The Seamaiden’s Inn, also called the Fair Seamaiden’s Inn by those who read the sign, sat between a cobble-house and timber and stucco built bakery. Never before then had I ever taken paid shelter within an inn. The Seamaiden, however, was not at all what I expected; prior to hearing the word I would have made within my mind a picture of an old, worn open-room with a fire and a stern man behind a bar. The Seamaiden was much more of a picturesque, profit-focused establishment—I was kindly greeted by a woman behind the counter who immediately attempted to sell me a room. The floor was hardwood and covered in a green rug that spanned from left to right, a lamp set upon an artisan table that burned with oil, the ceilings scalloped and adorned with elegant details that would not have been there if it were of a cabin-style. Indeed, they were building an atmosphere that I was to live and breathe if I took refuge there; and I did, of course.

“Glad you could get yourself inside before the rain started out there,” she half-heartedly muttered before I fully brought myself to the counter-front. “And where have you come from?”

I sat my coat on the floor, only to then hesitate as to whether or not it would be tough for me to do so, yet still left it there unbothered. “Ascott—or, Harthwaite, rather.”

“Have you ever been to Sattenbury, or have you been to the coast for that matter?” As she spoke she pulled out quite a large book, bound in freshly tanned leather.

“Never been to Sattenbury, but the coast, yes.” I eyeballed her actions, no contact with her gaze that she put upon me. Her actions were done like she had done it a thousand times before, like it had been written on her mind when she was a child. “When I was young.”

“A surprising amount of people around here haven’t been to the coasts.”

“Is that so?” I said, watching her hands fiddle through the pages of the ridiculously sized tome.

A short “mhm” came from her as she licked her finger. “Course it is.”

“And what, might I ask, are you doing with that—?”

“Can’t remember where the full pages end and the blank pages start. It’s our catalog of all our guests and all our transactions.” She put her pointer finger on a page that was half full with scribbles of black ink—“And here we go.” Out of a rolling drawer she found a ball-point pen, put her hand on the open page, then looked up at me in half-hearted anticipation. “Name?”

“Name? Oh—yes, my name. Put down I. Larkin.”

The girl's eyes drew to the tome. “Isaac? Isaiah? Ivan?”

“Do you require my first name? Is that needed?”

A scoff. “I wouldn’t be asking for it if I didn’t need it would I?” She was losing her patience, patience that I did not think she started with in the first place. I can assume that she had possibly hit her wits end when it came to dealing with customers, though she had a job that she was to do, a duty. And whether she was to give me cordiality was her choice.

“Irwin.”

Brief scrawling of my name in a fashion that was unreadable, at least when it was upside down. “One, two, or three?”

“One, two, or three what?”

An expected sigh. “Beds.”

I nodded. “One of me, one bed. No other members in my party.” My left hand found itself in my pants-pocket. “Would it not be better if I put my signature instead? Would that not make the transaction legitimate.”

“Sir,” she said as she closed the book, instantly stamping out any hope of me scribing my name down, “that isn’t required. We just need a first and last name. And the proper amount of payment.”

“And how much is that?”

Another scoff. “I was getting to that, Irwin.”

I muttered under my breath: “Hospitality is not the Seamaiden’s forte.”

“Moron-ory is yours,” she said shortly before answering my former question. “Thirty copper stirling.”

If I had no chivalist tendencies I would have responded once again, further prolonging the argument and upsetting the short-tempered girl; however, I attempted to foster amity, brushing off the comment and kicking it under the rug I stood on the hem of. “I will have to fish that out of my belongings. Would you cut one silver? That would be seventy copper back.”

“I know how much it would be, and yes I can.” The gilded cash box to her side is what she consulted to retrieve her coins. “Of course I can.”

