12. The Mist Thickens, Part 1

Mystery solved.

Rosalyn had gotten a look at the ring the search party had found - it was Elliott’s alright. It matched the one she had found in the buried box on Communion Beach, aside from some char on the metal. It had been a few days since then. After the initial shock of it, Catherine had tried to convince herself that Elliott was still out there, but in the days since… it was clear to Rosalyn that she knew it to be true.

The Detective didn’t know how to tell Catherine about what she had found on Communion Beach days earlier, but that now that Elliott was dead, she didn’t see much use. Especially because knowing Elliott had this other side to him would probably only hurt Catherine even more.

My best guess is that Elliott had fallen in love with someone in the Church of the Mysticet. With Fogport’s political tensions, the two likely planned to leave the city, so they could be together somewhere they wouldn’t be judged. Deerin knew about the whole thing, being Elliott’s best friend and a member of the Church, which explains why he had so much disdain for Catherine, since she was probably a big reason why he wanted to leave.

Elliott hatched a plan to stow away on a shipping vessel. Maybe they were both on the ship? But he used his knowledge of the ships to stow away, and then, unluckily, the ship was attacked by a Ghost Whale. One of his rings was the only thing found of his body.

It works. It’s pretty clean. Rosalyn said as she tapped her foot, staring down into her Inkchanted Journal as she sat at the kitchen table. That’s what everybody thinks. That seems to be what Catherine is going with, minus the bit about his secret partner.

Then, she tapped her finger to the page, and the ink all vanished. No. Not good enough. Rosalyn sighed. I still have questions… who was his partner? Where is she now? She deserves to know the truth about Elliott too. And if she died on that ship… well then her family deserves to know. she thought. And how did he get on the ship in the first place? Why didn’t he tell Catherine?

Then, Rosalyn flipped through to an earlier page in the journal. A detailed, ink sketch of Rosalyn’s dream. Her, floating above the Astral Ocean, with the Ghost Whale staring down at her, and showing her the box with Elliott’s ring. There’s no way that was just a dream. I know they can speak to people’s souls, show them things… they wanted to show me that ring. They wanted me to find it. Rosalyn thought. People say you just attacked that ship… but I don’t know.

Rosalyn looked over at the couch in the opposite corner of the stone apartment. Catherine was sitting there, in the same spot she’d been in for most of the past two days, staring intently at the same spot on the wall. She looked ghostly - her face and hair had already lost so much colour, and she could see Catherine’s face beginning to sink into her skull. While her skin was turning deathly gray, her eyes had turned crimson, warped by alternating bouts of violent sobbing and unblinking staring.

The Catherine Rosalyn had known, the one she saw again on her first day here, died with Elliott. Now, a new, unrecognizable creature had taken her place. One that radiated a crushing, depressive sadness… but in their most quiet moments together, there was also the unmistakable aroma of hate.

“Hey…” Rosalyn started to say. Catherine slowly turned her head towards her, but didn’t look her in the eye.

“Y-Yeah?” Catherine sniffed.

“I’m thinking of going to grab something to eat. Do you want anything?”

“I’m not really hungry, Roz. Thanks though.” Catherine said, before nestling back into the same spot she had been sitting in for the past 7 hours, like a statue who had come to life now returning to its stone plinth. But then, after a few minutes of silence, she spoke again. “I just don’t understand why he’d leave.”

Rosalyn didn’t know what to say. “I’m not sure myself, Cat.”

“Do you think it’s suspicious? Do you think maybe he wasn’t on that ship? I mean, he loves me. He loves being here. There’s no way he’d leave me, right?” Catherine asked, her voice trembling more and more as her sentence continued. “And I’m just so… so ANGRY.” Catherine hissed. “I want to hop on a ship and kill every single fucking fish I see.”

Then she stood up, her feet almost cracking the floor. “And those fucking MYSTICET! All of them… them, the Whales, all of them! THEY TOOK HIM AWAY ROSALYN! He’s GONE!” Catherine screamed. A part of her wanted to believe that it was all a conspiracy, that Elliott was still alive… but in the deep recesses of her soul, she could feel like a phantom limb, that Elliott was gone. “They’re all… they should pay for this… right, Roz?”

Rosalyn gulped. “I mean… well… just take your time to recover Catherine. And then we can start to think about what to do next.”

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* * *

I don’t think I can tell her about Elliott and the Mysticet… Rosalyn gulped as she paced down Fogport’s Northbound Main Street. I mean, Elliott’s ring? Buried in the sand? She’ll think they killed him. And if that anger that I saw in the apartment gets any stronger, I mean… I don’t know if this Island will survive.

She couldn’t blame Catherine for her anger. She had lost her parents in the same way, and now, 20 years later, her brother too. Sea monsters… maybe Catherine was right. Maybe it really is us versus them. But she can’t be thinking that right now… she needs to focus on healing.

