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coochiequeens · 6 months

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April Hutchinson may not be able to compete for two years for speaking the truth but she won my heart and respect.

By Genevieve Gluck. November 8, 2023

A female competitive powerlifter for Team Canada who spoke out after a trans-identified male athlete set a women’s national record at a championship in Manitoba has been informed that she is facing a two-year suspension from her sport as a result. April Hutchinson shared the news to X (formerly Twitter), where she has received an outpouring of support after she slammed the situation as a “horror show.”

“I now face a 2-year ban by the [Canadian Powerlifting Union] CPU for speaking publicly about the unfairness of biological males being allowed to taunt female competitors & loot their winnings,” Hutchinson wrote.

“Apparently, I have failed in my gender-role duties as ‘supporting actress’ in the horror show that is my sport right now. Naturally, the CPU deemed MY written (private) complaint of the male bullying to be ‘frivolous and vexatious.'”

Alongside her statement, Hutchinson shared images of the notice she had received, which reported that a discipline committee had convened on October 23 and had “determined that there is sufficient evidence for Major Infraction as a result of repeating offences, including prior warning.”

“Based on the information provided, the Discipline Panel is recommending that [April Hutchinson] have her membership to the CPU suspended for 2 years. We strongly feel this is a case of a repeated offence, and should be treated as such,” the notice read.

Hutchinson was reported to the CPU on August 23 by Anne Andres, a trans-identified male athlete who set a women’s national record at a championship in Brandon, Manitoba, on August 13. Hutchinson had publicly condemned his participation in the women’s category, and appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored just days after the championship competition.

“I’ve been a powerlifter with the Canadian Powerlifting Union for about four years now. Over the last year, I have been fighting my federation to ban trans women — also known as men — from competing with women in powerlifting,” Hutchinson told host Rosanna Lockwood.

“They have ignored my pleas, as well as many other women who don’t agree with it. They’ve actually threatened to suspend me for speaking up about the matter,” she added. “The threats keep coming, and disciplinary action for speaking up has been ongoing over the last year.”

“The whole thing is disgusting. It’s disgraceful. It’s disheartening,” Hutchinson remarked. “I’ve been threatened with suspension. Two weeks ago, I received a letter from my Federation, stating that I cannot call Anne a biological male.” In response to news of Hutchinson’s potential ban, The Daily Mail reached out to Andres for comment. He responded by telling the journalist who contacted him that “the blood of LGBT people” was on her hands, and added, “Get straight f*cked.”

Andres, 40, currently holds multiple records in the female division, including the women’s deadlift and bench press, and has placed first in nine out of the eleven competitions he has participated in over the past four years.

At the Canadian Powerlifting Union’s (CPU) 2023 Western Canadian Championship, Andres participated in the Female Masters Unequipped category, and beat out Michelle Kymanick and SuJan Gil for the first place award — with a total powerlifting score that was over 200kg more than the top-performing female in the same class.

A “total” is the sum of the heaviest weight lifted for the squat, bench press, and deadlift. Andres’ total would have placed him amongst the top-performing male powerlifters in the entire championship had he participated in the men’s category.

The Western Canadian Championships was held under the umbrella of the Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU), which announced a gender self-identification policy earlier this year. The policy, which garnered mass backlash from women’s rights advocates, explicitly allowed any males to participate in women’s competitions on the basis of self-declared “gender” alone.

In February, the CPU’s “Trans Inclusion Policy” was released, containing an explicit statement that the CPU supported allowing transgender powerlifters to participate in the sex category of their choosing based on a guidance from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES).

“Based on this background and available evidence, the Expert Working Group felt that trans athletes should be able to participate in the gender with which they identify, regardless of whether or not they have undergone hormone therapy,” the document reads, deferring to the “inclusivity in sport” guidance from the CCES.

Just prior to the CPU’s announcement of a gender self-identification policy, Andres gained significant notoriety after sharing a video of himself appearing to mock female athletes, asking why female powerlifters were “so bad” at bench press.

The widespread outcry against males in women’s powerlifting events, prompted by news of Andres’ participation and taunting of female athletes, motivated the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) to issue a policy change on August 21.

“For a transgender athlete to compete in the sport of powerlifting at any level, he/she must declare before competing that he/she is a transgender athlete. If an athlete fails to declare that he/she is a transgender and competes that violation leads to Disqualification of the result obtained in that Competition with all resulting Consequences, including forfeiture of any medals, points and prizes,” the IPF said in an updated policy document.

Increasing reports of male athletes identifying as female in order to compete in women’s events have attracted significant criticism. As previously reported by Reduxx, a Canadian powerlifting coach self-identified into the women’s category earlier this year and broke the Alberta women’s bench press record. Avi Silverberg was attempting to highlight the unfair advantage males have when competing in women’s athletics, in protest over the CPU’s recently implemented gender self-identification policies.