I suppose that my smile that I made my attempts to keep in order to uplift peace was smearing away. From then on I refused to make any forced conversation, rifling through my things to find a silver piece and passing it off to her for her to pass off to me seventy copper, ridiculous to me that a stay in such an establishment for but only one night cost as much upon my realization of the condition and scale of the room. Cramped, utterly cramped, for I had to contend with whether I was to stoop upon my entering and where to put my luggage as opposed to stand. The floors were decorated with an artisan’s carpet, the lofted bed was draped with curtain-like beddings and sheets, and the window was open with wisping, ghostly pale hangings that foreshadowed the gusts of the coming storm. I shut it, took out what I required for the morning, stepped out into the foyer of the second floor peering at my watch. I had time to seek out food if I wished as the inn did not offer any, however I did not desire getting caught in the rain. Instead, I sat upon the foot of my bed and took out Ludwig's letter as I rubbed at the black engraving and read it thrice-over again, all in anticipation of our meeting. This is what I had longed for, to confer with possibly like-minded individuals, those who I could call colleges, to educate myself and debate all in the name of the progression of knowledge for men.

Perhaps in my childhood I should have taken up the violin, for I could play a song for my mother when she was ill, as I knew how to play the keys. But I had left those things behind me in the wake of the passing of my mother as I know that they would have sunk me down into the deepest pits of my despair and hindered me from pursuing what I wished for. Yet maybe the strings of the violin would have sliced through such feelings and, like my studies, brought me out of my upset. Though now I had promise, I had pursuits, I had desires for something that I believed to be greater than myself and that would shape the world around me for the better.

Against my better judgment I did, indeed, leave the confining, constricting walls of the inn and went out to the open, damp, chilled air of the fishing streets of Sattenbury. Truly, it had been years since I was to the coast, since I tasted salt water in the ailing wind that bitterly ate at my pale skin. Beau explained to me long before that such brine would eat at the mechanisms of my arm, that it would lock up, that I would have to have it repaired if I stayed in that sort of environment for long enough. I could always have removed the prosthesis but the mobility that it provided was far greater a promise than the experience of salt-water; and too, even if I were to take it off I would not have been able to swim in the sea, for one needs both appendages.

I walked between the looming figures of buildings far older than me, their foundations established on rocky shore creaking as the days went on and the moon and sun rose. As I walked closer to the shore I kicked up loose sands that were filmed across the streets, I passed by common-folk who were to go about their daily tasks and not bother to entertain any form of interaction with me, an outsider. And nonetheless no one knew who I was, I had but one publication. Evenso, there were but three captures of me: one from my early childhood near the creation of the device, one of me with my father within my seventh year, and a third to be kept as record for Limmere. And if I were to walk up to one of these fleeting men or women and ask of them if they knew my name, “I. W. Larkin, soon to be potential choice of the state for the royal institute of thought” they would respond to ask of my first name, “Irwin”, and they would say that there are many who have the name Irwin, so what is to become of me?

Now I was to the docking-way, where water-bowing ships ebbed and flowed while others were tied upon wooden poles that stuck out of the waves, at which their point of intersection with the salty sea they were caked in barnacle and clam. For the coast was just as I had remembered it, beautifully unforgiving, a changing tide of force and yet balanced control that lapped up the sands and spit them out into the abyss, that smooth out rock and yet chipped at stone. It was a distinct culture and world that was so alien to me thought I fit into it like another wayfarer, for they all knew nothing of the endless expansion of the sea and what hidden within its murkiest of waters just as I, still they tried their best to tame it and use it to their heart's content for commerce and trade and reap. It was much like the hills of inner Farenzo, where wheat fields sprawled in the organized pattern of the farmers who tilled the earthen ground. And hewn out of bricks of clay were the houses of cities such as Iyelsgarth, all cultured out of the earth that we human beings had been given, us to be stewards of these natural materials. Still a world that we knew the slightest bit about, a curtain hiding all mysteries of grim reality.

“Pardon me—!” he said, passing by in a tussle, to then have his stacked parcels slip out of the comfort of his arms and spill out onto the ground before the dock. The young man, about my age I assumed, was carrying stock to a merchant ship eagerly anticipating its departure; he was a docker. “Forgive me, I didn’t—!”

