Disappearance of Roselei Hawthorne

Chapter Fourteen

 "Does this ship even have a rowboat?" Kallen asked as he watched the many other ships lower small boats with paddles into the water.

"It does." Lillia nodded as she showed it to Kallen and the others. "It's pretty big, so we should be able to all fit in it. But we should still be careful, so let's get in one at a time."

One by one, everyone carefully climbed into the rowboat. Once everyone was in, Gideon pulled on the ropes to hoist the boat down to the waters below. Upon being detached from the ship, Lillia reached for the oars, only to find that there were none.

"Uh... where are the paddles?" She asked, looking around.

"I don't see any. Are they perhaps still on the ship?" Gideon asked, preparing to pull them all upwards again.

"No, no... I don't know why they'd be there. And I never saw them on the ship. They're hard to miss, so I would have known if they're there." Lillia paused for a moment to think, before turning to Celty. "Were they even here when you found the ship?"

"I don't know." She shrugged in response.

"Well, no matter where the oars are, the fact of the matter is that they're not here, which means we'll need to think of an alternative way to get to shore." Kallen pointed out.

"Celty." Gideon, as well as everyone else, turned to her.

"What?" She raised an eyebrow. "Why are you all looking at me?"

"You can manipulate the water to push us to shore. Just like before, when we were stuck in the doldrum." Kallen said.

"Must I do everything?" Celty rolled her eyes.

"You actually do practically nothing. You're basically the least helpful person here." Vulcan snickered as he rolled his eyes.

"Come on, Celty." Lillia pleaded. "It's not very far."

"Fine, fine." Celty sighed, before slowly waving her arms in a rowing motion, which pulled the waves, and the rowboat, towards the shoreline. Once they had reached the docks, they were greeted by a young man wearing a very professional-looking uniform.

"Hello there, on behalf of the royal government of Pearlstone Kingdom, I am to ask the reason for your visit." The young man asked.

"Er... " Lillia began, only to let her voice trail off as she turned to Gideon for help.

"We're... tourists?" Gideon spouted the first thing that came to mind.

"Yes, tourists." Lillia nodded. "We're here for recreational purposes."

"And where are you from?" The man asked as he wrote something on a piece of parchment attached to a clipboard.

"We're from Urania." Lillia answered.

"Urania? Never seen such strange clothing on Uranians before." The main raised an eyebrow as he looked at Celty and Vulcan.

"They're priests." Lillia said, silently praying that the man would believe them.

He eyed them all suspiciously for a moment, before sighing and scribbling something else down on his piece of parchment.

"Alright. Thank you for your cooperation. You can be on your way now." The young man stepped aside, allowing everyone to climb out of their boat.

"Well that was stressful." Celty muttered as she climbed out of the boats. "So what now?"

"Should we divide and conquer?" Kallen suggested as they walked away from the docks and into town.