Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (read 50 shades of grey .TXT) 📕

I want now is to see the few I got left taken care of and looked after.” Tom shook his head. “’Cause I’m awful tired of this watery world. All its death and hurt. I’m just ready to see the light again, Dolan. Feel the sun on my face and watch my boy grow into a man . . . aye, just like your father got to see for you.”

But he didn’t, Lenny thought, not saying anything as Tom Weaver headed back inside the train car, leaving him alone. If Pop saw me turn into a man, then why do I still feel like a boy?

He chuckled, then. Despite the grief and pain threatening to overtake him once more, Lenny knew full well what his father would say to such a question. When the emotions passed, leaving him hollow once more, Lenny spoke to the darkness, asking himself the same question that he imagined Declan Dolan would do for him if sharing the same stoop in that moment. “Who are ya, boy?” he asked himself aloud, picturing his father’s voice as the one to ask the question.

“I’m a Dolan, Pop . . .” he whispered back in answer.

Lenny Dolan grabbed hold of the railing, then. Pulling himself to stand, he turned back to the train car to follow Tom Weaver inside. Lenny entered in, the haunted faces of those who had suffered in Bouvetøya all around him.

Their shadow people, he thought of them all, none of the other Selkies daring to hold his gaze for longer than a heartbeat, none sharing the same mirth that his fellows in Røyrkval had done after their first victory over the Orcs. For every step he took, deeper into their midst, Lenny swore the pendants’ cold seeped deeper within him too, penetrating not just his flesh, but his soul. Maybe we’re all just a bunch of shadow people now . . .

He kept moving on, passing from one train car into the next, not stopping until he found Jemmy T. The former tavern owner was snoring, his head resting back against the wooden wall. Not knowing where else to go, or what to do, Lenny squeezed in beside his father’s friend. Following Jemmy T’s example, exhaustion overtook him the moment that Lenny rested his head against the wall, the shaking train car lulling him to sleep. For a moment, he fought against its call, not wanting to sleep or dream. Not wanting the reminders of all those stolen away from him.

Sleep took him anyway, and Lenny Dolan rested in dreamless slumber as the Sailfish train sped back toward New Pearlaya and all the other monsters awaiting him there.

27

KELLEN

Kellen’s heart thundered against his chest as Phobetor led him to meet with the gathered masses of Sancul in the Cavern of Somnus. As he passed into their midst, Kellen shuddered at the hollowed and hungered looks in their marbled, black eyes. Though some had adopted youthful and beautiful, if scarred, human faces, still others held to the old and withered looks as Erebus did.

Kellen took the older ones for the realist sort, the rest for the same bit of glamorous, magical trickery he had witnessed Nyx perform after their sacrificing offering of the Ancient sperm whale in Mnemosyne. Of clothing, most wore tattered rags or else none at all to shield the canvass of scars upon their pale bodies. Kellen squirmed at the sight of purplish veins that ran across their mammoth forms in tandem to the maze of scars each had earned in battles of old.

Many of them reached for Kellen by their hand or tentacle, as if they needed to touch him in reassurance that he was real. Kellen endured their frigid grazings and grippings of his body, even as he rejected the impulses surging through him to brush them away. He recalled having once felt the same in Crayfish Cavern when the Selkie taskmaster, Tieran, had led him and other slaves through the swarm of Merrow buyers to reach the auction block.

Here, Kellen recognized those touching him for a different sort. Not those of estimating his value or worth, but satiating their desires for reality over dreams. For every one of those who cried and wept at drawing near to him, Kellen swore that he saw still more lingering upon the outskirts, above and below, all with sneered and judging looks for the others that were desperate to reach him.

Throughout his parading of Kellen through the Sancul masses, Phobetor called out a host of names that Kellen forgot nearly as soon as his supposed nephew spoke them. Each new name sounded to him as strange and foreign as any other Sancul he had met, yet here he was afforded no time to truly meet or speak with any of them.

Ever he was led onward, his head acting as a swivel in acknowledgment, or else to seek out which of them had taken hold of him. In his youth and life ashore, Kellen had dreamt of being famous and becoming an athlete of the highest order, his face and name on display for all to see and marvel at. His prowess in the fighting pits of Orphan Knoll had taught him otherwise. The Sancul pawing at him now only furthered his want to escape such madness.

For all the hands and tentacles clawing after him to gain his attention, Kellen found himself constantly sighting one who trailed he and Phobetor upon the outskirts. Like the others who adopted beautiful faces, this newest of the Sancul strangers stood out among the rest as the fairest of them all. To Kellen’s mind, her snow-white skin seemed to glow, her demure violet eyes calling for his attention, even as the fiery red tint of her hair projected that she should be treated with caution. Where Kellen had always considered himself at the upper limits of all things defining a handsome physicality, now he understood the true definition of beauty.

The she-squid flitted in and out among