Not to show my age but the thought of men competing in women’s sports was funny when it was this guy

Say what you will about the 90's at least we had common sense about this issue

#Canada #April Hutchinson #[Canadian Powerlifting Union] CPU #Anne Andres is a man #But telling a journalist to get fucked is not bullying #If he competed as a man he would have been one of the top performing men but not the winner #Women’s sports is not a backup plan for men who can't win against other men #the CPU’s Trans Inclusion Policy #Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES)#International Powerlifting Federation (IPF)

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barkingbonzo · 15 days

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Michael Whelan Cover Art, The Cosmic Computer

Michael Whelan (born June 29, 1950) is an American artist of imaginative realism. For more than 30 years, he worked as an illustrator, specializing in science fiction and fantasy cover art. Since the mid-1990s, he has pursued a fine art career, selling non-commissioned paintings through galleries in the United States and through his website.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Whelan in June 2009, the first living artist so honored. According to his Hall of Fame citation.

Michael Whelan is one of the most important contemporary science fiction and fantasy artists, and certainly the most popular. His work was a dominant force in the transition of genre book covers away from the surrealism introduced in the 1950s and 1960s back to realism.

His paintings have appeared on the covers of more than 350 books and magazines, including many Stephen King novels, most of the Del Rey editions of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, the Del Rey edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series, Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince and Dragon Star series, the Del Rey editions of H. P. Lovecraft's short story collections, the Grand Master edition of Ray Bradbury's fix-up novel The Martian Chronicles, DAW editions of Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné books, numerous DAW editions of C. J. Cherryh's work, many of Robert A. Heinlein's novels including Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, the Ace editions of H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy novels, and Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Otherland, and Shadowmarch series and Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive. Whelan provided covers and interior illustrations for Stephen King's The Gunslinger and The Dark Tower, the first and last of his Dark Tower books.

Cover art by Michael Whelan has graced many music record albums including Demolition Hammer's Epidemic of Violence, The Jacksons' Victory; Sepultura's Beneath the Remains, Arise, Chaos A.D. and Roots; Soulfly's Dark Ages; Obituary's Cause of Death; and every album by the Elric-influenced metal band Cirith Ungol. He painted original works for the covers of Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell and The Very Best of Meat Loaf albums and several of his older paintings illustrate the liner notes of the former. In 2009, he painted the cover art for thrash metal band Evile's album Infected Nations.

#The Cosmic Computer #Cover Art #Michael Whelan #science fiction #art #illustration

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submissivegayfrenchboy · 6 days

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05/ 05 / 2024

MAN OF THE DAY #90 : HENRY CAVILL

🎉HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GOD HENRY CAVILL!!!

I want to wish an Happy Birthday to His Imperial Majesty God Henry Cavill 🎊

Can you believe it's already the 90th MAN OF THE DAY article? 😳 10 more and it's will be the 100th 🤭 so thanks you so much for being here for me, reading my blog 🙏

I love Henry Cavill for the person He is, His body and His obvious alphaness, but more especially for His many amazing roles 🥰

Last time i talked about God Henry Cavill it was to answer a question about His brothers ⬇️

Can you believe that God Henry Cavill is only aged 41? 😳 His Majesty looks so masculine that you couldn't give him one specific age.

I mean, look at how Henry Cavill evolved 😍 :

A French article about Henry Cavill's evolution :

His Imperial Majesty God Henry Cavill have so many great roles in his career, and even though i haven't watched them all, i still know them : for instance, i may haven't watched THE WITCHER, but i am aware that Henry Cavill reproduced an amazing pose of Geralt in his bath. I also heard that Geralt's relationship with the musician has been imagined as a gay couple by many fans 👬

I haven't saw God Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes in ENOLA HOLMES and its sequel 🙃

He was so handsome as a blond man named Humphrey in the movie STARDUST. It's the only time where he is a blond man, but his mustach still makes him looks manly and hot.

To me God Henry Cavill was amazing as Superman, but less convincing as Clark Kent.

You can admire pics of Henry Cavill as Superman here :

I could admire pics of Henry Cavill all day 😍

I honestly don't know what i prefer : His eyes, His straight nose, His pink lips, His eyebrows, His hunky jaw, His arms, His chest, His ass,...

His Imperial Majesty God Henry Cavill's eyebrow is so iconic : He can looks arrogant, seductive, cocky, funny, surprised, angry, dumb, cute, tired, evil, innocent, surprised.... and also all at once! That's why Henry Cavill is so recognizable and expressive 😁

My favorite role of Henry Cavill is the one of Duke Charles of Suffolk in the series THE TUDORS :

you'll find the link of my list of the 10 most men in the world (Henry Cavill is the First, same position than Chris Hemsworth) in this article ⬇️

And this article you will also find the links of my stories about Henry Cavill, who is so inspiring. I will soon suggest you ideas of plots about Henry Cavill 😁

It was unexpected to see Henry Cavill as the vilain in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT : my mom became obsessed by Him because of this role, she found Him hot with his beard!

