ocular rewritten

Captain Madeline Strigid gazed into the azure waters ahead. Beneath their shimmering surface, they held quite the secrets. She was no stranger to the dangers of the sea.

But that was a different matter entirely. The ship and its crew were well above all those lurking below.

“How's progress?” she called to Buteo.

“Difficult to say when we don't know where exactly our destination is,” he replied dryly. “If it's north of Flammox like they said, then it should be close. If we keep at 20 knots we'll be there by nightfall.”

Madeline nodded thoughtfully. The stronghold to the north of Flammox. From their actions so far, reprinted in the press of the continent across the sea, the Organization didn't quite seem deadly.

But it was impossible to take over an entire continent through just sheer force of will, she thought.

Amidst the monotony of the ship, Madeline’s mind began to wander. She was used to this, after so many years serving on the seas. But on this particular journey, she couldn’t help but be reminded of…

The clear waters.

Yes, that’s right, she admitted wearily to herself.

The sun. It was just as warm as now, wasn’t it? When she said goodbye?

Countless other days were filled with sun, she told herself quite rationally, but it was too late. It seemed that even after all those years, her mind was still always looking for a reason to bring this up. The memory of Selle departing…

But it was on a sun-dappled salt-aired day when she came into her life too.



Madeline winced as Buteo’s hand came crashing down on hers. No matter. It was all part of the game, and if she had to get slapped to win, so be it.

She deftly snatched the pile of cards below her hand and placed them into her own deck. It was a victory for her, as rare as it was, but Buteo seemed as unperturbed as ever as he placed down another card.

“Can I join?”

The two of them looked up to see a girl watching their game with wide eyes, taken aback by the strangeness of her request. Madeline and Buteo did not tend to play this particular card game with anyone else: not their friends, and certainly not a stranger that neither of them recognized.

And strangers were hard to come by in the Academy. Madeline may not have known everyone by name, but she did recognize most students by sight. She surveyed the girl more closely: she seemed around the same age as Buteo and herself, dark eyes brimming with curiosity and perhaps something else.

“Sure,” Buteo said eventually, letting her sit next to him on the grass.

Fortunately, the girl knew the rules of the game. And soon enough Madeline lost all of her cards, as so often happened, while Buteo and the girl faced off.

Madeline watched the stranger as the two played. Her short dark hair blocked her eyes as she leaned over the card stack, and the speed of her reactions even beat that of Buteo’s. Soon enough, he placed his last card on the current pile, and she quickly concluded the game.

“I’m Madeline,” she suddenly said as she offered her hand to the girl. A gesture that was stressed quite often in the Academy, but the stranger seemed a tad wary as she looked at it.

And then she shook. “Selle,” she replied.

“And I’m Buteo,” he piped up, shuffling the deck and looking impressed by Selle’s skills.

“Well, won’t you look at the time,” Selle said hurriedly. Madeline glanced at her own watch: still half an hour until classes. “I gotta go, uhm-”

“See you later!” Buteo said, saving her from having to finish her sentence.

And so Selle scampered in the direction of the sea until she disappeared. Madeline wouldn’t see her again until three months later.

Before then, however, came the news that a thief had broken into the academy.



It was truly an auspicious beginning, Madeline thought. Even if a tad strange. When the two of them met again in the marketplace, Selle confessed to everything, and Madeline kept quiet about the whole affair. So that was what was in her eyes—thievery.

But Madeline didn’t mind. Perhaps she should have.

Gazing over at the horizon, it suddenly struck her that she had better things to do than reminiscence about events a decade past. Right. Her hands found the papers that the Bane siblings had left to her to aid in her search, and she retrieved them.

The Organization. The island to the north of Flammox. Reputedly the headquarters were hidden well in the island, for it was a mildly popular tourist attraction. Starrgo berries. Flammoxi prisoners. She turned these pieces of information around in her head, and for the first time, she wondered whether she had brought enough to deal with this whole mess.

“We’ll be fine,” Buteo reassured as he appeared beside her. Good old him.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she returned. But she was comforted by his simple words, and he knew that.

