"Come in."
Rissa entered backwards, nudging the door open with her back, holding a tray, a covered bowl, a small loaf of something dense and dark, a cup of something steaming. She turned around, surveyed Aeryn standing at the mirror with a rigid posture, a woman who had nearly just died, and set the tray down on the cot.
"The cook made soup," Rissa said, in the tone of someone who has decided not to ask questions. "It's mostly salt and …," she sighed and continued, "...it's hot, it will help."
Aeryn sat. She accepted the cup and wrapped both hands around it and let the warmth do something to the cold that had been sitting in her chest since the vision. She closed her eyes. It was helping.
They were quiet for a moment. The rain was getting gentle outside. The ship had stopped pitching so violently. It seemed that either the storm was passing or the Captain had found calmer waters.
"Rissa?" Aeryn finally opened her eyes and looked at the unusually quiet Rissa.
"Are you hurt?" Rissa asked finally not letting aeryn continue. She was stealing glances at the sleeve Aeryn had pulled down.
"No."
Rissa looked at her for exactly one beat longer than was comfortable. Then she looked away and tore a piece from the dark loaf.
"Rissa."
"Mm."
"I'm sorry," Aeryn said. "For everything that was said in this cabin tonight. On my behalf and otherwise."
Rissa was quiet for a moment. "It wasn't your fault."
"I know. I'm still sorry it happened to you."
Something shifted in Rissa's face, a careful, controlled shift, the kind that happens when someone has been holding something tightly and someone else has just, unexpectedly, acknowledged the weight of it.
But she didn't answer.
Instead, in a movement so sudden and decided that Aeryn had no time to prepare or deflect or be appropriately regal about it, Rissa put down the bread, crossed the two feet between them, and hugged her.
Aeryn went completely still.
It was the hug of someone who had been terrified for a very long time and had simply run out of places to put it. Both arms around Aeryn's shoulders, her face tucked in, fierce and warm and slightly damp.
Aeryn sat with her arms at her sides for a while, her face doing something complicated and bewildered that no one from her court would ever have been permitted to witness.
But then as if she herself needed it, she put her arms around Rissa and hugged her back.
They sat like that. The soup steamed gently on the tray. The ship creaked around them.
"You must have been terrified," Aeryn said, quietly, into the top of Rissa's head.
Rissa's arms tightened. A sound came out of her that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sob.
"I had everything perfectly under control," she said, muffled.
"Of course."
"I was very calm."
"You were holding a dagger to a man twice your size."
"That is calm for me, you have no idea what my life is like."
Aeryn felt something shift in her chest again but it was different this time. Lighter. "I think I'm beginning to."
A pause. Then Rissa pulled back slightly, just enough to look at her. Her eyes were still red. She looked, Aeryn thought, like someone who had decided they were going to be alright and was simply waiting for the rest of themselves to catch up.
"Your hair is white," Rissa said.
"I'm aware."
"It's very..." She appeared to search for the word.
"Decrepit? Ancient? Like I've aged forty years in a single evening?"
"I was going to say dramatic." Rissa tilted her head. "Very dramatic. Very queen-who-has-suffered about it. The court poets will absolutely lose their minds."
Aeryn stared at her. "I nearly died tonight."
"Yes, and you'll be absolutely gorgeous at your own near-death memorial. Has anyone told you your bone structure is unfair? Because it is. It's honestly very inconsiderate to the rest of us."
"Rissa."
"White hair at nineteen. I've been getting grey hairs since I was seventeen from stress and I just have to deal with it like a normal person."
"Rissa?"
"don't try to change the topic my lady!"
"Those are completely different…"
"My suffering is also valid, Your Highness." Rissa said. She was acting strange she was not answering to aeryn but just venting without letting aeryn intrude into her insecurity.
"I was submerged in a void by a divine emissary…"
Rissa got quiet for a few seconds, she was scared but then she as if snapped herself out of pity and got back into her normal mode, "And I watched! From here! With no powers! Do you know how that feels? Very bad! It feels very bad!" She was gesturing now, the bread back in her hand, apparently for emphasis. "You at least got to do something dramatic! I just had to stand there and be worried about you like a normal, powerless, very anxious."
"Rissa?"
Your highness…..
"RISSA! Listen to me!" aeryn said forcefully with the little energy she had. Rissa got quiet. The silence stretched between like them years, rissa knew what aeryn wanted to ask her and she didn't want to talk about that. "You pulled a dagger on Finn."
"That was for you."
"I know." Aeryn's voice went quiet again. Genuine. "I know it was."
Rissa deflated slightly. She picked the bread and looked at the bread in her hand as if she'd forgotten where it came from.
"Rissa… do you remember why I wanted to exclude you back in Sahirra. You have done the same mistake. I told you…" Rissa's head was down. "Eat your soup," she said, cutting into aeryn's words. "Before it goes cold and I have to go back to the cook and he will absolutely take it personally and the next three meals will be passive-aggressive…"
"Is that a real concern?"
"You have never been on a ship before. Yes. It is a very real concern. Please my ladyEat your soup."
Aeryn ate her soup.
Outside, the storm had passed. The sea settled into something like patience. And somewhere above them, on the rain-slicked deck, a disgraced knight-turned-captain took back the wheel with steady hands, pointed the ship's nose toward open water, and did not look back at the shore.
.
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