God Henry Cavill was so funny in ARGYLLE ! I would have liked to see and hear Him more!

I can't wait to see THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE where He seems to looks so manly and even beastly 🥵 : the tongue scene is already iconic 😜

It's a French article about Henry Cavill ❤️

#Henry Cavill #Man of the Day #Homme du Jour

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mediaevalmusereads · 6 months

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Say Yes to the Marquess. By Tessa Dare. Avon, 2014.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: historical romance

Series: Castles Ever After #2

Summary: After eight years of waiting for Piers Brandon, the wandering Marquess of Granville, to set a wedding date, Clio Whitmore has had enough. She's inherited a castle, scraped together some pride, and made plans to break her engagement.

Not if Rafe Brandon can help it. A ruthless prizefighter and notorious rake, Rafe is determined that Clio will marry his brother—even if he has to plan the dratted wedding himself.

So how does a hardened fighter cure a reluctant bride's cold feet?

● He starts with flowers. A wedding can't have too many flowers. Or harps. Or cakes.

● He lets her know she'll make a beautiful, desirable bride—and tries not to picture her as his.

● He doesn't kiss her.

● If he kisses her, he definitely doesn't kiss her again.

● When all else fails, he puts her in a stunning gown. And vows not to be nearby when the gown comes off.

● And no matter what—he doesn't fall in disastrous, hopeless love with the one woman he can never call his own.

***Full review below.***

Content Warnings: graphic sexual content, suggestion of suicide, disordered eating, animal death

Overview: This series isn't very long, and since I've already read books 1 and 3, I figured I might as well do book 2. Overall, I was thoroughly entertained by this book. Though it wasn't as thematically coherent as book 1, it did have some delicious narrative angst. I also really enjoyed the dynamic between the protagonists, so for those reasons, this book gets 4 stars from me.

Writing: Dare's writing is about what you'd expect of both a Dare novel and a romance. It's quick, easy to understand, and filled with the author's distinct humor. I don't have much to say about it that hasn't already been said in previous reviews; just know that I don't think the prose is bad by any means. I always find Dare rather light hearted and fun.

Plot: The plot of this book follows Clio Whitmore as she tries to convince her fiance's brother to release her from the marriage contract she made 8 years ago. Clio became engaged to Piers Brandon just as his international political career took off; after 8 years of waiting and not seeing him for more than a few days at a time, Clio is ready to call it quits. She appeals to Piers's brother, Rafe, who, as acting Marquess of Granville, has the ability to quietly dissolve the contract and thus spare Clio and Piers any public embarrassment. The trouble is, Rafe has his own reasons for wanting Clio and Piers to marry, and he does everything in his power to make her change her mind.

What I enjoyed most about this plot was the angst and the yearning between Clio and Rafe. We learn early on that Rafe has been in love with Clio for a while, and seeing her become engaged to Piers puts her out of reach. Rafe can't bring himself to betray his brother by seducing Clio himself, and releasing her from the marriage contract would not only be a blow to his brother, but would put Rafe's own future at risk. Watching the characters try to work out their attraction as well as their non-romantic desires was very satisfying, and I think Dare handled the plot with grace.

The only things that weren't satisfactory were a few things that I personally didn't like (the cake fight, for example, felt a little silly) and the ending, which felt rushed. Dare seems to have a tendency to rush her endings in this series, and while I understand a romance novel isn't typically 400+ pages long, I do think some scenes in the middle could have been cut so the scenes leading to the end could have been expanded.

Characters: Clio, our heroine, is generally easy to root for because her desire to live her own life is sympathetic. I really liked how her character arc involves deciding to be an independent woman and earn her own income, as well as deciding that she was not willing to wait around for a man to come and take care of her. I also really appreciated that Clio's flaw - not wanting to hurt Piers and offload the dirty work on Rafe - was explored, and Clio's narrative had her learning to be more assertive.

Rafe, our hero, was also fairly sympathetic in that he had a lot of angst tied up with being the imperfect second son of a powerful family. Rafe constantly feels like he can't measure up to his brother and simultaneously loathes and respects him. This combo made for a more complex emotional portrait, and watching Rafe figure out who he wanted to be was incredibly satisfying.

Clio's siblings were a nice addition, and I very much appreciated that Clio's relationship with them was complex, like Rafe's relationship with Piers. Daphne is a little judgmental and is always putting her sisters down, yet Clio makes very clear that she still loves her. Phoebe, their youngest sister, is perceived as odd because she has some traits associated with autism; I really liked how Clio navigated trying to help Phoebe exist in a world that doesn't understand her while also learning to accept her sister as she is.

Romance: The romance between Clio and Rafe is deliciously angsty. As I mentioned above, the fact that Clio is engaged to Piers means that there really isn't a clear way for the protagonists to get together without hurting someone, and watching them try was narratively very engaging.

