cool scene.)

36: ...to give up control.

Gordon comes to flat on his back, and he must have only been knocked silly for a moment, because particles of wood and dust are still falling through the new hole in the deck that he’s staring up at. Through the gap, he can see a section of the mast and the sails, tattered at one corner where a cannonball took out a rope and tore the edge loose, sending the cloth fluttering in the breeze.

Overhead, there are pounding footsteps and shouts, but Gordon can’t focus enough to think about that right now - he’s too busy trying to pull air into his deflated lungs. His hook scrapes the planking he’s laying on, but he hasn’t got enough strength yet to haul himself upright. He can’t catch his breath - why can’t he catch his breath?

“Great shot, Bubby!” Coomer bellows from somewhere on the deck above, and Gordon relaxes slightly. He hadn’t realized he was still tensed up, and that movement allows air into his shocked lungs in a painful, burning rush. He wheezes a few breaths in, then kicks his elbows back and manages to push himself up far enough to see that there’s a spar of wood punched through his right calf.

“Where’s the captain?” Tommy’s voice yells, sounding more distant than Coomer’s.

“He’s right - oh. Oh, dear.” Coomer’s voice gets closer, and then his head is silhouetted poking over the edge of the new hole in the deck. “Ah! Hello, Gordon!”

“Is - how is he?” Tommy shouts. “Is he okay?”

“Now, Gordon, I wouldn’t suggest that,” Coomer says, and Gordon looks up from trying to yank the wood out of his leg and waves at him. He still can’t catch his breath enough to shout.

A cannonball whistles overhead, and Coomer’s head vanishes as another half-dozen gunshots ring out. The hole in the planks is partially obscured by smoke, and Gordon tries to set his left leg and pull himself off the spear of wood. It looks like he fell on a pallet of crated supplies which broke under the combined weight of his body and ten feet of deck, and part of the pallet is what’s currently playing peekaboo with Gordon’s leg muscles. Since the pallets are secured to the floor of the hold to keep their weight from shifting, this means that Gordon is effectively stuck like a bug on a pin.

Joshua collected butterflies like that, Gordon remembers, and the thought is enough to drive another gasp of air from his lungs. Joshua never killed any of the insects, but any time he found dead ones, he picked them up and brought them home cradled in the cup of his hands to add to the little box of wings beneath his bed…

“oh, shit,” a voice says, and Gordon’s head snaps up to see Benrey leaning over the hole in the deck, outlined in smoke and the fading light of sunset.

“Where’s your gun?” Gordon rasps, the words tearing at his throat. “You have to - fight back -”

“yeah, sure, right,” Benrey says, and hops down into the hold.

It’s an eight foot drop if it’s an inch, but the former stowaway doesn’t even seem to notice the impact. They’re immediately hurrying over to Gordon, peering critically at the impaled leg.

“clumsy lil boy, ain’t’cha?”

“Shut up,” Gordon hisses, hauling one of his pistols free. “Shut the fuck up - take this, and get -”

“nope, i gotta - you really fucked up big time,” Benrey says.

“It was a direct shot!” Gordon snaps.

“not direct enough to, uh, t’hit you, though.”

“Benrey,” Gordon barks. “Are there boarders?”

“uhhhh,” Benrey tips their head back and looks straight up. “no. they’re not, uh - not close enough yet.”

“I have to get back up there, then, to make sure they stay that way.” Gordon tries again to set his heel against the floor of the hold, but his boot slips in a mix of blood and what might be whiskey. What a waste.

“that’s probably - hey, you shouldn’t do that!” Benrey’s tone is alarmed enough that Gordon stops and looks at them. They’ve got both hands outstretched, one hovering a foot above Gordon’s pinned leg, and the other at shoulder level, like they’re going to push Gordon back to the deck - or like they’re monitoring another wound.

Gordon glances over and blinks, genuinely surprised to see a six-inch splinter of wood protruding from the meat of his upper chest. Maybe there are multiple reasons why it was so hard to catch his breath after the fall.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and sees Benrey nodding out of the corner of his eye.

Another shot whistles overhead, and Gordon curses again. “I’m the captain,” he says, probably nonsensically. “I have to - no one else can steer the ship.”