I made my attempts to comfort him as I aided him in his collection. “No need for such formality, it was just a mistake. I was standing in your way, I could have stepped aside. I’m a fool.”

“No sir, you’re not a fool, I am.” He fumbled with a package as he tried to fit all of them in between his arms.

“Not a sir, I’m barely your senior. I assume, of course.” With my metallurgic arm I took out of his uneasy hand the package and placed it with the rest of them betwixt his arms. “Yes, I assume.”

“Twenty-one.”

“You what?” I said, briefly looking over my shoulder at a hollering crone.

“I’m twenty-one,” he said as he looked out to the lolling sea. “You assumed.”

I nodded stoutly. “Twenty-two.” I saw within him, perhaps, similar tendencies as to myself; a lack of eye contact, uneasiness. I wished that I was as self aware then than I am now. “I’m twenty-two, so I am your senior.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Well, off to the ship’s belly.” He was reluctant to leave, I believe.

I did not dare to respond.

“Good-day, sir.”

“Sir,” I said under my shallow breath. “Sir.” I watched him as he stumbled with his haul down the dock I was debating taking a stroll on. Instead, I waited there for greater signs of the oncoming storm—I wondered as I observed why the ships would be setting out at such a time, before potential calamity at sea with the soon-to-be howling winds and torrents. Six minutes of ponderance and the boy returned, first passing me by and then turning on his right heel and looking upon me a second time.

“I didn’t thank you.”

I disagreed with his cordiality. “No need to. Was just a civic duty.” My arms crossed at my chest. “You dock?”

“What else is someone our age supposed to do here?” He whispered something that I could not make out over a tolling bell from one of the slumber-ships. “Only way I can make money.”

“Your name?” I asked. Maybe it was not my place but I had a desire to ask him these things. Maybe it was investigation or an intuition that I knew nothing of.

He raised a browned eyebrow at me. “Foster.”

“Foster? Never heard that name before.” I had.

He mirrored my apparently stand-offish stance. “Surprising.”

“Irwin.”

“I could have guessed that.” Now he picked at salt or dirt that lay underneath his pointer fingernail.

“And what is that supposed to mean then?”

“Nothing.”

I agreed, ignorantly. “Nothing—nothing at all then.”

“What’s a dreg like you doing at the docks anyways?”

“A dreg? That is quite the derogatory word, is it not?” It was not like I was unfamiliar with the air that the townsfolk of Sattenbury had about them, as I was met with it prior in the inn.

He retconned what he said before. “You’re quite the opposite of it, actually. Other end of the rope.”

“And then what is that supposed to mean?” I could not tell if he was being playful or purposefully trying to drive me off.

His demeanor shifted. “Have you not seen yourself in a mirror? Look at what’re wearing.”

There and then I looked upon myself and upon him; I wore ornate or elegant clothing, that is at least comparatively to him. While I wore a white undershirt and refined leggings and a top-shirt of finest fabric he wore what he could find, a sun-bleached cap and ragged shirt that tattered at its hem with a belt far too large and pants of the same nature.

“You live in the country-side, don’t you then?”

Now I entertained the discourse—he had no malice, he was being playful. “Indeed.”

“‘Indeed’. Let me guess, Chapelgate?”

My guard was down and I had been struck. “Chapelgate? Ridiculous.” Chapelgate was one of the highest regarded cities, it was a realm of luxury and a sort of refinement that even I was foreign to. “I have never been to Chapelgate.”

“Unlikely.” Though I was not lying. He thought against that notion. “No, you’re from Chapelgate. You’re here on some kind of business, something to do with us dockers. You’re one of those one’s that’s trying to squeeze money out of our operation here. That’s what I think.”

“I know nothing of commerce.”

He was surprsied. He broke his mocking stance and scratched his nest of brown hair. “Well then. I know about all of that stuff because of all the other dockers, I’m not tied into those sorts of things.”