I also enjoyed the fact that a big part of their arc as a couple involved respecting each other's unique interests and gifts. Clio wants to start her very own brewery and Rafe is set on reclaiming the championship title in prize fighting; while each tries to convince the other to give up their ambitions, over time, they become more supportive, and I liked that neither of them had to sacrifice their personal interests in order to be worthy of a romantic relationship.

TL;DR: Say Yes to the Marquess is a romance with some forbidden love, but is mostly notable for the way it navigates complex sibling relationships and characters' individual goals. While there are some moments I found a bit silly and the end does rush a bit, this is a fairly strong installment in the Castles Ever After series.

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valentinerose529 · 1 year

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The Ship That Sailed Through Time

A short story based on the prompt: a time traveler and an immortal make contact through the years.

I got inspired to write this after looking at a few too many port cities and old boats on a road trip. I wanted to capture the feeling of being disconnected from time and not being able to live in it, and whether you would chose to change that existence.

Fun fact, this story is an AU! Aiden and Ari are both original characters of mine with different backstories and skill sets than in this story, but have a similar motif of being from vastly different realms of life and connected across time.

Please do not repost!

i. portland, maine

Ariadne had always known the Turtledove, with its pearlescent sails and cherry-dark planks and figurehead carved into a lovely siren-woman. She had been born on this very deck and knew every inch of the ship by heart from the barnacle-encrusted hull to the crow��s nest on the highest mast.

She knew the crew by heart too, but had her favorites: Father, with his captain’s coat and salt-encrusted beard; Mother, the first mate, with her crumpled hat and salt-encrusted pistols; her grandfather’s first mate Lorri, who had graying hair and a tattoo that changed with the weather; Brandon and his matelot, who had both been on board since Ari had been too small to see over the railings; and the cook, Ladesha, who always slipped Ari some honey to temper the bitter ship coffee when her parents weren’t looking.

Ari had been the cabin girl for as long as she could remember. At first, she’d been too little to haul in the sails or climb up the rigging without getting blown around by the wind, but now she could help with all the regular ship duties and sometimes Father even let her steer the ship in calm weather.

──────◅▻♢◅▻──────

The first time she met the boy, he was sorting crab traps on the dock. He was pale and smudgy enough that Ari first thought he was part of the dirty seafoam puddles, but a closer look proved him to be alive. He was a scrawny human with a mop of blond hair peeking out from the collar of his threadbare coat, and sat on the edge of the pier shivering from a recent dip in the ocean.

“Hi,” she told him, young and unafraid of strangers.

“Hi,” he agreed, deftly freeing a crab’s claws from the trap and tossing it into the bucket with a tinny thump.

“How old are you?” she asked, since she didn’t quite understand the land-living people yet.

He shrugged at her, making his sandy curls flop around. “Fifteen. And you?”

She didn’t know—nobody did on the ship—so she tossed out her favorite guess, “Nineteen. What are you gonna do with those?”

He tossed another crab into the bucket. “People will buy ‘em, of course. My boss owns the traps and pays me to swim out and fetch them.”

“Can I watch?”

“Why do you wanna watch this? It’s boring.”

“I live on a ship. Anything’s interesting.”

“When do you have to be back on your ship?”

“Not till evening, but Father won’t leave without me.”

He emptied the last trap and stood up, shaking the bucket to keep the crabs in. “Alright, I’ll show you something better. I watch out for the littler children on my block; they get up to all sorts of trouble. I bet you’ll like them.”

He led her deeper into the port city and introduced her to a gaggle of children in various sizes, a little one named Josiah and a willowy one named Grace and two named Edward, and the blond boy in the brown coat gave her no name at all so Ari had to call him, hey you.

They taught Ari to play hopscotch, and taught her how to fashion a spinning top out of a wooden spool, and the taller of the Edwards taught her how to steal a hot potato from the vendor on the street corner.

After the sun dipped down behind the buildings of the port city and the sky turned bruise-purple, Ari bid goodbye to her new friends. She committed all their names to heart, but the blond boy in the brown coat gave her no name at all. He smiled at her and said, “I’ll tell you when you come back to port.”

Ari smiled and hugged him, and ran away for the docks before she could say anything more. Because the truth of it was, she wouldn’t ever see him again in this time.

──────◅▻♢◅▻──────

When Ari tromped back up the Turtledove’s gangplank, she found Mother negotiating passage with a harried-looking man in a suspiciously stained suit.

“We don’t know when we’ll arrive,” she warned the man. “Perhaps it’ll be tomorrow, perhaps two decades.”

“I don’t care,” the man said. “I just need to get away from Portland.”

Her mother nodded solemnly and discussed payment. Ari watched from the railing and thought the man was quite desperate, but her mother only charged him the regular rate.

(Adjusted for the decade’s inflation, of course.)

As the man and his stained sleeves disappeared below decks, her mother turned to Ari and said, “You should help your father so we can leave on time. Where have you been all day, my dear?”