“i can - i could do that?” Benrey’s face is smeared with soot and sweat, but their dark headband is still tightly secured over their serious gaze. “i was, uhhhh first mate. first - first mate Benrey? maybe, uh - best mate Benrey?”

Gordon’s spectacles are chipped at one corner, but he still resettles them to stare blankly at Benrey. “...What?”

“i know how to steer the ship,” Benrey says patiently.

“No,” Gordon replies, and tries to haul his leg off the wooden spar again.

“no - wait, don’t -”

Something hits the railing on deck with a splintering crack, sending shards of wood spinning down through the hole in the planks. Gordon flings an arm up to protect his head, and Benrey ducks over Gordon’s legs as wood patters across their back.

Overhead, there’s a brief silence, then Bubby’s voice shouts “YOU MISSED!” This time, Gordon can hear faint voices yelling replies.

“Shit, they’re getting closer.”

“yeah, so - y’gotta let me help.” Benrey sits up and shakes the loose debris from their shoulders, keeping one hand extended to prevent anything from falling onto the wound in Gordon’s leg. Benrey does that a lot - Gordon will turn around and they’ll be standing there, one hand out like Gordon’s a fire and Benrey’s trying to warm up. He’ll admit it’s made him twitchy around the former stowaway, even after he cleared his residual resentment for having missed Benrey smuggling themself aboard. Even if they got Tommy’s help, he still should have noticed.

Sunkist gives a roaring bark, and there are several splashes like bodies falling into the ocean. Sunkist would never attack any of the crew, so that must mean the fucking Navy ship has finally closed the distance and has either sent a dinghy, or tossed lines over to attempt a boarding.

Gordon looks at Benrey. “Tommy said you got him out of Port Royal on a hijacked dinghy. Is that true?”

Benrey shrugs. “yeah, i guess.”

“This isn’t a dinghy. Can you actually take the helm of a ship this big?”

“yeah, i guess,” Benrey says again, which isn’t the most reassuring thing to hear.

Above them, the clatter of grappling hooks filters through the smoky hole in the deck. “Damn it,” Gordon hisses. “I wouldn’t - I don’t even know where to go, besides ‘away’.”

“i do,” Benrey says, and checks the splinter in Gordon’s shoulder in a businesslike manner. They swipe some of Gordon’s mane of hair out of the way to look at his back, then make a muffled sound. “uh…that’s probably fine.”

“What does - fuck it, I don’t care,” Gordon growls, and loops his hook around Benrey’s shoulder to tug them close. “We have to get away from these fucking bootboys, yeah? Just - get us away.”

“uh-huh,” Benrey says faintly, face flushed and eyes very wide. And Gordon’s been holding back a little, because he’s listened to Benrey’s singing at night and watched them play with Tommy and Sunkist and listened to them pester Bubby until he shows them how to pack blasting powders into explosives, and he’s not blind, okay? He’s seen Benrey watching him back.

Lines creak horribly as the wind catches the sail at a bad angle and the ship lists. Gordon huffs out a curse and feels his own breath reflected back at him from Benrey’s proximity. He reaches up and unclasps his locket, tugging it free and slinging it over Benrey’s head, pressing their lips together as he does to keep Benrey from noticing the complicated motion his fingers make to lock the clasp. He can’t lose the locket - it’s far too important, for far too many reasons.

Benrey presses back immediately, one hand cupping Gordon’s good shoulder, the other braced on the floor as they return the kiss with enthusiasm. Gordon pulls back and swallows, then tucks a finger under the locket and picks it up, letting it roll over his fingers to display the heavy back of the case. He flicks the tiny tab that’s hidden near the hinge, and a length of metal slides out with a soft click.

“whuh…that’s a key,” Benrey says, their eyes nearly crossed to focus on the locket. Gordon clicks the tab again and the tiny key folds back into the pendant.

“When you get to the wheel, there’s a slot on the back of the king spoke, where it meets the barrel of the helm.” Gordon lets the locket fall to thump against Benrey’s chest. “Fit the key into that slot and it’ll unlock the wheel.”

“sneaky,” Benrey says appreciatively.

“Cautious,” Gordon replies. “Coomer’s idea. We stole her once. Didn’t want anyone stealing her back.”

