suit of cups

"You have pretty hair."

It was the first kind thing Basil Hawkins heard from another child since he and his mother moved to her home village in the North Blue. At ten years old, he was quite used to unsolicited commentary about his appearance, so he braced himself to fight, though he didn't hear the snickering of a bully's audience. Instead, he looked up to see you.

Though you stood while he sat, he could tell you were a few inches shorter than him and likely younger. You didn't look at his face or his brow, but truly, honestly, at the ends of his hair hanging past his chin.

"Go away."

Hawkins recalled the straw effigies he'd sprouted from his hands as he made to leave, but to his annoyance, you followed.

"I said go away."

"I'm going home."

"You're lying." He lengthened his steps the little bit his height allowed him.

"Am not. I live in the stone house with the outside kitchen."

That was generous. Smoke and steam wafted downwind to the wooded area where he lived smelling like fish and starches, from what had to be a pot over a fire pit at most. He liked being outside during this island's brief warm season, so he didn't relish when the air smelled like burnt food.

You shuffled quickly to catch up to him. "I heard there was a boy with powers. Is it you?"

"No."

"You're lying. I saw you grow pancit from nothing."

"Pancit?" he repeated.

"Noodles."

Hawkins looked at you sidelong as he slowed his pace slightly. If he was a misfit for the eyebrows he was told were his father's contribution, you stood apart from the villagers with your pitch-black waves while everyone else resembled his mother in coloring, straight, fair hair and fairer skin.

He stopped and held up his palm, conjuring a small scarecrow. You watched in fascination, and bizarrely sniffed the air before frowning.

"That's not pancit."

Other children would call him a monster or a witch and run away, shrieking, but you were unimpressed.

"No, it isn't."

You poked the scarecrow lightly with your finger, and he felt the foreign heat of your hand near his. Was it already that cold outside, or were you that warm? Then you grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward.

"Come on!"

You lived so close by but a world apart from him, with three generations of family who seemed to be mostly fishermen and homemakers. You barely introduced him to the old woman bent over a wok in the small, fenced yard with more gravel than grass before you pointed at the colorful woven mat under her feet.

"Lola, is that straw?"

She hummed affirmatively, and you grinned at him, though he wasn't sure what reaction you were looking for, then or throughout that evening of boisterous adults speaking half a different language while you piled his plate high with food, fragrant with garlic and vinegar and peppercorn. He'd always been left to his own devices, free to come and go as he pleased with his mother's unpredictable hours, so he was unsettled to the very end when you tried your best to walk him home. In practice, you lagged behind him, hobbling with a bundle of leftovers your mother foisted on you that had to be a third your size until Hawkins held out his hand with a put-upon sigh.

"Give it to me."

"No. You're a guest."

"We're going to my house."

"Just for a second!"

"And we're never getting there at the speed you're walking."

You grumbled as he pried it from your fingers, hooking the veritable tower of containers into his own. It really was one of the biggest meals he'd had in recent memory. Neighbors had been curious about the two of them before and made token offers to look after him out of pity for his young, hardworking mother, but that usually ended once they realized how off-putting and somber he was besides his Devil Fruit.

Hawkins was sure your own interest would wane soon and your family was surely gossiping about him at this moment, but he'd at least savor the dishes you brought along before his familiar solitude. You'd probably turn tail now that he relieved you of your burden. You'd probably pretend not to know him once other children got wind of his powers, and he'd resent you for it more than he did anyone else so far, because there was something sadder than usual about a little kid like you discarding him.

But you kept coming back.

The next day, Hawkins stepped out of his house to find you sitting on the fence post with a book that looked much too mature for either of you. Even he scarcely read anything but the comics in the World Economic Journal, so he doubted you were far beyond picture books yourself. You didn't acknowledge him as he approached, but the tension was evident in your neck, like you were waiting for him to speak first. He took advantage of his height and long arms to pluck it from your grasp.

"Hey!"