“Oh, I made some new friends.”

“You didn’t tell them anything, did you?”

“Of course not,” Ari said, and slouched away to find her father.

Ari wasn’t allowed to tell strangers the truth of the Turtledove, not until she’d been on land longer and learned what her parents called discretion. She had never broken the rules, but her parents reminded her of it every time she stepped foot off the ship.

When she found her father directing the loading of the new cargo, he let her give the orders for stacking the cargo correctly, only speaking up to correct her if she made a mistake. All the crew knew that Ari was set to inherit the captain’s position when her father stepped down, a day she hoped would be far away in the future, so nobody protested her orders.

ii. chester, pennsylvania

The next time Ari met the boy, her hair had grown nearly to her waist and the world had changed. The ladies wore wide skirts and many men wore wigs, and the accents had changed just enough that Ari had to pause and think about every word a stranger said.

As she skipped down the gangplank, she felt the fishhooks of time catch at her skin and tangle in her unbraided hair, binding her to the rules of the land-living.

Ari’s job on shore was simple: have fun!

Oh, and there was some shopping for fresh food and new shoes for her and a coat for Brandon, but that wasn’t as important as exploring.

With her goals thus outlined, she wandered barefoot down the street, dodging carriages with the reckless invulnerability of a girl who had never before seen an angry horse.

And of course, like any carefree sailor not paying attention to the land traffic, she crashed into someone.

He stumbled and lost his footing—Ari planted her feet like she was onboard the storm-tossed ship—she caught the stranger and turned their fall into a weird spin.

“Thank you, miss,” he gasped, once they’d both recovered their balance.

“No, sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she insisted, quickly letting go and stepping back.

He was short and spindly, blond hair wrestled into a tangled ponytail, and wearing a nice street suit that clashed with his threadbare coat. “Have we met before?” he asked.

“Oh, we couldn’t have. I’ve been sailing my whole life, and I’ve never been to this port before.”

“Your whole life? How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“That’s what you said last time, wasn’t it?” he asked thoughtfully.

A thrill ran through her. She knew it wasn’t possible, but he certainly reminded her of someone she had seen in the last port. “I don’t think there was a last time, sir.”

“No, no. I suppose not,” he said slowly. “My apologies, miss…?”

At first she thought he had simply trailed off, but then she realized that he wanted her name. So of course, she gave it to him. “Ari, Ariadne Laurens. And you, sir?”

He gave her an odd little smile. “Aiden Murphy,” he said, and Ari repeated it under her breath until she was sure she wouldn’t forget this strange man with the patched coat and pretty face.

“I suppose I’d better be going.”

“Of course. Have a good day, miss. Safe sailing for the Turtledove.”

It wasn’t until after he had vanished into the crowd that Ari realized she had never told him what ship she crewed on.

──────◅▻♢◅▻──────

During the next four days in port, Ari all her free time on land. She wasn’t supposed to—she still had nightmares about running too far from the docks and coming back to find the Turtledove sailing away without her—but this time she wanted to pay attention to the land as much as possible. If she had met the man in the threadbare coat more than once, what’s to say there weren’t other familiar things in this port?

A thorough search of the city resulted in Ari knowing exactly how many bricks paved the thoroughfare by the seawalls and the latest exchange rate for foreign currencies, but not a single familiar face or even slang she could understand.

She couldn’t even find the man in the threadbare coat again, so she began to wonder if he was a dream. What had his name been?

“Aiden,” she remembered aloud.

“I beg your pardon?” someone said behind her, and she nearly startled herself off her seat on the pier.

As if she had summoned him out of the passing traffic with her voice, the man in the threadbare coat stood behind her with a confused expression. He looked completely unchanged—but of course, it’d only been a few days for the land-living.

“You are real!” she said, delighted. His expression deepened.

“I should hope I am, miss. Can I help you?”

“Yes… well, no, I don’t know. I’m just trying to figure out if we’ve met before. Before I ran into you ereyesterday, I mean.”

“If I may say so, miss, you remind me of someone I met many years ago. But as you say, you’re only nineteen, and it was…” he trailed off.

Ari didn’t want to know how many years ago it had been exactly, so she asked instead, “What if it had been me? What would you do? What would we do again?”

He shrugged. “I could teach you how to play hopscotch again.”

She let out a surprised laugh. “It is you! But shouldn’t you be much older?”

“I could ask you the same question, miss.”

“I’m not allowed to tell. Sorry.”

“No, I understand. We all keep our secrets.”

She nodded, and swung her feet below the pier. “You know, I never get to see anything inland. Is there anything interesting happening over there?”

He sat down on the top of the neighboring pillar a short distance away, close enough that she could still swing her foot in the waves and splash his ankles. “Well, up north in Concord, there’s a tree that sings.”

“Do they usually do that?”