Benrey nods and rises to their feet. The shadow of their headband makes their eyes look like tiny pinpricks of reflected light in the darkness of the hold, and for a moment Gordon wonders if he’s made a mistake - but only a moment. Benrey has proved time and again that they’re on the same side as Gordon’s crew, even though they’ve been annoying as hell along the way.

“m’gonna go - do that. with this.” Benrey gestures at the locket, and Gordon realizes with a spike of delight that they’re flustered. That’s hilarious.

“Benrey?” Gordon reaches out and tugs on the trailing end of the sash that’s tied around Benrey’s waist, unable to reach anything higher.

“yeah? huh?”

Gordon smirks up at them and slaps his loaded pistol into their empty palm. “Fuck ‘em up.”

Benrey’s mouth curls up in a feral grin, their teeth gleaming red in the glow of a sudden explosion from the deck. “on it, boss,” they say, then pause, and carefully add, “captain.”

“Finally,” Gordon snorts. “Knew I could get that out of you eventually.”

“more where that came from,” Benrey says, and then makes a standing leap for the edge of the splintered hole in the deck before Gordon can parse what the hell they meant by that.

In a surprisingly short amount of time, the chaos on deck seems to subside. Gordon can hear water rushing against the hull, so he knows they’re moving, but he’s surprised they managed to fight off the Navy sailors that quickly - unless none of them made it onboard in the first place. Sunkist’s immense head peering over the railing has certainly repelled boarders before, so perhaps it worked again.

Gordon hears footsteps trotting across the wooden planks behind him, but before he has to worry about drawing his other pistol, he hears Coomer’s cheerful voice. “Ah! Hello, Gordon! I see you’re still in a sticky situation!”

With his help, Gordon is able to prise his leg off the spar of wood without tearing too much more muscle, and they make their unsteady way through the hold, Gordon leaning on Coomer, to reach the actual stairs up to the deck. There is debris on the steps, too - the battle left quite a mess, and Gordon winces as his good foot slips on a piece of wood and almost goes out from under him. Coomer catches his weight without appearing to notice, which Gordon is grateful for.

“I’m not sure where young Bipple is taking us, but those dastardly bootboys are having trouble keeping up,” Coomer says as they reach the level of the deck, “and that’s all I care about. Bubby was almost out of bombs!”

“Bite your tongue,” Bubby snaps, holed up near the forecastle and hurriedly pouring dark powder through a paper funnel into a small container tucked between his knees. “I’m never out of bombs.”

“Good to hear,” Gordon rasps, and Bubby glances up sharply, eying the dust on his clothes, the bandage on his leg, and the spear of wood still sticking out of his shoulder, secured tightly with cloth padding. (Coomer had decided it was doing better to block the potential bleeding where it was, but Gordon was hating the fact that it left him with minimal use of his good arm.)

“All right, captain?” Bubby asks cautiously.

“Just fine,” Gordon replies, “as long as these bootboys stay back. Any casualties?”

“Not on our side,” Coomer says brightly, and Gordon leaves it at that.

They make their way across the deck, skirting the edge of the large hole Gordon was thrown through, and head for the quarterdeck. At the helm, Benrey is outlined in an eerie glow. Gordon blinks. The Navy ship is too far back to be casting that light, and anyway, it’s the wrong color, shining a sickly blue that makes Benrey’s skin look wan and washed out. They resemble nothing so much as a corpse, and Gordon stumbles to a halt, staring up at them as they shift the wheel slightly, sending the ship a few degrees to starboard.

“Is…that…?” Gordon starts, and at his shoulder, Coomer nods.

“St. Elmo’s fire,” he says quietly. “None of us have been able to talk to them since they took the helm. But they had the key, so…I assume that was your doing?”

“Yeah,” Gordon says, distracted. “I…gave it to them. Are we - do we trust -”

“Cap’n Freeman, you’re okay!” Tommy appears from behind the mast, and Gordon blinks.

“Do you know where Benrey’s taking us?”

“Oh, I, um…no,” Tommy says, reaching out to scratch Sunkist’s ears as the enormous dog wiggles around some rigging to reach his side. “But we’re in a, um, some kind of current, because they’ve got more sails but they, um, it looks like they can’t catch us.”

