Until we Meet Again

“That’s strange.” An unfamiliar voice crows from somewhere above Mercy as she blinks awake.

She pushes herself up onto her elbows and peers up at a strange purple raven with a silver crown floating above it’s head. Its perched on the edge of The Amaryllis’ crows nest with the crew’s crest framing it a little too well to be an accident.

“What?” Mercy blinks again, hoping at some point, sooner than later, this will all make sense.

“You’re not to be moved on.” The crow states before gliding down and hopping closer to her once it lands. It tilts its head like Mercy is a puzzle to solve when it pauses an arm’s length away. “Not to another life, not to your after-world.” It croaks.

“OK?” Mercy sits up fully and is confronted by another crow, or perhaps a raven, she never saw enough on her times at sea to know the difference.

This… corvid, however, doesn’t speak. It barely even looks at Mercy before perching on her shoulder.

Something, some ancient, primal part of her warns her not to meet the glowing silver eyes. What she does see is, as she struggles to find somewhere else to look, is a small albatross, silver and wispy, circling its head, much the way the other has the floating crown.

“Curious.” The first voice says again.

“You want to explain what’s happening?” Mercy stands, the corvid on her shoulder merely settling in more comfortably as the other hops to the side of the ship to rest next to them.

As she looks out to a red sky, whether morning or night she is unsure, she thinks back to what little she remembers of finishing school and what she managed to pick up from when Finale spoke of her god.

“Are you… Mashar?”

The crow makes a strange noise, its head bobbing up and down in a way that Mercy interprets that the crow is laughing at her.

“You humans feel the need to simplify everything!” It crows, ruffling its feathers and hopping around before settling once more. When it finally does settle, laughter ending, it settles its red eyes on Mercy and she feels a sense of calm wash over her.

“I am what you may call: Those Who Went Down Fighting.” The crow explains, bobbing its head as if bowing. It then shifts its intense stare to the bird on her shoulder. “That is: Those Who Smiled.” Both birds are silent for a moment, though Those Who Went Down Fighting seems to be waiting for a response from the other bird. When the other bird gives none it ruffles its feathers in agitation.

“Where are we?” Mercy asks, having a vague theory but nothing set in stone.

“The In-Between.” Those Who Went Down Fighting answers, the emphasis on the words clearly meaning something to the creature. Mercy doesn’t need to ask in between what to know. She’s been near death enough times in her career that she isn’t naive enough to ask. But she can’t grasp why she would be here now. The memories before her waking up in this In-Between are clouded like she drank too much rum the night before, she can remember everything else just fine, except for the exact events surrounding what led to this bizarre moment.

After a few beats of silence she walks to the bow of the ship in an attempt to at least get her bearings straight. Those Who Smiled still doesn’t move, its head swaying with her motion, though its beak pecks at one of her longer earrings as it catches the light of the setting sun.

“Red at night.” Mercy answers her earlier question.

Those Who Went Down Fighting cocks its head at her from the rigging.

“Good luck, fair weather.” She explains. She waits, expecting the sun to sink lower in the horizon but it doesn’t move, and at that moment she also notices the still air, and the lack of a soothing sway beneath her feet. This place is still, everything that her life was never. “So, if I’m not dead…?” She isn’t afraid of the answer, but this In Between as the one talking bird explained is boring and she wants to be back with her family, her wife, her crew, and the strange children they seemed to have accidentally adopted.

Neither bird answers her and she has to choke back a huff of annoyance.

But as she does so she feels an external tightening around her neck, and the fog around the moments leading up to this bizarre event begins to clear up. Protecting Awnya, sending Finale to get help, sacrificing herself to the royal guard, knowing it would be her death, her father-- A plan?

“Someone, something, is keeping me alive?” She asks, to both birds but only expecting one to answer.

“It appears so.” The bird, for an entity that is meant to shepard the dead, is not angry or disappointed, but simply confused, if Mercy had to give an emotion to the strange creature.

“And this has never happened before?” She can’t stop herself from asking, the same curiosity that annoyed her mother, that Echo confessed caused her to fall in love, rears its head once more.

Both birds respond this time by ruffling their feathers in a way that Mercy can clearly interpret as: No.

Those Who Went Down Fighting cocks its head once more as its crown becomes more translucent.

“Well,” it says “it appears whatever is keeping you alive is waking you up.” It takes flight and begins to circle above Mercy, “I trust I don’t have to tell you to make use of this strange occurrence. You and I both know this won’t be happening again.”

Time slowly starts to trinkle through the dreamlike setting as the sun slowly begins to set once more, The Amaryllis rocks comfortingly under her feet, and the wind picks up to cause the sails to billow and stray hair to come loose. A fog begins to roll across the bow, much like it did on early autumn mornings in her home port.

Those Who Smiled is still perched on her shoulder, not having made a single sound this entire strange encounter, bites her ear gently before taking flight.

She has the strangest sense, before she wakes up, she will see it when her time finally does come round.