“No, never! But I’ve seen it; the tree sings. Nothing I could understand, though. Some people even take the broken branches and make instruments out of them. The dead wood never sings again, but supposedly any music played on them makes crops grow sweeter than anything you’ve tasted before…”

──────◅▻♢◅▻──────

Ari bid Aiden goodbye that evening as the tide receded, feeling the gazes of her parents from the deck of the Turtledove. She wasn’t supposed to promise to see people again, because she might never see them again. But Ari had the sudden and selfish wish to hear more of his outlandish stories, so she leaned in and whispered, “I don’t know when we’ll arrive, but we’ll make port in Morehead City next. If you’re there, it’d be nice to see you again.”

He nodded. “I’ll try to make it there on time.”

She laughed, but couldn’t tell him why she found it funny, so she just skipped up the gangplank and waved goodbye from the railing.

iii. morehead city, north carolina

A score of years later, the Turtledove docked in Morehead City. To the crew’s surprise, there had been a sugar shortage in the city perhaps a year before they arrived, and their cargo of packed sugar and solid cane was suddenly worth a fortune.

After the sugar had been sold, Ari went for a walk onshore, hoping to find a familiar face. None turned up, so she returned to the ship in low spirits.

She found old Lorri on the dock, playing their flute for a man in a threadbare brown coat. “Ari,” they said when they saw her. “This gentleman came asking for you by name. Do you know him?”

Ari looked at the man, examining his sugar-brown face and seafoam-pale hair until she remembered his name. “Aiden!” she guessed delightedly. He broke into a smile.

“I thought you’d never arrive! You said you’d dock here next, but it’s been—”

Lorri shushed him loudly, gesturing with their flute. “Don’t tell us, lad; I don’t need to know how fast the land-living is.”

Aiden buttoned up his lips. Then he offered Ari his arm like a perfect gentleman. “Walk with me, miss?”

Ari did not invite him on board the ship, and he did not ask to come on. It went unspoken that one did not step on board the Turtledove unless you were willing to give up some time.

They found a place to sit away from the salty bustle of the docks, and Ari nearly screamed when all the street lamps turned on without a single lamplighter in sight.

Aiden laughed and gave her a lesson about the curious invention of electricity—lightning! Imprisoned in wires! Who could believe it? —and then they sat and talked until the moon was high and the wind came in cold from the water. When Ari started to shiver, Aiden quickly handed her his coat, so they sat closer together to stay warm and talked for even longer.

“Are you still nineteen?” he asked eventually.

“I think I’m a bit older,” she said, after trying and failing to figure out the math. She wasn’t land-living, so the time never passed the same. But of course she was older, if only by a little. “What about you?”

He laughed. “I’m definitely not fifteen anymore.”

“How old are you, then?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“Seventy-five, by my last count,” he said, and she made a surprised sound.

“That’s impossible.”

“Said you wouldn’t believe me, but it’s true.”

“How?”

“That’s my secret.”

“Alright,” she said, and subsided, because she’d promised before. “Tell me something else?”

Aiden scooted closer into the coat, taking her wrist and making her yelp at his chilly fingers, before he told her a story about sailors who tricked fairies and fishermen who ate hurricanes. She doubted it was true, but it whiled away the hours and at the end she forgot her original question.

Four days later, the Turtledove was loaded and ready to sail, but for the first time Ari wished the crew wasn’t quite so efficient. She stood with Aiden at the base of the gangplank, one foot resting against the plank as if she had stopped midstep.

“I’ll see you… later, I guess,” Aiden said, pulling up the collar of his coat against the wind.

Ari could only say, “Yeah,” and scuff her heavy boot against the dock. After a moment, she lifted her necklace off her head—a pretty one made of conch shells and blue waxed twine—and offered it to Aiden. “Here, why don’t you hold on to this? You can give it back to me in… Yarmouth.”

He examined it carefully before hanging it around his neck. “I’ll keep it safe,” he said solemnly—as if it were a far older treasure than a necklace only a hundred years old—and tucked it inside his collar. “Do you always arrive after the same amount of time has passed?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never paid attention before. But next time, why don’t you tell me when I arrive, and I’ll keep track of how much time passes?”

“Am I allowed to?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I’ve never had a reason to want to know before.”

When Ari joined Father by the wheel, he gestured for her to take it. She eagerly grabbed it with both hands, but before she moved, she looked back at the port behind the ship. She could almost imagine time passing as she sailed away, people living and growing and dying and through it all a man in a shabby brown coat waving goodbye from the vacant dock.

Ari reminded herself that she wasn’t part of the land-living, gripping the wheel tighter and turning it firmly away from port.

iv. yarmouth, nova scotia

Many years and two ports later, the Turtledove sailed up the Canadian coastline to the bustling port of Yarmouth, which was filled with towering steamboats and slender canal rowboats. After they docked and unloaded the cargo, Lorri informed the captain that they wished to retire.

