Deepwater's Daughter

Chapter 19

Geffen sprang the buckle that held Ysara strapped against Kasey's chest, and she fell into the young satyr's arms. The sailors that surrounded them on the fire-blackened deck gave a hearty cheer as Ysara clasped Geffen by the ears and planted a lingering kiss on his bemused lips.

"Oof!" Ysara gasped as a soot-stained blur tackled her from the side, and she looked down to find a sobbing mouse girl clamped around her waist.

"Oh, Plec!" Ysara cried, returning the girl's hug with one arm while she kept the other wrapped around Geffen's neck, "I'm so happy to see you... all of you!"

The mouse girl looked up at her through watery eyes, the fur of her cheeks streaked with ashy tears. "I thought you were de-ead!" she wept.

"No, you didn't!" Geffen scoffed, "You were the one who told us all to keep hope alive that she wasn't!"

"I just said th-that, so I w-wouldn't think the other th-thing!" Plec sobbed.

"Well, I'm not dead," Ysara assured her, "and neither is Rasha."

"She's alive too?" Plec gasped, pulling back far enough to reveal the red on her chin where she had pressed against Ysara's blood-stained jacket.

"You're hurt!" Geffen cried.

"No!" Ysara said, "It's not my blood..."

She looked back at Kasey who was unharnessing himself from the glider with the help of two of his fellow marines.

"We have to go down and look for Casca!" she said, "He's badly hurt... I think you shot him."

"If you mean that raptor we fired at, then, yes," Kasey answered, "and I was going down to finish him off when I saw that you were with him."

"You could have killed her!" Geffen growled.

"Maybe," the grenadier admitted, "but the fall certainly would have, if I hadn't abandoned my pursuit of the wounded raptor to go after her instead."

Geffen considered his words for a moment and then gave a grudging, "Thank you."

"They aren't called raptors," Ysara explained, releasing her hold on Geffen at last as she turned to face Kasey again. Plec on the other hand, simply shifted her embrace to avoid the bloody patch and rode Ysara's tail around as she pivoted. "They are naga, like me, except... well, they have wings."

"Do they now?" Kasey smirked as he helped his companions fold the rapidly deflating balloon on the back of the canvas glider.

"That one you shot is my friend!" Ysara hissed, "He helped save me from the other naga that wanted to kill me and Rasha."

"These friends of yours tried to burn my ship!" Captain Okasie said as she clopped down the steps from the fo'c'sle.

Ysara twisted to face the hard-eyed captain, dragging Plec with her. "Because they were attacked before by satyrs in another air ship," she said, "satyrs that killed their people!"

"Where is the fox-kin now?" Okasie asked, ignoring Ysara's accusation.

"She is safe with one of the naga who rescued me," Ysara said, "a lady named Xsatca whose daughter your people killed!"

Okasie's eyes fell to the stain on Ysara's jacket. "Go below and get cleaned up, doctor," she ordered, "Remain below until I call for you. It isn't safe topside now that our presence is known here."

"I doubt it could survive long enough to return to its nest, Captain," Kasey spoke up.

"Do you have its body as proof, sergeant?" Okasie demanded.