Wharf’s Tavern was a dreary, dismal bar where local sailors wasted hours of their life and sobriety trying to forget the things they’d endured on the sea which caused the vacant expressions they all wore like uniforms. There’d never been a cheery soul known to set foot in such a place as bleak as Wharf’s, but that was preferred by all of the regulars, anyway. As the saying goes, misery loves company. There was no room for jubilancy in the seaside tavern filled with lost souls and broken hopes.
It was for that reason, every man slumped over a bar stool groaned in misery when they saw her walk in. Wharf’s was no place for a girl like Orla, who nearly glistened with light and bold intentions.
People with hope, and people with ambition, only served as a reminder of everything they’d left behind, too far behind in their past to ever reclaim. There was no hope for the patrons of Wharf’s Tavern, and the only promise tomorrow would bring, would be the certainty of another drink passing the lips of each man inside the dim, drab establishment.
“Aye,” The burly bartender called out, wiping the sweat off his brow with a dishrag Orla was sure would be reused in unsanitary means, “What brings the likes of you in here, dearie? Got some troubles weighing on your soul tonight?”
The drunken men looked over half in interest at a new face in the crowd, half in irritation at a young lass with the promise of a long, untainted future before her, daring to show her face in a place where they came to safely dwell in their own misery.
A lovely girl made it quite difficult to focus on one’s sorrows, no matter how determined the patrons were to drown in them.
Orla removed her hood, revealing the full extent of her beauty. Golden curls framed her heart shaped face, and long, dark lashes drew one’s attention to the deep blue of her eyes. The haunting color of the tumultuous ocean, which reminded the men of their memories of the sea they were desperate to avoid.
“I’ve gotten wind that this is one of my brother’s haunts.” Orla’s eyes scanned the dimly lit room. The air was thick and humid, and held a strong odor of whiskey and saltwater and perspiration. She fought the urge to scrunch up her nose.
“I’d place a bet that any kin of yours couldn’t be found here, lass.” A drunken man chuckled as his hungry eyes scanned her up and down, nearly falling off his stool in the process.
She paid him no mind, she was already making haste through the tavern to a figure slumped over a table in a booth far in the back.
“Well, this is a fine sight.” Orla said with pursed lips, looking down at the inebriated mess that she had for a brother.
His sandy hair was matted to his forehead with sweat, and he squinted open one eye to see who in God’s name was speaking so shrilly to him, exacerbating the pounding in his head. He didn’t want to have any semblance of responsibilities at the moment, not when he didn’t even feel like a person due to his state of drunkenness.
“Get outta here, Orla. I’m busy.” He slurred in a groan before shutting his eyes again.
“Clearly.” She said, her pale hands forming fists at her hips.
“Eh,” The bartender chuckled to the customers who were alert enough to listen. “Little miss golden hair is Nicko’s sister. Who woulda thought?”
“Get up, you drunkard.” She cried, trying in vain to pull him to his feet. “It’s your wedding day, get up.”
Nicko groaned and swatted at her desperate attempt to pull him to reality.
“There’s nothin’ you can say to rouse him, lassie.” The bartender called over, his deep voice echoing through the tavern. “Once he reaches this point, nothin’ but an angel from heaven itself could be of any good in gettin’ him back to the land of the livin’.”
“Believe me,” Orla said, “If my father wants him there today, he will indeed be there, one way or the other. Even my drunken brother wouldn’t risk angering our father.”
“Aye, how could any man be displeased with so lovely a daughter to serve him?” A sloppy man chuckled, offering his drink up in the air as cheers.
Orla, who had perfected the art of ignoring unfavorable remarks, continued tugging on her brother’s collar. He, though stone-cold drunk, was at least dressed more pristinely than the shabby patrons of The Wharf.
It’s as if the sober version of him who had woken up that morning knew in his right mind there was no use going against their father’s wishes. The drunk version, however, was harder to convince of reality.
“Nicko, if I could find you here, that means Father can easily do the same.” She pleaded, a tinge of worry for her brother seeping through the irritation.
With that, he lifted his head to look at her, and then his hazel eyes glanced to the stained glassed window which warped the lighting, making the dimly lit bar appear all the more dark and dreary than the day was outside.
“Damn it, all.” He muttered, lifting himself from the velvet cushioned booth. “Is there no other way for him to be appeased than to ruin my life even further?”
