Lusca
| Name: | Lusca |
| Location: | The Lady Sinister |
| Rank: | First Mate |
Noted Favors, Awards and Memberships
Personal Color: Rose
Alternate Names: Catalina Thorne, Pirate Princess
Biography
She had been lost for many a year. She was wandering, restless in mind and body and spirit, drifting among other souls who did not recognize her. There would be occasions where their lives may intersect, even overlap but the bond would eventually become exhausting. Try as she might to reveal herself to the others, they had neither the time nor the patience to see who she truly was. Inevitably they would pull free, after extracting as much as they wanted to take from her and giving little in return. They would walk on their way down the path, leaving her behind mourning the small pieces of herself that they carried with them. Borne away by deceit, by selfishness and indifference, she feared she would never be able to reclaim those fragments of her soul.
In time she came to fear the faces. The smiles and welcoming eyes that lured one in, only to later glimpse in a twist of the light, in the breath of a moment, the visage of a fiend peering out instead. It became easier to stay away from the others, to avoid those interactions, those dances with mysterious strangers who seemed more intent to wound than to heal.
But it would become lonely for her, and sometimes she would venture out and mingle with the others, but they did not even know who she was. They called her by many names, and sometimes she became other names she had devised for herself. None of them fit however, they were like ill fitting coats. Sometimes they swallowed her up, other times they pinched, and she would scratch and squirm until they peeled free. They would lie there on the floor, like the shed skins of a snake, taunting her with the unfulfilled promise of being seen for who she was inside.
The day finally came when she could take it no more, when the demands of the flickering fires in the eyes of the others became too much to bear. She could no longer try to be something she wasn’t for the benefit of those who chose not to see her for who she was. Who saw no value in what she had to give, but demanded she please them anyway. So she ran, blindly at first by tears of frustration and sadness. As she ran the tears flowed away and she started to see more clearly and was blinded by the light glinting off the waters ahead.
Waves rolled in and crashed on the sand beneath her feet; she stood in the surf and allowed the sun and the waves to beat down on her body. The scorching fire started to burn away the pain in her heart and the cooling water began to soothe to wounds. She looked out across the horizon and saw a ship, her blackened hull cutting through the waves and her sails unfurled in the wind. Without a single backward glance, she took determined steps into the water. Giving up the world of the others, she strode deeper and deeper into the blue.
The briny water licked up her body and she gave herself over to the power of the ocean. It pulled her, pushed and challenged her and saw her for who she was. Her heart echoed the exultation of the oceans pulse and with a shout she dove in, disappearing beneath the waves. Her eyes peered into the deep blue, where sunlight vanished into mystery. Letting go of her old names she joined in the mythical dance and was reborn from the foam and sand and spirits that haunt the seas.
They stood on the deck of the ship, these kindred souls to the ocean. Captain Greybeard and his crew, and they had seen many a storm. Perhaps they had seen a ghost or two in their time, certainly a sea monster would not put them out of sorts. So perhaps it is no surprise that when she climbed aboard that they did not shrink away or raise any alarm.
She approached the Captain and the First Mate standing by his side. She looked at them and watched for the fires that burned in the eyes of the others, for that flicker of deceit. The Captain raised his hand, and his voice in welcome and as the others on the ship raised their voices in chorus she stepped forward into their embrace.
Her name is Lusca, and she has found her home.
