Steam Stowage

I've noticed that things are often done just a little bit different in the UK than in the states.  Our Thursday writer Ben, has decided to continue that theme.  Welcome to the world of steam punk! Where airships rule, and mechanical devices are the coolest gadgets.  No matter what reality you land in, the steam always rises when people are in close proximity. 

Steam Stowage

by 

Ben Hannigan 

      The air was cool as she waited; dressed in clothes long creased with age, clothes borrowed from a trunk seldom used by any in the family, kept more as a keepsake than to be worn. The year was 1947, the thirtieth year of Our Lady of the Lord Maria the fourth, the mother of the current Pope, the leader of Catholic England and master of the land. The Orange Rebellion crushed by her forefathers and those who incited it slaughtered, with full backing of the people. 

     England was solidly Catholic. The steam barges ruled the land; a tribute to the brilliance of England’s researchers and the bravery of its sailors. It was to one of these Eliza’s path led, fleeing an arranged contract marriage aided by the nuns of her school and dressed in the clothes of a dead man.  She was ready.

     Laid upon the roof she had slept on, she watched the escape boats roll by, the shells bound for a boat to the Dutch colony of new Amsterdam on one of the working vessels. Vessels where those with the correct papers may work their passage across the sky and earn their entry fee to the colony. But of course, she had no papers, there wasn’t time to forge them.  She had to flee before sundown, flee and never be found or possibly to find a suitor before the contract was initialed. 

     For if she were to be wed then she could no longer fulfill the contract as Eliza Fairchild would no longer exist. She waited and watched for the last pod which she saw from careful previous scouting was unlocked, and equipped somewhat better than the others being the Captain’s pod. She swung across the alleyway with her pre-trimmed line and dropped into the belly of the pod, her home until the new world. As she fell she caught her head on the door-lock, a small cut that she didn’t feel at the time but would later come to change her life. 

      She lay on the hammock breathing heavy with glee as she felt the ship rock and clunk onto the vessel. Now, all there was to do was wait.  She saw she could practice her sabre work, or read, or work on forging papers but for now she had a darker goal.  Rifling through her bag she found the small bottle of brandy gifted by the nuns to use for wounds, or bribes or well indeed as one had said, steady the nerves. Prying out the cork she took a belt. Sipping at the half pint to warm her heart and quell the ill humors pumping their way through her veins, the yellow of fear and the black of loss and terror competing with the gold humour of triumph and the green of sorrow that it had come to this. She fingered her rosary as she drank and prayed for forgiveness, for protection, and for a new safe world. 

      The brandy warming her as it always had but also filling her body with feelings she knew from church as a sin, but knew from Sister Mary as desire and love.   The love GOD wills us to bear, the joy in being alive, and his love for us. For she had reasoned to the younger girl if God did not will it then we on earth would not feel it. She taught the girl of the saints that prayed with it, the angels that shared it, the ecstasy of His love. 

     Eliza felt her hands tracing the familiar steps she was taught, caressing her nipples through the soft linen shirt following the pattern, across her tummy and her thighs cupping her sex and searching through the firy heat for the nub, the symbol of HIS presence and she gasped as her nails raked across it, missing the comforting weight of the young nun’s hand, she moved faster and it was less controlled as she raked her fingers across her slit. Her back arching, her breeches down in a tangle by her feet as she exploded, asking, begging, calling for her god to  send an angel to spear her as he did St. Theresa; gasping and exploding filled with his energy, his love. 

     She slid down into the pillows exhausted, given of her body all to her pleasure what she was taught was for her god.  Sleeping, resting safe and loved she lay, blood dripping slowly, unknown to any man.