Gordon’s gaze follows his pointing finger. The Navy ship does, in fact, have a full set of sails up and belled out in the breeze, visible by lantern light even from this distance. Since Gordon’s ship has at least one damaged sail and is a smaller vessel to boot, there’s no way they should be running ahead of the heavier Navy ship. And yet, here they are.

Gordon looks up at Benrey again, who doesn’t seem to know that anyone else is nearby. “I’m going up,” he decides. “I’ll talk to them.”

“Gordon, I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Coomer says. Tommy, usually Benrey’s primary advocate, stays conspicuously silent.

Gordon shrugs, then winces when the splinter of wood in his shoulder bites into his flesh at the movement. “Someone has to do it, and I gave them the key. I’ll go alone,” he adds, pulling away from Coomer before he can protest.

The staircase up to the helm has a banister, and Gordon leans on it as hard as he can as he limps his way up the steps. The air begins to feel charged as he nears Benrey, and he can see little sparks of blue light flickering curious fingers out from Benrey’s shoulders, from their clothes, from their hair. The entire wheel is glowing from this side, Gordon notes, and decides it’s probably best not to touch anything.

“Benrey,” he says from the top of the stairs, his hand still on the railing and his hook looped over a rope to keep him steady.

Benrey’s lips are moving, but they’re silent, staring straight ahead, eerie blue light dancing across their features. Gordon doesn’t know what to do. He’s only seen St. Elmo’s fire once before, on the rigging of a sinking ship during a thunderstorm, and they’ve all heard the stories of what it means. The fact that it hasn’t spread to the sails is immaterial - its presence says that one way or another, they’re all doomed.

At a loss, Gordon takes an unsteady step closer and raises his voice. “Benrey?”

That gets a reaction. Benrey turns their head slowly, like they’re underwater, their hair fluttering against the wind above their headband. Their eyebrows gradually come down as they make eye contact with Gordon, and when they open their mouth to speak, the words sound like they’re coming from very far away.

“oh…hey…you’re up. cool,” Benrey says, and starts to turn back to face the wheel. Behind them, the Navy ship fires a single shot - they must have dragged one of the guns around to face forward. Maybe Bubby’s taunting struck a nerve. The shot whistles harmlessly through the night and splashes down well aft of the ship’s stern. Benrey frowns again.

“s’not very…nice,” they say quietly, and Gordon watches a line of bright blue lightning flicker from their shoulder over the railing. He turns and sees it streaking across the water until it reaches the place the cannonball splashed down, where it leaps from the dark sea and follows an arc back toward the Navy ship, as if it’s tracing the shot’s path in reverse.

When it lands, there’s the distant sound of an explosion, and several screams. Benrey smirks, and doesn’t look back.

“What the fuck is going on?” Gordon rasps, dust and smoke still thick in his throat and feeling thicker. This is - this is magic, or religion, or something, and he’s not prepared for it today. Tonight. Whatever.

“don’t worry about it,” Benrey says, and their voice sounds clearer, though they still face forward, both hands on the wheel. Gordon’s locket gleams bright gold on their chest, somehow untouched by the blue-violet glow of the St. Elmo’s fire that wreathes the rest of Benrey’s body.

“Where are we going?” Gordon asks unsteadily.

Benrey’s lips curl up in a smile, their teeth gleaming and sharp. “a trap,” they reply, and raise one hand to point, blue lightning flickering around their wrist and fingers like playful snakes.

Gordon turns to look, squinting his eyes to see through the ambient glow. Far ahead, but getting closer, there is a shadow on the water, what looks like a hole sunk into the sea…

His mouth goes dry. “Is that a maelstrom?”

“...dunno what that is,” Benrey says after a moment. “s’a whirlpool, though.”

“That’s what a maelstrom is, man.” Mesmerized, Gordon steps forward and his leg gives out, sending him crashing toward the railing in front of the helm. He forgets that it’s currently flickering with blue light and reaches out to catch himself, jarring his shoulder and his leg in the act and gritting his teeth to keep from crying out.