"On the Heavenly Spheres," Hawkins read out loud. The page you were on had diagrams, not so much illustrations, and he kept his thumb there as he flipped through to see more of the same. "Did you steal this?"

"Borrowed," you corrected. You'd hopped down from the fence to try and take it back, swiping futilely at his shoulders before he handed it back to you.

"From who?" Your family didn't seem terribly bookish.

"This neighbor lady," you said with a sniff. "She smells weird but she has a lot of stuff like this. See?" You held it out, pantomiming for him to take a whiff, and he recoiled.

"No, thank you."

But he didn't mind laying in the grass a few feet away from you with his backlog of Sora, Warrior of the Sea clippings while you hummed and doodled on your left arm in fountain pen, the odd symbols he'd glimpsed in your book, until the sun rose past noon and you asked him for soap in a panic before you both were due for lunch at your house. He could tell your mother restrained herself from striking you for the faint smear of ink left behind, and the next day he gave you the rest of the newspaper to write in the margins of instead.

His own mother was surprised to see you the evening after that, and looked between the two of you curiously as you chatted to her about the trove of food their family of two had been reheating diligently for days.

"I'm glad you're making friends, Hawkins," she said softly when he returned from walking you home.

"We're not friends," Hawkins said. "I'm babysitting."

His mother smiled at that, a little sadly, and he winced. He'd never had one, but understood the concept. It'd always been the two of them.

Summer turned to fall. You tried to teach him go, which the elders of your family played, though he wasn't convinced you understood it, either, with how a pruned man whose exact relation to you was inconclusive scowled every time you clacked a stone down loudly. Hawkins finally unearthed the pack of cards misplaced in their move here, and you played what few games the pair of you could think of for two players, mostly slapjack that left both of you smarting and teary-eyed, except for the times he covered his hand with a thick layer of straw. He made you truly cry, once, and he'd never felt worse. His mother came home and laughed at the scene the two of you made, and you betrayed him by ignoring him that evening to learn knitting at her side.

"We've been here for ever," you said, "but everyone still thinks they're back home, so no one knows how to dress for winter."

Back home, someplace you'd never been but you and now Hawkins heard plenty about. A summer island in the Grand Line. All the straw baskets and mats in your home was waste from white rice, unlike the barley and wheat around here. Hawkins wondered if it was warmer than a Northern summer, or warm like the life you invited him to without hesitation, or warm like your hands.

🜄

It was your birthday deep in winter when Hawkins finally met the smelly old woman who supplied you with books.

"You can take a bath right away," you hissed. He was more annoyed that for the next six months you were only two years younger than him instead of three, but now dread filled him along with the memory of patchouli and mothballs from times you'd stuck a book on his sleeping face.

The old woman lived at the edge of town, still closer than either of you, and it was one of the few times you saw other children your age, including a few who he'd punched and been punched by for comments about his mother and about you, so Hawkins took your mittened hand in his, your stitches much neater than his own despite you only learning a few months ago. He didn't let go until you passed the iron gate of a row house and you skipped ahead of him to knock.

Besides loud makeup—dark lipstick, no mascara—the old woman looked much like any other on this island, and you hugged her around her waist like you were used to it, though Hawkins could tell you held your breath. He bit back his smirk at that before you introduced him, and he managed to keep his distance with a polite bow of the head. You kicked him in the shin under the table while your hostess rifled around for something, and he tutted you for almost disturbing the tea.

She left you in a sort of drawing room, whose one complete wall was lined with tall bookshelves, including a few spines he recognized from your voracious intake. Incense puffed off a brass holder shaped like a sea king, and Hawkins couldn't excise it from the cocktail of other scents that was surely embedding itself in his hair and clothes.

"Now, darling," the woman said on return, sitting across from the pair of you at the round table. "How old are you this year?"

"Nine," you answered guilelessly.

"Mm. And you?"

He tried to hide that he was startled at being involved. "Eleven, now."

"Hawkins is a Virgo," you explained.

"Ah. I see." She nodded like you'd exchanged a larger volume of information than he could hear. "Birds of a feather."