His words came out a jumbled slur, omitting the stench of whiskey from his breath as he spoke. If she hadn’t been so used to seeing him in such a state as of the past year, she might’ve recoiled at the mess of the man before her.
“She’s a lovely girl, Nicko.” Orla whispered, resisting the urge to touch her brother’s arm sympathetically. “You might find happiness with her.”
“But she’s not the girl. She’s not her. And I’ll never find happiness again.” He vowed.
“Not with the path you’re choosing, Nic.” She sighed. “Come on, we’ve got to get you cleaned up a bit before father sees you in such a state. Or your future wife for that matter.”
Begrudgingly, he let her take his arm and lead him out of the tavern, but not before he took one last swig of his drink.
The mist of the sea splashed against his face, startling him into reality. He opened his eyes a bit more, as much as he could with the pounding ache in his head. Nicko staggered towards the ocean, his anxious sister at his heels prepared to stop him from falling– or jumping in.
“Careful, Nik.” She said warily. But though the hour of his wedding was speedily approaching, she couldn’t bear to drag him away just yet.
Her brother had always loved the sea, above all else, until Pearl came along. It was where he found solace and she couldn’t take that away from him in that moment. Not when everything else had already been stripped from him, too. His dreams, his future, his girl.
“It wakes me up, deep in my soul. The sight of it. The smell of it.” Nicko breathed it in deeply, lucidity coming back to him slowly.
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“It’s beautiful.” She agreed, standing beside him and staring out at it’s vastness.
Orla had always been strangely haunted by the sea her brother loved so much. It represented to her, something that she deemed unattainable. The sea was freedom, and power and independence.
For Orla, who lived each day by her Father’s commands, it was a place she would never roam. And for that, she felt a quiet resentment in the wake of it. She would never know what it was like to board a ship and have the world at her fingertips. She would never know the power of choosing her course or steering the wheel where she intended.
“Nothing is beautiful anymore.” He said, solemnly turning away from it. “Come on, better get going before the old man has me hanged for tardiness.”
Orla, thought sadly to herself, that the punishment her brother envisioned might not be too much of a stretch of the imagination when it came to her father.
~*~*~*~
After a worthy battle against the bar of soap Orla wielded, Nicko finally succumbed to cleanliness for his wedding day. She scrubbed his face clean, forced a toothbrush down his throat, and combed his hair into submission. Suddenly, he appeared before her as the perfect prince her father expected him to be. The prince she knew her brother didn’t have the heart to be. Not anymore.
“Nico,” Orla whispered softly. “I’m so sorry you have to do this. Truly, I am.”
Her brother lifted his head towards her, tears glistening in his eyes. Emotion her heart broke to see yet again this year, after a life of never knowing anything but joy to grace her brother’s mood.
“It should’ve been her.” He choked out. “I should’ve been marrying her.”
Pearl. She knew it without question. The love of Nicko’s life, no matter how short hers might have been.
“She would want you to find peace. And she would want you to be happy.” Orla said, struggling as always to reach her brother in the midst of his ocean of grief.
“I don’t want to be happy without her. I don’t want to be without her.” Nicko groaned, collapsing onto his bed.
Orla shuffled towards him uncomfortably. She understood in a sense that her brother lost his love, and it pained him, but it was hard to comprehend the extent of that loss when she herself had never loved anyone besides her brother.
Their mother died when she was a child, and their father was hardly worthy of love, no matter how desperately she searched inside herself to find some scrap of it to offer the man who she owed her existence to.
As for romance, there had never been a point. Orla knew she could never be with someone of her own choosing, and any match she made would have to be a political one. She thought Nicko was a fool for falling for a girl that he could never wed without their Father’s approval. Orla never had the heart to tell her brother that it was a doomed relationship from the start, and even if she had lived, there was no chance of a union between them to ever take place.
Nicko, being the heir to the King, would be approved to marry no one short of a foreign Princess of an economically strong country to meet their father’s standards. A country like Pixagu, who would serve as an unparalleled ally, whose Princess was surely waiting for her soon-to-be-husband to arrive at the chapel any minute now.
“Nik,” Orla whispered softly. “It’s really time to go now.”
To her immense relief, he nodded his agreement. She smiled up at her brother, who had seen too much sorrow and lost far too much in his young life, and tried to convey a silent message. It will be okay.