Benrey makes an unhappy noise, but Gordon can’t look at him yet - he’s too busy staring at the flickers of blue-violet light that are dancing across his knuckles on the railing. It doesn’t feel like anything, which is a surprise - but this close, he can hear a faint crackling, like a distant fire burning hot pine logs. He stumbles away anyway, and feels Benrey’s hand in the small of his back when he does.

“sorry,” Benrey mumbles, pushing him gently back toward the stair railing. “might wanna…hold on.”

A single thread of blue light stays anchored to Gordon when Benrey pulls their hand away to return it to the wheel and Gordon stares as it flickers around the curve of his hook, the other end jumping between Benrey’s shoulder and their forearm. It looks like a bolt of lightning in miniature, jagged and jolting, but it still doesn’t hurt.

“TOMMY!” Benrey bellows, and Gordon twitches. “HANG ON TO SOMETHING!”

“Aye aye!” Tommy yelps from below, and Gordon can hear him shouting it up to Coomer and Bubby. Benrey does something with the wheel and reaches up - and finally, several fingers of blue light dart up to dance through the rigging and skip along the sails. The ship slows, and Gordon can hear startled shouts from the Navy vessel.

“Benrey, you can’t run us into that,” Gordon says. “It’ll - maelstroms aren’t big enough to eat a ship, but it could tear the hull apart and put us in the water anyway, and that’s basically the same fucking thing.”

“this one’s big enough,” Benrey says, then adds “i made sure of it.”

What? Gordon stares at them. “What? What does that mean?”

Benrey shrugs. “means i made sure of it,” they say, then send the wheel into a rattling spin. The rudder creaks and the ship lists hard to port just as they reach the edge of the vortex’s current.

Gordon looks over the railing at it, and abruptly realizes that what he was looking at was an actual hole in the ocean, still quite distant. He’s never seen a maelstrom this big, and certainly not one in the middle of the sea, with no land to knock about strange currents that might build something like this.

“Holy hell,” he whispers as the hull shudders and settles into the groove of the spinning current, slingshotting them around the edge of the vortex.

“something like that,” Benrey mutters, and behind them, the Navy ship charges forward in pursuit.

“We’ve got them now!” A posh voice cries. Gordon glances over his shoulder to see that the Navy vessel has closed much of the distance between them. Sailors holding lanterns lean out over their railings, but they seem cautious about firing another shot, and Gordon notices several arms pointing up at the blue glow dancing through his rigging.

“Benrey?” Gordon asks slowly. “What’s the light?”

“it’s, uh…helping,” Benrey says, their voice sounding distant again. “don’t mess with it.”

“How the fuck would I do that?” Gordon starts, then has to slam his hook into the banister as the ship abruptly lists hard to starboard. “What - did we just hit something?”

“no. s’fine. don’t worry about it,” Benrey says quickly. The black hole of the maelstrom’s mouth is getting closer, frothing white water at the edge marked by moonlight and the mix of lantern light and violet witchlight before it drops away into darkness.

“Benrey?” Tommy’s voice quavers from somewhere on the quarterdeck. “We’re getting awfully close…”

“it’s fine!” Benrey calls down. “don’t - it’s okay!”

“Okay!” Tommy replies, and Gordon can hear the relieved smile in his voice. Just like that, huh? But Tommy’s always been trusting. Gordon is less so.

“If you wreck my ship I’ll - I’ll drown you,” he says, which is probably rude in the situation, but tempers are high.

“like t’see you try,” Benrey mutters, then spins the wheel again as the Navy ship pulls broadside across the mouth of the vortex.

“Oh, shit - TAKE COVER!” Gordon bellows, but it’s too late - he already sees the flashes of light from the Navy guns going off. Fuck, have they even reloaded their own guns? Bubby and Coomer probably took care of that, but -

Gordon’s train of thought screams to a halt, then cataclysmically derails. There is…something…rising out of the black maw of the maelstrom, and it’s caught the cannonballs and flung them back somehow. He can’t exactly tell how, because the…thing…is as dark as the mouth of the vortex itself, and he can only see it where it blocks the light from the Navy ship. Even then, his mind struggles to perceive what he’s looking at - is it some sort of curtain? A feral whale? Is it a serpent? Is it Scylla herself, rising from the depths of Charybdis to hunt for human blood?

“don’t worry about it,” Benrey says sharply, and the wheel clacks as it spins in its housing and their bowsprit swings away from the whirlpool.

