The darkness from that night covered the city. Ivy watched the city from underneath her bridge. Off in the distance, the torchlight glinted off the water. Ivy pulled her knees to her chest, enjoying as the light spread across the water like an old painting. A soft, cold wind whipped through the misty atmosphere.

Somehow, this set of weather had become home to her. Even though she wanted to leave, and even though she was awaiting Queen Lavender’s arrival, there was something which had become comforting about the cold.

As  the next morning arrived, Ivy decided that the one hour of sleep would have to do. She groaned, trying to figure out what to say next to the pirate queen. Lavender’s ship pulled into the harbor.

Ivy took the makeshift cane and she worked her way through the streets. Somewhere, halfway through, the cane snapped. Ivy continued to hobble through the streets, although she was much, much slower.

Where it had only taken twenty minutes to make it to the harbor the day before, it now took Ivy now found a deep pain within her ankle that made it last an hour. By that time, Queen Lavender’s shipmates had all dispersed across the city.

Ivy sat on a nearby ship, the pain swelling in her foot. She wanted to go search some more, but she couldn’t. She watched as another crewmate left the ship, and then she waved to him, a deep sadness within herself.

“Hey,” she said. “I sent Queen Lavender a message the other day. And I don’t quite have the health to meet her elsewhere, but you can tell her I’m here.”

The man had a few strands of grey in his hair. He looked at Ivy with a skeptical gaze which colored his face. “And you are?”

“Ivy,” Ivy said. “I know we are on a truce, but I would like to update those terms.”

The man narrowed his eyes further. “She’ll be at port all day. But she should be within the city for several hours, and she won’t return back here. It’s probably best you find her before it’s time. She’s not going to be too happy at the last minute meeting.”

“My foot is hurt,” Ivy said. “It took an hour to make it over here from underneath the bridge. You can tell her that if she asks. And if she gets mad at anyone, let it be me.”

The man grunted. “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Ivy waited by the portside, her stomach rumbling. She ignored the hunger as best she could, as was a common practice for her. She let the waves pass, not even feeling like she wanted to do something about it. As she placed her elbow on her knee to prop her head up, she found her energy stores depleted.

When Lavender returned, evening had arrived, setting its soft glow on the city. The sun poked through the clouds, just to where the light highlighted the edges of the buildings and the trees. At this point, she carried many items with her to port.

“There you are,” Lavender said. “You had a stool for us?”

“I’m sorry,” Ivy said. “I lost that stool.”

Queen Lavender narrowed her eyes. “And so why are we meeting?”

“I don’t have anything to offer you at this time,” Ivy said. “But I’m hungry, cold, tired, and now? I have a wounded ankle. So if there’s nothing else to offer in terms of a new truce, let it be myself, for whatever that means to you.”

“You spend weeks hunting me down, and there are rumors that you wanted to kill me,” Queen Lavender said, a smirk on her face. “All for the scepter. What happened?”

“I don’t have anything,” Ivy said. “And listen. When winter comes, it’s only going to be harder to survive out here. I don’t have anywhere else to go, and so for any feud we might have, regardless of who started it, I think I am going to let you have it.”

“In other words,” Queen Lavender said, arching an eyebrow. “Please. Do go on. Say what you want to say to me.”

“I am offering my unconditional surrender to you here,” Ivy said. She fought back the tears. Not because she was mad at Queen Lavender; at this point, there were plenty of other things to be frustrated over. But because of her own state.

Queen Lavender turned to one of her other crew members, offering them the items she had been carrying. She then turned back to Ivy, stood for a long moment, crossing her arms. In those moments, the smallest stone could have dropped, and Ivy was certain it would have disturbed the stillness. Queen Lavender stepped closer to her, a shrewd eye on Ivy’s face.

“If you join my crew, there will be a long list of conditions for you to live by,” Queen Lavender said. “You technically made my life easier by killing at least two pirate captains. Let’s be real. But let me get one thing straight right now. If you so much as threaten my crewmates, or myself, then that will be it for you. I don’t care about the details, or about who did what. If you join me, you will have to learn to work with those who disagree with you without killing them. Can we agree to that?”

“Yes,” Ivy said. “Listen. I know your crewmate said that you get pissed when people try to meet you here at the end of the day. But after getting here was a struggle, I didn’t feel like I had anything else in me.”

“It’s that bad, huh,” Queen Lavender said. “Do you think it’s a break or a sprain?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Ivy said.

“Let’s get you to the med bay, then,” Queen Lavender said. “Since you have surrendered to me unconditionally, if you can prove yourself to be worthy, I will take care of you. And from this point onward, our past can be our past. You already paid your dues before. I can show you mercy, since from the looks of it, it seems as though the streets haven’t been kind to you in the slightest.”

“Thank you,” Ivy said.

“Hey,” Queen Lavender said, gesturing at the crewmate Ivy first passed. “Please. Grab her a cane from the med bay.”

“Yes,” he said. He took off on the ship.

Once the man returned, Ivy took the cane and she followed Lavender onto the ship. Ivy glanced at the woman once more, wanting to give her thank you. But as Queen Lavender studied her, she fell silent. This was the woman she had sworn to be her enemy.

But once she had surrendered to Queen Lavender, Ivy saw a different side of her.

It’s like she has forgiven me already, when I have held a grudge against her for weeks. Now I feel guilty in ways which I don’t quite understand.