“Oh, must you go, Lorri?” Father cried. “We’ll miss you so much. You may never see us again.”

“I know, lad,” Lorri said, standing straight and solemn with their hat in their hands. “But I reckon I’ve spent enough life on the sea. I want to see the land—what’s left of it. Some of the old folks in my favorite pub have been telling stories of the logging and the railroads and everything that’s torn down. I think I have some great-great-grandnieces and nephews still alive, and I’d like to see some of the good parts of the land-living before it’s all gone.”

“I understand,” Father sighed, and subsided. “But is Canada really where you want to disboard? We could take you back over to the Spanish coast.”

“With respect, lad, I’d like to stay in this time,” Lorri said softly, and that settled it.

So the crew said their goodbyes, and Lorri packed their things and said goodbye to everyone once again, before wiping their eyes and striding resolutely down the gangplank.

Ari watched them leave, and then found a quiet corner on the pier to sit and have a good cry about her lost family member. They weren’t dead yet, but they could very well be by the next time they docked, and Ari wasn’t ready for this kind of mourning.

A figure appeared over her, a dark shadow against the sun that resolved into a skinny man with a mop of blond curls and a threadbare coat tossed over his shoulder.

“I had to learn French for you,” Aiden said, by way of greeting. He held out his hand, her necklace looped around his fingers. “Hallo, miss.”

“Hallo, Aiden. Has it been long?”

“Oh, not at all. At least, not for me.”

“It’s never a long time for me, either.” She twirled the end of her braid around her finger. “Lorri retired. The elderly sailor with the flute.”

Aiden nodded, but didn’t respond.

“So, there’s an opening on board, if you… like sailing.”

“If I find someone to be a good fit, I’ll let you know,” he said gently. Ari nodded, looking away from him. She had offered, and he had declined, so that was that.

She fidgeted with her necklace, lost on what to say. Long pauses were fine onboard the Turtledove, but the land-living were too impatient in such conversations. Aiden, however, didn’t seem to mind letting it stretch out until she found her words. “Lorri was like my family. They were the oldest crewmate of the Turtledove and it’s like… they were always there, never going to falter or get washed away. And now… I probably won’t ever see them again.”

“Probably not,” Aiden agreed, and her head snapped up to stare at him. He continued, “But you’ll always remember them. You’ve got a different way to look at the world, and I don’t think you forget things as easily, do you?”

She shook her head, and tried to take this to heart. She had a place deep in her heart for all her fondest memories about her old friend, and the crew would whistle Lorri’s favorite tunes for years to come. “Thanks,” she said. “How do you know that?”

He shrugged. “Because I’m amazing. Also, I’m very old and I’ve lost people before.” He rummaged in his pockets and held something out to her. “Here. Why don’t you hold onto this until you see me next?”

When she took it, she found it to be a round stone, once gray and roughly cut but worn smooth and shiny from years of rubbing. Her thumb fit perfectly into the depressed face.

“Isn’t it important to you?”

“So you’ll have to see me again to give it back,” he said, smiling. Ari returned the smile and tucked the worry stone into her pocket, realizing how quickly he’d lifted her mood.

“Whatever happened to those little pickpocketing magicians you met in Florida?” she asked, remembering one of his stories. He tossed an arm over her shoulders (no easy task when he was quite a bit shorter than she) and guided her down the dock to a little restaurant free of the smell of fishnets, chattering all the way about what those pickpockets had gotten up to in the decades since he had last been south to Florida.

v. alexandra, virginia

By the next voyage, Ari’s hair reached all the way down to her knees and her father let her call out the sailing orders sometimes. She and Aiden kept up the excuse of exchanging trinkets and favors and making the other return them in the next port. It kept them dancing around the real thing they wished to share with each other. Ari dreamed of taking Aiden with her on the open seas and never having to lose him to the passage of time, and he clearly wanted to take her along on his adventures instead of only recounting them to her during their short meetings in the years. But Ari had never again asked him to board the Turtledove, and leaving her beloved ship to join the land-living would surely take her away from Aiden in a few short decades.

So instead, they only treasured their moments together and eagerly looked forward to the next ones.

Today, there was a patter of running feet on the dock, and then someone climbed up the side of the ship. A widely grinning face surrounded by the hood of a threadbare coat appeared over the railing. “Hallo, miss!” Aiden said, leaning over just enough to knock his fist against Ari’s shoulder.

“Hallo, Aiden,” she said, instinctively brushing his pretty hair out of his eyes before remembering her manners and quickly pulling back her hand. Aiden hooked his feet into the net over the side of the ship and clung comfortably to the railing.

“How’s it been? Anything exciting, or sailing as usual?”

“Sailing as usual, of course. An ocean liner found us on the open seas this voyage, and tried to convince us to let them take the Turtledove to the nearest port. It took us ages to make the captain believe that we weren’t a replica from a port museum or a ghost ship. I think the captain only agreed because we wouldn’t let him onboard, and he had to hang in a lifeboat between the ships to talk to Father.”