As Rosalyn walked, she eventually felt eyes on her. Spinning around, she caught a glimpse of a hooded figure standing in a nearby alleyway, but when she went to go say ‘Hello’, it vanished. Rubbing her eyes, she felt like she might have just been imagining it.

Rosalyn, desperate to keep out of that apartment, walked so far North that she passed by the Mysticet Chapel. Outside of the ransacked Church, doors still splintered on the floor, a congregation of a few dozen robed men and women had formed, shouting angrily at a small group of Fogport Police Officers standing guard. “MA’AM! Ma’am, this is a crime scene. I legally cannot let you enter this building.”

“You’re kidding! What kind of crime? Because the only crime I see…” an older man shouted, waving his bony cane angrily at the officers, before gesturing with it to the cannonball on the floor. “Is YOU breaking and entering!”

“YEAH!” members of the Mysticet Church erupted, as they chanted to be let inside.

“Please, officers…” a young woman, holding a baby in her arms and with another child at her side started to say. All of them with pale hair and ghostly complexions. “We have supplies in there. We keep baby food, clothes for our children, our money, all in this Church! Can you at least retrieve some of it for us, we have mouths to feed, please… my baby just needs his whale.”

“I don’t give a fuck about your kid’s toy.” one of the Officers hissed. “And if you all don’t disperse, I’ll get an injunction to sanction this place!” the Knight shouted as he summoned a large Cannonsword, causing the crowd to erupt in fear.

“We heard what your precious monsters did to that ship. You got the Chief of Police’s brother killed.” another Officer jeered. “You’re all lucky she doesn’t turn you into cannon fodder.”

Rosalyn couldn’t help but feel white-hot shame as she came up behind the mob. She had only seen one Mysticet, until now, and he wasn’t much of a looker - especially when he was skulking around the dark Church cellar. But these people here, it struck Rosalyn how much they just looked like normal people. Men, women, children… families young and old congregating at a place of worship. Normal people. Elliott had thought the same thing too, once… at least, that was what Rosalyn suspected. And even if these people were sinister cultists, she felt like she owed it to Elliott to at least keep the peace.

“Excuse me…” Rosalyn asked, tapping the shoulder of a short, elderly woman standing in front of her. “What’s going on here?”

The old woman turned around, and her wrinkled face turned to a scowl. “These damn PIGS won’t let us inside our own Church!” she hissed.

“Mom!” another woman scolded as she turned around. “Don’t call them ‘pigs’, that’s going to make them like us any more.”

“Well they are!” the grandma spat. “They arrested Deerin two nights ago, and they haven’t even charged him with anything yet! He was just defending our Church after THEY broke in!”

The old woman’s daughter turned towards Rosalyn, with a sympathetic smile on her face. “Sorry about her, she’s a bit feisty in her old age. Mom, they’re probably here because of the attack on that ship.”

“A Mysticet would never attack a ship.” the old woman spat. “That’s a crock of horseshit I say.”

“Not even if it were attacked first?” Rosalyn interjected.

“Not as long as we’re around to keep the peace. But these damn PIGS are making me reconsider!”

Rosalyn spoke with a few more Mysticet, hearing them out on their perspectives of Fogport and the Ghost Whales. The picture they painted was different to the one the Fogport Police and Goldpearl had in mind. They were all convinced that a Ghost Whale would never attack humans, and that the crimes committed by the Church’s members was to protect the Ghost Whales… and themselves.

Crossing around the side of the Church, Rosalyn came up beside one of the windows. I feel like I gotta get back into the Church, somehow. she thought as she climbed up to the windowsill and peered in through the glass. The interior looked different in the daylight - much less sinister, and with a strange holy glow as the light refracted through the stained glass. She could see a painting on the far wall of the entrance hallway - the picture of the congregation that she had passed a few nights ago.

Waiting until the crowd outside entered another rancorous uproar, Rosalyn quietly pried open the window and hoisted herself inside. She hid in the shadows, staring at the backs of the Officers while they tried to quell the uprising - only sometimes, it seemed they were preferring to stoke it instead. Antagonizing them with crude remarks, while Rosalyn crawled up to beneath a wall of paintings. One of these people… she has to know Elliott, right?

But none caught her attention. What? No, she has to be here! It was a Mysticet necklace in that box, it had the bones and pearls! she grimaced as her eyes shifted to another painting. Beside the group portrait. Then, she almost gasped.

Bingo.

Outside, the Mysticet mother had peeled off from the congregation as she tried to rock the baby in her arms to sleep, shushing endlessly while the kid cried. But then, she heard something land by her feet. Picking it up, to see her kid’s stuffed whale, along with a pouch of coins. And then, looking back up, she saw Rosalyn walking back into town.