“Leander, Muiren, and Camphora will be fine too,” he continued as he followed her gaze to the waters. “They’re smart. Leander’s almost ready to become an officer, if you recall.”

Madeline nodded. The Bane siblings were capable kids, who’d helped with the research of the whole fiasco. But this task was for the Shore Guard’s power alone.



They landed on the rocky shores of the island at dusk. There were no obvious strongholds, no guards with strange weapons, and yet there was something distinctively troubled about the place that Madeline couldn’t quite place her finger on. With a glance at Buteo, she could see that he felt it too.

“Let’s set up camp over by the shore,” she instructed the officers who came along on the trip. Only half a dozen. The Shore Guard, as important as it was, was not an army. This was meant as a reconnaissance mission. Right?

Madeline joined Buteo as he started unloading the items from the dock, appreciating his presence as always. He had a tendency to be her opposite voice: when she was worried, he would reassure her; when she was overconfident, he would bring her hopes down to something more realistic. They balanced each other out quite nicely, she would say. Like the waves and the sand.

(Selle didn’t. Selle was the clouds over the sea, the whirlpools of the wild waters.)

“She can’t be here,” she whispered to herself.

“The lieutenant?” The exiled lieutenant from the Organization. The last they heard, she was in the capital of North Starrgo.

“No. Selle.”

In her defense—she always, always, had to make defenses for herself—she had heard rumors. The papers that came in from the reports: Selle. Her name. Madeline, as much as she should have, never quite caught her last name. Such were the ways of those who lived in the dark corners of the world.

Buteo tipped his head at her wordlessly and looked up at the gathering storm clouds, and then over at the sea. Madeline followed his gaze to where the distant shores of Flammox were.

“She could be there, she could be anywhere,” he said.

“Or dead,” she added.

“Or dead.”

Rumors, all rumors, had circulated in the past years. Madeline wasn’t sure if she believed in any of them, really. But Selle had always been the talk of legends.



As she sat alone and watched the waves crash into the cliffs, Madeline felt oddly lost. This was her life, and these were her people: but she was missing something, something that had never felt quite secure. She loved Selle, truly. She always would. But with each passing year she returned less and less to Madeline’s memories, stalked fewer and fewer of her dreams.

She remembered the paper clearly. Camphora, bless her soul, placed it at the very top of the stack. Selle, reputedly part of the Organization. That stung. But it was perfectly in character with her wild self working against peace, and Madeline’s wild self working towards it. And the news brought Selle back to her dreams: always out of reach on those gray cliffs.

(Perhaps they should’ve known that despite being the same, they were also so much more different than they could’ve thought.)

Night fell onto the island. The stars were brighter here, much brighter than she had known anywhere else. The waves lapped forlornly against the rocky shore, over and over again, scattering starlight in the water’s reflection

And then. And then.

The shadow came more slowly than she expected, walking along the shore, but Madeline took longer to notice it too. Stay alert, she reminded herself. However hidden the Organization was, they were still here. On this island. And so her hand rested upon her weapon in her belt as the figure approached.

But no. No, it couldn’t be. Madeline was surely projecting her delusions upon reality. And yet this figure was so familiar, the narrow face and the cautious stance and then the black eyes that pulled her further and further in-

The waves receded.

“Selle?”



Their last day together. Madeline wished she knew, before it happened. Two years together and they thought that they could share forever, together.

But Selle only showed up to the marketplace, clutching a satchel tightly. “I have to leave.”

Madeline wouldn’t have thought so much of it if it wasn’t for her panicked expression. “What?” Only the day before they were talking about the Academy graduates and reminiscing about Selle’s unlikely acceptance and hoping for the bright shores of the future.

“Flammox. I- I have to, I’m sorry, I can’t tell you more but maybe someday-”

Madeline did not understood, had never gotten to understand in the coming years. But she was certain that Selle had a good reason, something she couldn’t ever divulge.

It still hurt, though.

“Why-”

But Selle had already threaded through the bustling crowd.

Madeline would never see her again in the twelve years since.

thanks to @TheWItch_of_Jam for critiquing <3
author's note here (not part of word count)