A genuine, creeping smirk came across my face. “Is that so?”

“Yes it is.”

“Do you have a schedule?”

He shook his head in a negative response.

“Ah.”

“And I just finished loading that ship, I was about to be off anyways.” The boy—as silly it is of me to call him a boy when he is but one year my junior—wiped off either dust or soil from his trousers. “What about a wife, got one of those?”

“Never thought much of the concept.”

He grinned at me, one of his far right teeth I saw was missing, perhaps he lost it in his line of work. “I see. What about the arm?”

I drew silent.

“Something happen?”

I mouthed an acknowledgement. “I came to Sattenbury on my own accord.” In my attempt to avoid the question I looked back out to the water, each time I did so I expected to be met with something different.

“That’s not what I asked but alright. Why’s that? Folks don’t tend to pass-through Sattenbury.”

“If that was so then why is there an inn?”

His demeanor shifted for a third time, embarrassed. “Well, you see—the Seamaiden is different.” Foster’s eyes became wide as he looked down at my feet.

“Is that so?”

“It’d be better if we left here, the wind is picking up, can’t you feel it?”

It was noticeable, yes, but for the past while the wind had been unpredictable, and though the skies told the story of a coming tempest it had yet to reveal itself in full.

I was brought by Foster’s guidance into a small keep, or a bar, rather. The floors were dark and oaken and the ceilings short; the frame was kept up by the shaved trunks of trees I could only think were of pine and therefore from Harthwaite or the like, either that or the new world across the raging waters that I was so unfamiliar with. Or perhaps Bengrad. There were a host of characters within the bar, all the like that I would have thought to be kin of a place such as Sattenbury, maybe even more so to that of Sablecroft. The Gale, that being the region of the coast which holds Sattenbury, Sablecroft, and the like, appeared to be home to a variety of strangers, odd-folk of varying origin that all found it best to reserve themselves by the shore where they may find it easier to make a living for themselves—perhaps, along the Gale, life would be fairly simple.

“Do you drink?” Foster asked me, giving a bent coin to the hardy man behind the counter.

“No, I do not. It is all far too bitter to me, I would rather keep my wits about me anyways.”

He shook his head, looking to the barkeep. “Irwin here seems to have it all backwards.”

“Is there a registry here, in Sattenbury?” I asked Foster.

Either rightfully or unrightfully so, he was confused. “A registry?”

“Biphone.”

The barkeep interjected even before Foster had a moment to think to himself for a retort. “Up the way, by the engine station. Two there, I call me wife.”

I nodded, forgetting to continue conversation with Foster in my mind; but no matter, as he was the one to pick it up quite enthusiastically.

I had broken my oath, my sobriety of twenty-two years save for the few times I was under the light of the operation table, put into a medically-induced stupor—and my breaking of such an oath was either the greatest of all pleasures or the worst of all blunders. Led astray yet there was the unspoken promise of rapture, that which brought me into the half-made safety of his domicile and too for him what brought him into my arms. He was but an incubus to my fortitude, yet neither of us was at fault for the beckoning primality strung between us dually. His fingers as they fidgeted with my shirt buttons and stripped away from my flesh my upper-clothing, that caught upon the hemmed waist of my trousers and slipped them to the carpet; even then too his teeth that pulled at my loin-cloth. In this action he performed I rubbed at his soft hair and twisted it about my hand of flesh. And then in the same fashion I forbid him the security of his old and worn attire, learning from his affluent appetite. Perhaps it was when he whispered into my ear that he would devour every bit of me that he placed his hands upon and ever more fell me like a great pine. I grabbed at his fair waist to hold him closest to me, and with his passionate heat he sheared clean my heart as my thumbs clutched at his bony pelvis.

