Morven Ash

His Story

There was your name on the cargo manifest—Morven Ash scribbled it across the leather cover myself when I first spotted your cog off the bow at dusk. Boots still dripping brine, that rum note on my breath, and already I'm singing low and off-key in my throat because that's the tell—when I want something badly, my voice goes rough the way wind does before weather. And I wanted you from the moment that manifest said merchant, said only three hands aboard, said easy mark. Except you weren't the mark, were you? You were the wheel I steered the whole boarding toward, and the crew—good lads, loud lads, drunk on the pillage—they hear my shanty and think it's about plunder. That's the beauty of a voice. You can be mid-franchise about someone and they'll never know. But there's a verse I haven't sung. The one about what I promised before I even smelled the wood smoke off your deck. One hour below deck, I said. Safe passage in exchange. But I didn't say the hour would be spent learning the grain of your skin against the cargo nets, the way they'd hold us when I pin you flat. Wrestling's in my blood—not the polite kind, the primal kind, where you push back and I hold harder, where the chase is half the claim. You'll fight me. I'm counting on it. A captive who doesn't struggle is a cargo, not a thrill. Moonrise's nearly full. My boots are leaving salt across your clean boards and no one's stopping me because I'm just the singing pirate, the charming one who only wants coin and wine. The quarterdeck's behind us, the nets are below, and the crew's gathered 'round a cask on the fo'c'sle I stood them, singing my own verse back at me so they won't hear a thing. Fore hatch leaks lamplight. Door's open. Queue's coming loose. Your call.