With that, she held out a tall deck of cards toward you, and pressed your palm on the top before she shuffled them overhand like any of the men on the docks Hawkins had seen playing cards to pass the time. After a good long while, she set them in front of her counter-clockwise in a large wheel. There were twelve of them, and you made a noise of recognition.

The old woman grinned. "Sharp one, you are. Like him." She tapped the card that was at 9 o'clock from your shared point of view, one manicured fingernail on the crown of an enthroned old man, under which read "King of Swords."

You wrinkled your nose. "How is that my first house?"

"Where is your helmsman, dear?"

"Aquarius... oh."

Hawkins had no hope of following what seemed like an entirely disparate topic, the astronomy you read religiously, so he nursed his tea and inspected the rest of the spread. The deck was more colorful than the playing cards his mother had, with thick swathes of blue, red, green, and yellow and more proper illustrations than theirs. He counted two different kings on the table, and realized he'd never looked too closely before, taking for granted that every suit had two monarchs and a jack. But now that he looked, he wondered if his mother's deck wasn't a version of this with the more mystical cards missing. Why, though?

"Swords on three of your four angles," the woman tutted. "You're going to get yourself into many conflicts, and become known for it."

"By who?"

"Only another diviner would argue this much."

"I don't think I like tarot," you said sullenly. "It's not specific."

"Swords, dear."

Privately, Hawkins was impressed. He often found himself dragging you away from your family or other children by the scruff of your neck, how you challenged them as boldly as you did this woman who clearly found you amusing instead of abrasive.

The woman pointed at the third card, counter-clockwise. "Justice. Maybe you can use that tongue of yours to help the Marine."

"As my third house? I'm supposed to make propaganda?"

"Oi," Hawkins said, only half-offended. It was a familiar point.

"And I'm delighted to meet this young man of yours," the woman continued, and you audibly opened your mouth to contradict her, "but I think you should try to make some girl friends." The fifth card looked like three women clinking chalices together in the air.

"He's like a girl."

Hawkins had heard that before, but none of those who said it were you. If there was something girlish about him, whatever that meant, there was as much boyish in you, and you were each something closer to each other than anyone else.

For the next hour of your asking questions and picking the answers apart, Hawkins itched to take notes like when you read your astronomy books, or ask for the rest of the deck to flick through, and eventually he started speaking up himself, trying his hand at interpretation.

"It feels right for you to have The Star," he said carefully.

"It does. I like you, kid," your mentor—because that's what she was—said with a satisfied nod. You stuck your tongue out at him. "The Star as your eighth house suggests you'll be involved in political upheaval of some kind." Hawkins read headlines, at least, about the Revolutionary Army, and the thought of you dying for such a vague cause was laughable. "Or you will have close contact with someone who disrupts the status quo, violently."

You frowned. "I don't see how. I have Mars there, and it's undignified."

"The Six of Cups for your ninth house..." She looked at Hawkins then. "You two will travel together. I'm sure of it."

🜄

Hawkins drew six cards every morning. The first three were his personal reading, and the next three were for you. With your permission. You rolled your eyes as you gave it, but listened to his interpretation, and you in turn reminded him which of his houses had planets transiting through them. You said it was easy because your rising signs formed a trine to one another, his Cancer to your Pisces—only possible with signs of the same element. To him, those were The Chariot and The Moon, and your eyebrow visibly twitched when he said so.

He was fourteen and you were twelve when your grandfather taught the two of you and some of your cousins how to sail in a small double outrigger boat, an old but still-sturdy fishing rig retired from the family business but deemed safe enough for children on calm waters. You were only allowed to sail within a small bay separate from the commercial port at the island's northeast, and for the first time in your families' friendship, Hawkins felt guilty about accepting so much good will. Before this he had some pride and felt offended on his mother's behalf, that any help offered in his upkeep judged her as inadequate. His powers also meant your family would bear responsibility if he drowned, but they accepted the risk and kept sharing things with him like food and a sailboat and their roof, kept sharing you.

