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From her earliest days, Robin had heard the call of the tidemother. She knew all life came from the sea - the ocean itself had told her so. The rains and the winds and the oceans surrounded and protected and provided for the people of Kul Tiras. Robin knew the water was the lifeblood of her people and she saw that, for the most part, it was good.
Fitzrobin Fitzwilliams was twelve when she learned about bullies.
She had always been a strange girl, though she didn’t conceive of herself as strange. But other people had told her so, and she had worn the label for so many years she no longer bothered to dispute it. Her family was filled with people who didn’t understand her but they loved her regardless and she was grateful for them. One by one, her siblings were fed to the seas, as all loyal children of Kul Tiras were. Robin visited the docks every day for news; the waves carried stories of danger and boredom. Sometimes they ignored her. Twice they told her of death.
She listened as the tides grew fond of her sister Willa, though she wished they would speak to her of Lawrence as well. Neither knew quite how bright they shined and quite how much they were missed, but Robin did her best to remember them to the tides, that her family might receive them home one day. Family was important to her, as it was to any Fitzwilliams, and though she might well be a strange Fitzwilliams, a Fitzwilliams she remained.
Friends, she found more difficult. Her mother insisted on dressing her up and sending her out to meet the children of noble families - outside of that, she was left to play at her own devices. It was her mother’s dearest wish, or perhaps desperate hope, that Robin would grow out of her quiet, thoughtful temperament and become the social butterfly Mrs. Fitzwilliams had always hoped for. Robin humoured her mother, where she could, but still struggled to make friends with those who couldn’t hear the ocean. What use a friend who hated the cold spray of seawater and rain, who touched too much and too frequently, who expected her to speak like them rather than like the tides she spent most of her days listening to?
Robin suffered other children for a long time. But she hadn’t had to suffer any specific child for an extended period - children still kept their animal sense of danger about themselves, and understood not to bother a girl who always seemed to be listening to something. She also seemed capable of pushing them over without ever laying a finger on them, as long as there had been recent rainfall. Slipped, the tides would whisper in her ear. Accident.
There had usually been recent rainfall in Boralus.
Her first bully was a boy who had moved to the town with his fishmonger father. He had a nasty habit of chasing girls his age around the docks with severed fish heads, presumably to make them squeal. Robin had seen him days before he ever bothered her, and had noted with some disdain that he had no appreciation for where the fish heads came from. He only seemed to care that they were in his possession now. The tides offered to intervene, but Robin didn’t think this was proportionate. For once, she agreed with her mother. Some people had no sense of propriety.
The fishmonger’s boy was uncreative when he bothered her for the first time, waving the severed head like a talisman in front of him, trying to get her to flinch. She was bigger than him and stronger too, but didn’t move to stop him as he pressed the fish head straight into her cheek. He ignored the cold fury in her eyes. He ignored the waves surging at the bottom of the docks. When she told him to stop he didn’t listen.
“He slipped,” she told herself afterwards. “It was an accident.”
Some passing stevedores laughed at the childish antics - they helped him back up and he ran straight back to his father’s shop with an arm hiding his face. The satisfaction was cold and sticky, like a river of fishblood running down the streets and back to the ocean. Robin felt just a little sick for enjoying it.
The next time she saw him, the fishmonger’s boy had a fading bruise on his cheek and an expression of white hot anger on his face. He’d caught her between the docks and her home, definitely not by chance, and he shoved her against a wall hard enough to make her hit her head. She was stunned; she reached out to the tides for help, but the ocean doesn’t always come when called. It lapped in the harbour calmly, or perhaps in unseen anticipation. Robin’s ears rang enough by the blow that she only half-heard the things he was calling her, but the venom with which he said them was enough to carry his message. When she didn’t respond he called her stupid and when she turned to leave he grabbed her wrist.
She wasn’t anywhere near the docks but Boralus belonged to the tides and they came to life; they roared, indignant at his mistreatment of their property. She choked down on the bile in her throat and seawater in her veins; an alien presence bearing down upon her, telling her that his life was hers to end. He was just a child, she reasoned. She was a child too.
This time when he slipped there was no water beneath to catch his fall. His hand still clutched her sleeve and he fell to the muddy cobblestones dragging her down as well. By the time she got back to her feet he was already running away - she didn’t feel anything like the satisfaction she had felt before. Her mother would be furious that she’d dirtied her clothes, let alone that she’d been brawling. The tides settled, but the sky did not clear.
From then on the pattern was set. No matter how much she ignored him, the fishmonger’s son would show up to bother her; no matter how the resulting scuffle went he would be back in a few days looking to start trouble all over again. It took some effort to disguise the results from her mother. Her sisters helped, on the condition she let Jane show her a few tricks for making a boy regret bothering anyone. Robin thanked her for the instruction but secretly resolved not to apply her newly acquired skills. If this was a problem she could solve with a well-placed knee then she would have asked Jane for help from the start.
The tides alternated between eagerly offering to intervene on her behalf and total indifference. She graciously declined the excess as best she was able - but begged and pleaded for aid when it was denied. She had sat on the docks for many years and learned how the tides treated those they favoured and those that upset them. At a certain point, asking politely would never be enough, one way or the other. Kul Tiras lived and died by the grace of the Tidemother, and so too did Kul Tirans, no matter how young. This too was an education.
On the night of a new moon, Robin finally decided she had no choice but to act. The boy was clearly not getting tired of harassing her and defending him from the tides and her family and herself was becoming too exhausting to bear. The fishmonger lived in a flat above his shop, with a view out over the docks for which Robin couldn’t help but feel jealous. She waited, nearby and hidden. The boy skulked home, his face still smudged with dirt from brawling with her earlier. She waited for him to climb the stairs and knock, waited for his father to open the door and drag the boy in by his shoulder before she made her way across the street and up to his door.
Inside she heard the sounds of violence. There was a slap as a hand connected with a cheek and a thud as a body hit the ground. There was whimpering and there were harsh words. Words Robin had heard before from the boy’s mouth. She didn’t forgive, because it wasn’t for her to forgive, but she understood. When the tides roared at the docks behind her, she didn’t even try to soothe them.
A month later, she overheard the stevedores talking about what had happened to the old fishmonger.
“Must’ve been coming home drunk,” they said.
“He slipped,” they said.
“It was an accident.”
Fitzrobin turned, and walked away. The murmurs of the ocean followed her.