Chapter 2

• So he was a completely spineless man, he thought as he entered her room yet again. He had not lost track of time and knew she was twelve years older now. He had only allowed himself to come this close while she slept over the last few years though, for he was uncertain of what her ability to see him actually meant. She stormed past him, opened her door, and screamed obscenities that he’d only ever heard from older, weathered males. She shocked him, made him wonder whether he should really be here. The door slammed, and he turned to see her take a leap and flounce onto the bed.
• She had definitely lost that helpless, angelic look. Her dark eyes turned to him and he had no choice but to stand there and watch her look at him. She bounced off the bed, straight up as if she were pulled by a rope, and walked past him to the shelves along the wall.
• He turned slowly. Gone were the childish toys and trinkets. There were no more coloring sticks in this one’s life. His eyes moved over the top of the shelf. She had, over the last several years, added to her galleon, and it now held a detailed frigate and shebec model. If he were the size of a mouse, he could have lived on them, they were that detailed. She had associated him with the ships, and he supposed she was observant to have done so.
• With a hesitant movement he raised his eyes away from the ships he’d last seen in their real and true form to look back at her. She smiled at him, or possibly it was a snarl; it wasn’t easy to distinguish, but the point was she could really, truly see him and he was once more left to wonder what it meant. He heard a door slam downstairs and watched her turn quickly to the window.
• Stepping closer so he could see, her mother was leaving, and with her was a man. Even though he had never seen this man before, he knew it was the sort of man any woman was better not getting close to.
• Hearing her heavy sigh he turned. She had walked back over to the bed and was putting tiny drops with wires attached to them in her ears. He’d noticed most children of her age walked around with wires coming from their ears. Somehow he doubted it was to lessen the sound of cannon fire. He watched her for a moment longer, decided she was well enough for now, and left without further hesitation.
• The sound of sob haunted him once again, without intending it, he found himself inside her room. In the last four years he’d managed to stay away, but in an odd moment of weakness, had spent a few brief moments here, just to assure himself she was well enough. The room had undergone enormous change; it now assaulted his senses to be in it. It was a mix of bright and dark, contrasting with each other in ways that it made him dizzy. Gone were the pretty pinks of childhood; in their place was black with blood-red splatters.
• He stopped beside the shelf and wanted for one moment to touch the ships. Two more spectacular replicas displayed on the top shelf. A caravel, which, he thought with a smirk, looked as pieced-together in this size as he had always thought they were in the real versions. The man-o-war filled him with longing, just as the real thing had once done. There wasn’t anything that could compete with the force of it, the sheer threat its appearance on the horizon had wrought. Bringing himself from memories of a past long gone, he turned to find her sprawled half on, half off the bed. She was talking low into a phone; yes, he knew what a phone was—now.
• “I hope he falls and breaks both of his legs and has to spend the rest of the year hobbling around on crutches! He’s such a loser; I don’t know why I even bothered.” She sniffled.
• Pausing, he raised his eyebrows and tried to understand what she talking about. A male was no doubt involved; he was not so long gone that he didn’t recognize the tone that every female adopted when a male had done wrong. What he didn’t understand was the word loser; had there been a race? He shook his head and decided he needed to observe more television in his wanderings. It had been his only way to discover a world outside of his confinement. The only link that let him feel as if he were still part of the human race, not a lonely drifter who felt no peace. Of course, the first time he saw the wondrous thing they called a television, he was intrigued by such a puzzling contraption.
• “Yeah, okay, later!”
• Turning, he watched her hang up the phone and hop off the bed. He knew his eyes bulged when she stood up and walked over to close the door. He felt like he’d just been broadsided! What was she wearing? He seriously doubted she should even leave the building. Her shoulders were bare, as was her midriff, and his throat practically seized shut when he realized she was no longer a child in any sort of way. She had breasts! When had she gotten those? His eyes traveled down to see bare womanly legs beneath a short skirt. If he actually had such a thing as saliva left in his body, it would have dried right up inside his mouth.
• She walked over and touched the man-o-war ship with a feminine hand, and he suddenly felt like an extremely old man. Turning with her hand still on the ship, she looked directly at him, and he froze, not knowing how to react. She was past sixteen years now and more than womanly, but he felt saddened to realize that she had never been allowed much of a childhood.
• His eyes traveled the length of her again, noting that she was just a little more than a hand’s span shorter than his own height, but it was her eyes that swallowed him. Her dark hair hung to her shoulders, untamed waves of thick silk. Her deep brown eyes had been highlighted with coloured powders, and the result completely robbed him of air, or would have if he still breathed. A child of this age should not know how to look at a man the way she was looking at him.
• He watched without movement as her hand ran over a sketch of a face propped behind the ships, he would swear it was a likeness of his own face—himself in a looking glass, the way he remembered looking. He moved a hand to touch the scar that ran from his temple to cross his cheekbone. The sketch was of him, including the scar. He glanced back at her and had so many questions, but none he would ever ask. She could see him, but how? And why?
• Inclining his head to her, he turned to leave before he could change his mind, making a silent vow he would not return again.
• ~