The two of you monopolized the paraw. Your older cousins already worked on larger fishing boats while this was functionally a sailed canoe, so the novelty was gone. The ones closer to your age gave you (and him) wide berth, so all summer the two of you sailed circles around the bay, taking turns reading your respective crafts while the other rigged.

"I don't know, Hawkins, it's a little cloudy," you hedged as you used a ruler to keep your place on your ephemeris table. You laid on your stomach on the floor of his room, knocking your shins into him as he sat with his back against his bed, his cards on the floor. He'd been fashioning some sort of stand for them out of straw, mostly to keep them off dirty surfaces, but the mutability of layouts he used made it difficult.

"All the more reason to practice. Do you think pirates get a choice in what the weather is like?"

You kicked his thigh with purpose. "Fine. But if we capsize or get rained on..."

"I didn't draw any Cups," Hawkins said.

"Really." You didn't sound impressed. "There's wet majors though. Did you get any of them?"

Just The Moon, but if he said that you'd be reminded of your sign correspondence rant. "We both got the Six of Swords."

It took you a minute to visualize it: two figures in a boat disembarking, a ferryman and their passenger. "Isn't that bad?"

After a year or so of using his mother's cards, Hawkins saved up enough money doing readings at the farmer's market to order an entirely pictorial deck, quicker for his personal recall than pips. You really preferred words and patterns over images, and responded to the pip deck like he didn't, but you gamely learned the pictures anyway.

You whined the whole time you followed him to the dock. It was cloudy, but the clouds were fluffy and white, not at all heavy with rain, and soon you were out on the water again, where Hawkins was starting to feel at home.

He wanted to see the world. He always had, as he and his mother moved incrementally throughout the North Blue and he noticed the slightest of differences from island to island. Then he met you, and the thought of the Grand Line struck him like lightning. That, and Devil Fruits being more commonplace there. He must have eaten his before he could talk, since he didn't remember it and never could swim to begin with. Your family had been fishermen for centuries, but your own mother neither swam nor feared the water. When the mentor you now shared said you would travel together, he knew that meant he would go to sea.

It was to those happy thoughts that Hawkins reclined across from you in the long outrigger and dozed off. Until...

"Hawkins!"

You shook him awake far more violently than he thought he deserved, and the first thing he noticed was the air was cool, cooler than it should be for a summer afternoon. He blinked one eye open and saw it was nighttime, sunset or just past sunset.

"Shit." You gasped, scandalized. "Don't be a baby," he grumbled as he started sitting up, but you smacked him in the shoulder so hard he went straight back down.

"I knew today wasn't a good sailing day!"

"It didn't rain."

"We're lost. Do you see the coastline?"

Hawkins squinted vaguely where he thought he horizon should be. "...No."

"Fuck!" you hissed.

"Fuck," he repeated.

"We're fine, actually. Okay. We're good." He didn't know if he believed you, but you nearly snapped your neck with how quickly you grabbed the compass that hung from it. "Okay. The new moon was four days ago, so she's waxing. Does that look like a quarter to you?" Hawkins knew better than to answer. "Either way, we can't have moved too far. Good thing the sails were furled."

You chewed your lip and looked up at the sky. He followed your gaze and saw only a field of stars, those clouds you worried about long gone. He stared long enough that his eyes started to water.

"Are you crying?"

"No." He wiped at his face with the back of his hand.

"We need to shunt. I think we've been going southeast."

"You think? How certain are you?"

"I'm not a navigator!" you snapped. "I don't know. I don't have like, a percentage for you, but I'm reasonably sure. Look. There's Polaris."

You pointed, and he supposed some of them looked brighter than the others, but he couldn't be certain. It amazed him that you read the sky like a map written just for you, and he wished his cards were half as useful to your shared survival.

"I'm putting my life in your hands."

You huffed. "It's already there." Hawkins stared, and wondered if you understood, without his saying it, everything you meant to him and how lost he would be without you, that the depth of it all would embarrass both of you, and—"You can't swim."