Across the Midnight Sea

Chapter 16: The First Night

Hello lovely readers, thank you for being here. Sorry it has been a little while since I updated. I really struggled with how I was going to write some of the next few scenes so if you are enjoying any of this story please let me know. 

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Adira eased herself gingerly onto the bed in her room. The world seemed to sway, and it had nothing to do with the waves and everything to do with the wine.

Outside her door the crew were playing music, celebrating another voyage and praying to the god of the sea for safe passage.

The music brought an old face back to Adira's mind. Warm kind eyes. Dark beard, deep laugh...gentle voice.

Would he still want her?

Would he still love her?

She was sure he had loved her when she was a child. She remembered how gentle he had always been with her. How he had sung her to sleep every night. The burst of happiness that had rolled out of him the first time she sang with him showing that she too had the gift of song.

She had inherited her voice from her father, that much was certain, and her father had inherited his voice from his mother before him.

Adira looked down at the ring she wore on the middle finger of her right hand. It was a simple ring, a gold band with two entwined leaf's, each with a single tiny sapphire at their center representing the smallest of Kirrini flowers, a tiny little plant which most people overlooked despite its extraordinary ability to bloom even in the harshest conditions.

There was no corner of the known world where Kirrini flowers did not bloom and thrive, from the icy rocked mountains, down to the salty coast and even in the great dessert.

The ring seemed excruciatingly appropriate now and Adira squeezed her hand closed tightly feeling the metal indent in her skin. 

She would find a way to survive. She would find a way to thrive. Somehow.

Her mother had tried to convince her to give it up in exchange for rings that were more 'Appropriate' to her station. Adira looked down at the other rings on her fingers. Each one was more gaudy than the next. Jewel encrusted and heavy.

She hated them.

She was tipsy enough that the desire to rip them off her fingers right then and there and toss them into the sea felt like a very good idea.

No, she forced her and away from the lion's head ring on her finger and rubbed her face.

If her father did not still want her she would sell them all one by one to make a new life for herself. All except the one that had been her grandmothers.

That one she would wear into the afterlife along with her wedding ring.

Wedding ring.

Adira's heart squeezed.

Xavier.

What would he think of her now? After all his compassion, after his wonderful offer...

She had left with no warning and no note.

He had been so understanding...but would he understand this?

You must write to him, she told herself and then yawned. She would tell him everything, explain it all. 

Tomorrow.

The rocking of the boat became a lullaby and she lay her body down on the worn mattress nestling into the feathered pillow.

Tomorrow she would ask for paper and quill.