Thistle in the Sky | #NONC2022 | ✔

Chapter Five

Farah made sure she was on top of the envelope the next day as the Odonus's final coordinates approached. The mood on the ship was unbearably tense—just being down within range of the other crewmates threatened to suffocate her entirely. Up here was also a better place to watch for danger. Farah crouched near the exit hatch and rocked on the balls of her feet as she watched the sky, looking for nothing in particular, but anything out of place.

The sky remained clear. Recalling the Nectamia's warning, Farah turned a sharp eye on the fish instead. She half expected them to abandon the waterdrops and swarm past like they had in the rumors, but none did. If anything, there were fewer than usual, not more. Fewer fish could mean a ship had passed by recently. The longer Farah looked, though, the less she trusted her own assessment. The watchman had not noted anything. She was being paranoid, and paranoia meant a different kind of danger: the danger of clouding her own judgment with futile worrying, and missing a genuine threat. She returned her attention to the sky again

The Odonus's last coordinates passed around midday. Farah felt the visceral relief of the watchwoman when the news came, delivered by a shaky and exhausted Gemi. She must have been in the radio room since the crack of dawn.

The haze that had hung over the sky in the morning dissipated with the passage of the sun, leaving the Tideless bright and clean and shining. Fish flashed their sides as the Ariomma approached. An hour past the coordinates, something glistened in one of the waterdrops. Farah shielded her eyes and peered harder. She caught her breath. The entire column was filled with jellyfish, all pearly white frills, iridescent bells, and heartbeat pulsing. There were so many, they didn't all fit. Every few seconds, one would get shunted out by its mindless companions, and flail through the air before it found its way back to the same waterdrop, or over to the next one.

The watchwoman glowered. Sea-vermin and bad luck stood out amidst a swirling soup of superstition when Farah peeked into her thoughts. This woman spotted—or claimed to spot—more omens out here than the rest of the crew combined, and wasted no time in informing her crewmates about them. If she had her way, no sailor would toss their wash-water overboard while the winds blew sun-clockwise, look over their shoulder after a sea-turtle, or curse in the presence of a black tern. Some of these were heeded more closely than others, usually to the degree that they were shared.

Jellyfish, apparently, were signs of ill waters, poor fish catches, or both, depending on where they appeared. Farah watched their ghost-opal sheen fade into the distance as the Ariomma retreated. She did not share sailors' superstitions. In that moment, though, she could feel what drew people to believe them: it was reassuring to feel you could read the Tideless, which so often defied all prediction. The watchwoman turned away, appeasing her own anxieties. Ill waters and poor catches could not sink an airship. 

Three days past the coordinates, the Ariomma's navigator declared the ship to have left the zone through which the Odonus could have drifted had it lost its engines. Kaz chattered Farah's ear off about what he was learning in the engine pods as his nervous energy wore off. In another two days, he and the rest of the crew had relaxed.

Farah never did. Gemi picked up a radio broadcast from the Nectamia again that day, as it turned around somewhere within half a day's distance and headed back the way they'd just come. It had lost contact with another rescue vessel, and was trying to locate it again. The Odonus still hadn't been found.