“Why couldn’t he come onboard?”

This stopped Ari short. And suddenly she realized that she had never told Aiden about the magic of the Turtledove. They both pretended that being different from the rest of the land-living was perfectly normal and never again had asked each other to share their secrets.

She looked around. Nobody else was around; she had the sudden urge to break the rules for Aiden, just this once. You could never tell the secret of the Turtledove to anyone who wasn’t onboard the ship, but Aiden was almost onboard, wasn’t he?

So she said, in a low voice, “As long as you’re on board the Turtledove, you’re apart from the rest of the land-living. You don’t age, and you don’t die.”

“Really?” he said, in a tone that she knew meant he was extremely curious. “So that’s why you’re always the same. I thought… ah, nevermind.”

“Wait, what’d you think? You have to tell me now.”

“Oh, fine; I thought you were like me. But we clearly aren’t the same, so… yeah, nevermind.”

“What are you like?” she pressed. Having shared her secret, she wanted to know his.

He shrugged and nearly slipped off the railing. “I’m immortal, I guess. Unlike you, I do age; I just live longer than everyone else.”

Ari struggled to find a response; the magic of the Turtledove was familiar and expected, but the magic of Aiden was uncharted water to her. “What are the rules?”

“What?”

“You know; on the Turtledove, you can only enter and leave in a port for it to work right. If you exit at sea, all your years catch up to you at once and then you die. And it only changes time on board; I’ll start aging the moment I jump over the railing with you.”

Aiden shrugged. “I don’t know my rules, but I’ve never broken them yet. I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“But you won’t know what the rules are until it’s too late,” she protested.

“Maybe I won’t. But I’m not going to go do stupid things trying to figure it out; that’d end badly.”

“Why, Aiden, you say that like you’ve never done stupid things.”

“But of course; only the most sensible plans for me! Certainly I’ve never tried to wrangle a dragon—did I ever tell you about the time out west when I found a dragon in a gold mine?”

“Well, let me get comfortable…” Ari dragged a crate over to the railing and perched primly on it, then gestured for Aiden to continue. He readjusted his grip on the railing to be able to gesticulate with one hand, and then launched into a tale that began with an utterly boring train ride across the Great Plains and took most of the evening to tell.

vi. a few years off the coast of ireland

Ari didn’t see Aiden in the next port, and so she couldn’t tell him to meet her in the one after that. She despaired privately that perhaps he had finally broken the rules of his immortality and fallen prey to land-living. Certainly times were changing, and few ports even had a place for the Turtledove to dock amongst the bulky ocean liners and streamlined electric motorboats.

And this was only the first change to a routine that had stretched across centuries, because one day her parents called her into the captain’s quarters for a discussion.

“Ari, I’m stepping down,” Father said. “I’ve been captain for long enough, and I think it’s your time now.”

“What? No, you can’t!” Ari said, voice thick in her throat. “Please don’t leave me.”

“Oh, darling, we won’t leave,” Mother assured her. “We’ll sail with you for quite a while longer. But we agree it’s your turn to be captain. You know the world of the land-living better than we do, I think.”

“Only because of my—of Aiden, and I haven’t seen him in the last ports,” she protested.

“But you’re willing to pay attention to what’s beyond the ports,” Father pressed. “There’s less of the ocean than there was when I started sailing. You’ll need that knowledge, and your friends on land.”

Ari flung her arms around her father and said into his shoulder, “Alright, I’ll do it.”

Her mother took off her hat and put it on Ari’s head, and Ari imagined the weight that came with it settling onto her back. She’d been dreaming of this day for decades, but now she couldn’t even find her best friend to tell about it.

Had he broken his rules and paid the price for immortality? Or had he simply forgotten her and moved on like the rest of the land-living?

vii. trenton, new jersey

“Captain Ariadne?” someone said from behind her, his voice hesitating on her rank. Ari turned. A smudgy man in a threadbare coat stood on the gangplank, nervously twisting his fingers around and around his other wrist.

“Hallo, Aiden. How long has it been?”

“Long enough, Ari. Congratulations, I see you’re captain now?”

She shrugged. “Oh, am I? I wondered where the hat came from.”

“I think it’s dashing.”

She let the comfortable silence fall, and moved to walk down the gangplank. But before she joined him in the land-living, he said quickly, “So I guess that means you have an opening on board?”

Her heart sang. “Do you know someone who wants the position?”

“I don’t know the first thing about boats, but would you take me on?”

She could have picked him up and spun around the deck in her excitement, but reminded herself to be professional. “We don’t know when we’ll arrive,” she warned.

“That’s alright,” Aiden said, taking her hands. “I don’t care when we end up. It’s the journey I want.”

Fin.

#word count: 4833 #thank you for reading!#my writing #original fiction #val rambles #short story #oc: aiden #oc: ariadne #sailor au

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