Somehow, the current lets them go. It should be impossible, but the sea clears ahead of them, and Gordon’s pretty sure he sees flickers of green and blue lights along the edges of the still water, like the reflection of lanterns lining an avenue.

“Did they miss again?” Bubby’s voice comes from below, and Gordon realizes with a start that, because he told them to take cover, none of them saw the thing that rose from the maelstrom.

“Oh dear,” Coomer says softly, and Gordon spins to look back beyond the stern just in time to see the lights on the Navy ship go dark one by one, the mast tilting as the vessel begins to drop prow-first into the vortex. The rush of the current seems muted, and the Navy ship is quiet and dark as it slips out of sight beneath the waves with a faint rush of cracking wood and creaking ropes.

Gordon breathes very carefully for a few moments, thinking hard. There’s still witchlight dancing around Benrey, but the flickers of blue that had leapt so energetically into the rigging and sails have returned to the helm and seem rather subdued, as if they’re dogs expecting a scolding. Gordon watches one dart close to his hook before it appears to think better of it and lunges back to Benrey, instead.

Gordon shakes his head. St. Elmo’s fire doesn’t think anything. It’s not alive. No one knows what it is, but they know it’s not that. Although...Gordon thought he knew that maelstroms couldn’t get big enough to destroy a sloop, let alone a Navy man-o-war, yet he just saw it happen in front of him. And he’s starting to rethink his initial dismissal of Benrey’s statement that they aren’t human in light of this…well, light. And everything else, of course.

The thread of blue connecting him to Benrey jitters as Gordon steps toward them. They take a step back, but keep one hand on the wheel, looking worried.

“are we, uh…was that okay?”

“That was brilliant, Benrey!” Coomer shouts from the staircase. Gordon swings around to glare at him, and he hurries back down the stairs with a chortle.

“are we…okay?” This sounds even more hesitant.

Gordon steps up next to them and sets his hand on a spoke opposite to the one Benrey’s holding. Their gaze flicks down, then back up to Gordon’s face, and they swallow. Slowly, Gordon reaches out with his now completely glowing hook and gently taps Benrey’s chest. There’s a bzzt like static discharge, and their hair stands on end for a moment before flopping back into its usual messy sprawl above their headband. Most of the unearthly glow around them goes dark, leaving only a few flickers of light across their shoulders like a glowing stole.

“That was pretty brilliant,” Gordon concedes. “But uh…maybe some warning, next time? I don’t know what the fuck I just saw, but I think -”

“oh shit, you weren’t supposed to see that,” Benrey interrupts.

“What did I see?” Gordon asks stiffly.

“uhh…”

“Do not say -”

“don’t worry about it?”

“You fucking -” Gordon lashes the wheel with a practiced sweep of his hand and lunges after Benrey, who takes off, cackling their way down the stairs. Tommy catches them on the quarterdeck, because Gordon can’t move very fast right now and his crew is nothing if not fair. Bubby and Coomer smack Benrey cheerfully on the back, and Tommy squeezes them so tightly that they squeak as Gordon makes his way down the steps toward them. Flickers of blue-violet light dance through the rigging, keeping pace with him as he goes, and he decides that if things like coral can be alive, then maybe light can, too. Especially light that knows better than to touch his locket. He smiles as Coomer steps up to reach for the dressing on his shoulder, now that they finally have time to breathe.

Gordon watches his locket bounce on Benrey’s chest as they laugh at Sunkist pushing Tommy over and sending all three of them sprawling across the deck. Perhaps there will be time for other things, too, if he allows himself that chance. He thinks of Benrey’s eager mouth on his, and figures that maybe he could try that again, to start with. They’ll have to see where it goes from there, afterward. But they’ve got time.

* * *

Far behind them and getting farther, where shortly before, a maelstrom devoured a ship whole, moonlight shines on smooth, dark water, broken only by the eddies of natural currents. Nothing lies lurking beneath the waves. If anyone came looking for a sunken Navy ship, they would never find it. The only evidence of strangeness is faint sparkles of green and blue light refracting off the surface of the sea - or maybe it’s just the reflected light of stars, silent and watchful in the vault of the midnight sky.

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