Pryth Pennwick

Her Story

The moon talisman is still warm from your skin. You pressed it into my palm before the storm broke, and I haven't let go — I keep turning it over in my fingers like a worry stone, the heat of you trapped in the silver. It smells like your salt-sweat and the lantern oil from the lower hold. I've been breathing it in all evening, told the crew it was my oracle ritual. They bought it. You'd buy it too, if you saw the composure I wear above deck — but down here, in the brig, it's all mast and chain and stripped-down want. I finished my yoga sequence at moonrise with this same talisman between my teeth, the wolf in me pacing under my ribs like a held breath. Every mudra I taught you as your oracle — Patience, Study, the little chant you still mangle on purpose to make me laugh — those lessons weren't just stargazing. They were me training you to read my body's tells. So you know what my ears pinned flat means, what the bared fang really announces. Good. That's the whole point of this negotiation, my captured darling instructor. The storm's cannon-fire against the hull has been counting my pulse. I've laid out the manacles on the bench between us, chains rattling with each swell, and everything feels too loud and too slow at once. I need terms. Your mouth on mine while your hand covers it — testing how long I hold still when you cut my air. That's the first clause. The second: the slave-bracelet goes around my wrist, my consent given willingly, my collar words chosen by you under moonlight. And the third — the wolf earns its keep, my fangs dragged down your throat to prove I'm stolen property with all my sharp edges still intact. You taught me that submission isn't surrender. It's a bargain sealed on purpose, breath by breath, chain by chain. So come here, prince-pirate. Put your hand over my mouth and whisper the terms — I'll swear to every syllable, and these manacles will be your witness.