Dark waters

6. Nara

After leaving the Dark waters, Tan started to chare his time at the wheel more with Track and Vu. It felt nice to have Tan standing there when he worked on deck and Cole couldn’t help glancing over in his direction from time to time. Quite often he met Tan’s gaze when he did so. Cole wondered if that counted as flirting, or if it just was a shy behavior before the actual flirting begun. He had no idea, and honestly he didn’t know whether he wanted it to be flirting or not. It felt kind of weird to do something he didn’t know anything about, but at the same time, he kind of liked it.

Cole hung the washed clothes on a line tied between the foremast and the shrouds. At least he thought it was called the shrouds. It was a net of rope leading up to the mast, but he remembered Track calling it a shroud when he tided the line for him to hang the laundry on.

He had just hung the last of Tan’s clothes on the line when he heard footsteps behind him.
He was met with Tan’s smile when he turned his head.
“I hope the clothes I left for you fit?”
Cole nodded.
“Yeah. Quite nicely.”
Tan nodded and let his gaze follow the mast to the sails above them.
“Would you like to know the names of the sails?”
“I don’t know if it will do me any good.”
“It’s quite easy if you know the names on the masts,” Tan pointed to the front of the ship, “All sails attached to the jib-boom are jib-sails. Flying jib, outer jib and inner jib. Above us are the foremasts sails, so it’s the fore-sail, the lower fore-top-sail, and at the top is the upper-fore-top-sail … In the main mast is the main-sail, the lower-main-top-sail and…”
“Yeah. I’m afraid you’ve already lost me.”
Tan met his gaze and tilted his head with an amused look.
“I’m fully prepared to repeat myself until you got it.”
“Sure, but there is no way I’m touching those things anyway. My feet are not leaving the deck unless it is to cross the gangway.”
Tan chuckled.
“As you wish.”
He looked out over the water.
“I think we’ll arrive in Nara soon”, he added.
Cole turned his head and spotted a beacon similar to the one that showed the beginning of Dark waters. This one was green though.
“Are there a lot of different colors on the beacons and what do they mean?”
“The white ones marks borders to Dark waters, the green ones signals that we can go close to land and red ones means we need to stay far from land.”
“So green light means it’s deep and we won’t scrape the hull if we get too close?”
“Yeah.”
Cole nodded.
“Seems simple.”
“It is. Sometimes there is a yellow light though, and that means there is a harbor that will welcome ships to stop for the night. However, this was used by less honest people, so these days the yellow lights have no meaning anymore. Sailors only go for known harbors.”
Cole nodded.

When he turned his head he noticed that Tan had stepped closer.
“If you like, I can show you how to steer the ship. It’s quite fun.”
Cole’s gaze flickered to Track at the wheel.
“I don’t know. I might give it at try. It doesn’t seem that difficult. At least if I do the steering in open water.”
Tan gave him a smile.
“Absolutely. You just need to hold on to the wheel. There’s not much else to it.”
Cole nodded and looked at Track again.
In the corner of his eye he could see Tan gazing at his face. His heart started to beat faster, but he didn’t let it show. He kind of liked that Tan showed an obvious interest, but he was unsure about how to respond. He didn’t want Tan to think that he rejected him, but at the same time he didn’t want to rush in to something unknown too fast.

“Captain!”
Track’s call ended the tense situation.
“Seems we’re about to reach Nara”, Tan said before leaving to walk over to Track.
Cole turned his head and saw the city lurking in a valley between two hills.
He had never been to Nara, but he had been told it was part of a big trading rout. He could already see the forest of ship-masts in the harbor. Some ships were coming or leaving with their full assemble of sails up.
He only hoped no one would recognize him. He had not spent much time in harbors, but he was after all a prince of Orison. You could never be too sure.