A male-siren’s call then. Though this was not the first time I had gone about this sort of practice, partake in such an act; before, but two or three years before, a woman of the east when I traveled with a compatriot. Her skin like the purest, silkiest china and her belle even so the same. It could have been that within him I saw her that I desired, I saw her dance within his burning passion—or, instead, it was within her that I saw my fantasy not yet realized: he. For he was hardened yet effeminate to please my titillating daydream. Me stretched out upon my back with legs out sprawled and arms above me in cruciform, my chest and abdomen exposed in a fashion of vulnerability, and he my proctor of pleasure, there then impaling himself. Each self-performed thrust of his to rise within me erotica of vastest euphoria as his posterior collapsed upon my lap-groin. And I placed upon his back both my hands, one of flesh and one of gold, to hold him in my cradled grasp—too I traced about his spine and scapula, pushed upon his tailbone in its synchronous motion and affectionately rubbed upon the small of his back.

In my ardor I gripped at his sides to feel his rigid frame and with a heave I pulled him to my presence, to feel close his body adjacent to mine as he quivered at the delicate press of my hand on his left thigh, to skulk across his fair skin and sheepishly grasp at his groin. With tenderness I still held him upon me, my metal arm upon womanly right of rump. For now I was in metronome, the same pace as he who thrusted himself upon me, a being of fluid movement, with imparted effervescence and entropy I released myself upon the sheets, severed from him. It is in this fashion that I was struck with thought, for he was not facing me as to avoid the potentiality of the birth of intimacy, even to the least of degrees. No, instead, I speculated that he desired to not form any sort of attachment for fear of dedication. Attachment.

Rather, that is what I thought until it was morning, the intensity of the sun splintering through the curtains as I felt clutching to me his form. So I brought my hand from my side and placed it on his head, to pull back his hair and plant my lips upon his fore in an intimate gesture. If it was attachment that he so desperately wished to escape from then he would not be embracing me within his arms, his head nestled against my side for gentle comfort. In the aching future I would receive many numbered and yet still scattered letters written by his wit.

When I made attempts to peek at the face of my watch which I had discarded on the side table on his half of the bed he jostled, stirring in his sleep and softly latching onto me—as my mind plotted onward I thought to myself that Ludwig could wait. If he desperately wished to reach me then he would prove himself.

I have omitted an instance, whereupon I firstly entered the Seamaiden; the colleen there sat behind the desk, when hearing my name, handed to me a letter in a sealed envelope. To my utmost surprise and subsequent uneasy stomach, I had been—in relation to my planned assembly—prematurely sent a letter of anticipation from my host. In a way such that I never wished to have again I felt uneasy, as he awaited my presence, a presence that I was eager to share before with the likes of him. Yet now such has been stripped away from me, as my desires had fallen upon a stranger I had met only the day before upon the dock, that not but his body and name and spare few things he shared upon our acquaintance I knew. A considerable, striking, rather genteel yet dashing figure—specimen might I say instead. And if I went about my steps and measures in a refined manner I perhaps would have such an admirer at my disposal. Though yet and readily returned my familiar longing for Sablecroft. Foster could not attend the latter part of my pilgrimage to the wharf-town; I knew nothing of his family, truly void of the constraints of his occupation. At the present, all that was known to me was the location of his abode, his satin voice, his dear optics—and here I cut myself short.

No. I would have to give him my dial, if he mayhaps could find the likes of a biphone to dial me in the first place, my address to write to when he scribes his letters, and my name in full—Irwin Winston Larkin. All of these things, of course, I did when he was conscious, escaped from his slumber, for I did not even dare leave dame there. Not a dame; a dandy. Never before had I ever taken such a fantasy to another of the same sex, for I must have been, indeed, enchanted. Bewitched, rather, and brought out of my familiar realm of proper ethic and how to court a lady, now in a school of thought that remote and external to self. To shine your shoes and fix your tie, that is if you wore one, and to keep buttons fixed and clasped and a belt about your waist, for a gentlewoman despised a crease on the trousers—and a man unescorted by a belt was dead before he could even ponder to leave the water. Now I pleased those who wore the same outfits as I, or perhaps it was just for that night, the 24th.