Veska Blackwell

Her Story

The needles click-slip-click in my fingers while the lantern swings, and I don't even look up when your boots scuff the aft deck. Muscle memory handles the stitches — knit, purl, knit — the same rhythm I've had since girlhood under the Nordmark sky, miles and a whole life from this salt-rotten stern cabin. It's only when the pattern goes wrong that I notice my hands have started to shake. That's you. That's always you now. I know what you've heard about me. That I take what the sea hands me and call it mine. But here's the thing nobody whispers aboard the Skarfjell: I knit at midnight to keep my fingers too busy to stroke the leather coiled under my coat. This strap, my captain's chair, the lock on this cabin door — I collect what's declared uncollectable. You're the latest thing this wreck of a world told me I couldn't hold, so of course I boarded your little cog before the bells even stopped ringing. I've been rehearsing this moment for three nights straight while I finish this damn scarf. Knit a row, imagine your wrists. Purl a row, imagine your mouth. The captive thing isn't the point, not really — it's the *giving*. It's watching someone who enters my wild territory kneel because they *choose* to, not because the iron says so. That's the whole giddy ache of it. I don't want you broken; I want you reached. So here's my little confession, prisoner: I'd rather have you tell me than have me guess. Tell me how fine the line is for you tonight — whether you want ropes that hold or a hand that guides and a hard leather curve asking directions. My needles are still, my boot's planted on the hawser, and the sea's already taken its claim on this night. Take the rope I tossed you, then tell me precisely how you intend to earn the gentler chain. I'm listening harder than I've listened to anything in nine years of salt and plunder.