Islands in the Sky

3.3

Sema sat on her boat for a while, watching the business of the docks.

The dock manager seemed to be at least marginally honest. He was sitting down the end of the dock, beside a small building which must be his home, where he would easily be able to prevent anyone walking down the dock unnoticed. He was at least pretending to be a guard, Sema thought. At least for now.

She decided that was a good sign.

There were other boats tied up here too, Sema noticed. Real boats, which probably had real valuables on board them. Some of those seemed unattended, so their owners, at least, must trust the dock manager.

That was reassuring as well.

Sema didn’t want to be taken advantage of, but she did need to leave the dock sometime. She needed to look around the city, and decide what to do next.

She wondered how naive it was to just leave. She wondered how naive she wanted to seem.

She looked around. The people around the harbour were mostly ignoring her. Most seemed to be busy unloading boats, or doing business with each other. They didn’t seem to be paying much attention to her, which made her think a lot of strangers came and went from here. That would probably help her pass without notice, she thought, which was good. They might also think she was an experienced traveller, and sailed a lot, and could take care of herself. That would be good, too.

She decided she had to risk leaving. She needed food, and she needed to find out more about the city. As well, for the longer term, she also needed to find something useful to do with herself. She needed a new life for herself, now that her old one was gone.

She thought about that. She thought about her family.

She felt mostly safe, here, on the dock. Safer than she had sailing, and much safer than she had at home after the pirate attack. She felt safer, and suddenly that made her feel miserable. It made her remember her family, and friends, remember everyone who had died. It was as if for a week her grief had been waiting for a quiet moment when it would be safe to cry, and now that moment had arrived.

She couldn’t stop herself. She cried.

She sat on the far edge of her boat, with her feet dangling into the sky. She sat, facing outwards from the dock, as if looking at the view, so no-one could see her tears. She didn’t want to seem weak, or afraid, or whatever crying might make her seem.

She sat there, and wept, and felt awful for everyone she had lost.

She felt awful for a little while, for as long as she thought she could allow herself, and then she made herself stop.

She had things to do. She needed food to eat now, and also a way to get more food later, a way to trade or to earn goods to trade. She needed a new life for herself. She needed to start working out this new place in which she arrived.

She thought about the dock manager. She could ask him about work or trading, she supposed, but that might make her look easy to deceive, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to encourage friendliness yet either, for the same reason.

She thought about just slipping away. Two things would happen, she thought, if she just left. The worst was that she’d return and find her boat gone, and him gone, and everything she owned missing. Which would mean she’d paid him ten plastic containers which he would have stolen anyway, and she’d lost a boat which cost her nothing, and which had served its purpose by carrying her here. On the other hand, she might return and find the boat still there, and nothing missing, and then she would have found out she could trust the dock manager a little, and that would be a useful thing to know. Neither circumstance would be an utterly wretched outcome, she thought, so in an odd way she had little to lose.

She decided just to walk off and explore. That seemed safest for now. To just slip away, when she had the chance, hopefully without the dock manager noticing.

She looked down the dock. An hour had passed, and the dock manager seemed to have lost interest in her. He was inside his building, and she couldn’t see him from where she was on her boat.

She decided it was as good a time as any.

She took a knife, and tucked it into her sleeve. She climbed over onto the dock, and began walking down it. She walked quickly, trying to slip past while the dock manager was indoors.

She walked down the dock, and past him, and he seemed not to notice her.

She walked out onto a broader concourse, where all the docks met one another, and then she kept walking. She kept walking towards the city, to see what she found.

Despite herself, despite her grief, she was excited to see this city.