She straightened his tie, took his arm, and kept him steady on his feet as they made their way to his wedding ceremony.
~*~*~*~
The Chapel, like most everything beautiful in their Kingdom, had it’s home perched upon a little, green hill overlooking the sea.
Orla had never particularly minded going to church, though she never paid even a wink of attention during the masses. Her enjoyment came from staring dreamily out the window towards the sea, imagining what grand adventures a vast ocean could hold for a young, wide-eyed girl like herself.
She could marry a pirate, Orla thought with excitement. How romantic it would be to have such a savage creature, tamed in the name of his love for her. She played out fantasies in her head, living through them in her imagination. She could discover a new island, her imaginary crew and herself. She could name it anything she desired, and the rules of the new land would be of her own choosing. There would be no arranged marriages, no power hungry Kings, and certainly no senseless laws for girls that didn’t make the least bit of sense in her eyes.
Orla shook away the visions of her past as she entered the chapel, with Nicko hanging on her arm. He groaned against the sunlight as they made the walk over to the church, and again he groaned at the sound of the organs playing once they entered.
“Nicko,” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “You need to at least pretend you’re halfway sober, lest you wish to inflict us all with father’s rage.”
As if summoned by the mention, the King of Ceruleunda stood before them in all of his taunting glory. Even his stance held power. With his massive arms crossed over his broad shoulders, he little resembled the petite frames of his children.
“What is this?” He hissed through gritted teeth, gesturing them into a back dressing room of the church, away from prying eyes.
Nicko stared up at his father with indifferent eyes, a slight glaze still coating them, despite Orla’s best efforts to soberize him.
“This, I believe,” Nicko said dryly, “is a wedding.”
“This is the most important day of your life, and you show up in such a state?” The King said roughly, grasping Nicko’s shoulders.
“Most important day of my life…” Nicko trailed off, contemplating the sentence. “Getting married to a stranger… for the sake of your profit… seems like this day holds more importance for you, Father.”
His words were no longer slurred, but Orla knew he still wasn’t back to sobriety if he was standing fearless before their father. That type of courage only came from gin.
Unfortunately for Orla, she was sober as a judge, which meant she knew the risk of proceeding in conversation with an angered King. Their father was like the sea himself, and if they failed to skillfully navigate his moods like a sailor on a stormy sea, the tides of his anger could swallow them whole.
Orla saw his jaw clench in anger, and she knew she had to smooth him over quickly, lest her brother be brought down by their Father’s wrath.
“Forgive him, Father. He’s speaking nonsense.” Orla spoke, daring to look up at the powerful tyrant before her. “Post-wedding nerves, I hear most men get them.”
“Boys, perhaps.” Father glared at Nicko. “Never men. But then again, the son I see before me could never be deserving of the word. He’s a boy, yet. And a boy he will always be. He doesn’t have it in him to grow up.”
Father spat out the venomous words with a goal. With an aim to knock Nicko down lower, to keep him in place. A man with no confidence will forever be reliant on those he deems to be superior. And Orla knew it was a tactic her father had utilized, not just on her and Nicko.
As if his power surged by the sight of his son shrinking before him, the King nodded, appeased. Orla’s heart swelled with sympathy for Nicko, who had always strived to be everything their Father wanted and more.
Until he fell in love.
“Father,” Orla said meekly. “We best get the ceremony started. It seems as if the church is filled.”
“Of course, it is. It’s not everyday that two powerful Kingdoms unite their powers. This union will change everything in our world.”
Without waiting for a word from either of his children, the King marched out into the church, wearing a smile of pride. The smile of a conqueror about to gain even more power.
Nicko’s ocean eyes flashed to Orla and he offered her the semblance of a smile. As if she were the one who needed comforting. Her brother, so broken and fragile, still trying to give more of himself to her. Trying to fill her with light when he was so shrouded in darkness.
She clutched his arm and crossed it through her own, offering herself as his anchor. She pushed through the ancient wooden doors, ushering her brother towards his fate.
“No matter what happens, Nik, you know I love you.” She whispered to him beside her.
But her sentiments were drowned out by the orchestra, blaring their wedding ballad, signaling the day that Nicko had dreamed of for so long. Only, in his dreams, it had been Pearl at the other end of the aisle.