On The Wings Of An Albatross

Seagulls

Sanem passed through the unfamiliar, sleepy fishing village, walking along a cobblestone path bordering the dock as she continued her search.

Sunlight danced over the water's surface as it fell in soft ripples against the harbor wall below. A sweeping breakwater reached across the small bay in front of her, built out of large stones to shelter the fishermen's boats within and providing a place for the men to sit and chat as they ate lunch before the boats set out again for the afternoon.

Sanem pulled her cloak tighter around her as one of the fishermen sent her a wary look, she felt the itch to pull the hood over her head, but doing so would only have made her stand out more, she needed to appear confident. To act like she belonged here.

The cloak was simple but elegant, sweeping in dark waves to down around her ankles with a velvety, green lining on the inside. The dress she was wearing underneath was green too, with modest embroidered patterns over the chest forming the silhouette of flowers over the top half of the bodice. It was not the fanciest thing she had in her wardrobe yet it still put what most of the women in this village were wearing to shame. It fit her remarkably well, fortunately.

It should be noted, that a mere fourteen hours ago the garments had not belonged to her. She knew little about their previous occupant other than that she had been called Mary and clearly had a fondness for the colour green, but she must have had some sense as the thing actually, remarkably, had pockets sewn into the inside. Pockets. A perfect mix of fashion and practicality - allowing Sanem a hidden place to discreetly stash her belongings. She felt a small surge of respect for the person she had taken them from, she almost felt guilty. Almost.

Sanem continued along the path, searching for the trader's shop as seagulls flew from rooftop to rooftop above her head, diligently eyeing the fisherman with beady eyes as the men unloaded their morning hauls from their boats. She listened and drank in the sounds, as the birds called and cried to one another; in warning as squabbles broke out, and in enthusiasm as a stray fish fell out of the crates and onto the path. It was a song that sounded like home.

The birds were nothing special, a few common gulls and one or two rambunctious herring's. It was only when something darker and leaner flew overhead that she paused.

Was that...? Her eyes followed it's movements like an astronomer catching sight of a shooting star flashing across the sky. Or perhaps, like an ornithologist catching sight of a rare bird landing right in front of her - at least, she liked to think of herself as an ornithologist. Others might disagree.

The black tern swooped down, flaunting stunning, dark feathers, a long, elegant tail, and a slender body. It bravely sized up against one of the larger gulls in an attempt to commandeer the discarded scraps.

Sanem hadn't seen one of those in a while, especially not in its summer plumage. She pulled out a sketchbook from her bag and sat down on a wooden bench nearby. She had a bit of time. The other's wouldn't be going anywhere without her; she could indulge in this for a few minutes.

The tern joined a collection of other seabirds she had drawn over the last few years, annotations made in delicate, graphite lines, accompanied by the species name for those she knew and family names for those she was less sure of, some of which were still followed by a series of question marks, the paper crisp and dry from extended exposure to salty sea air. She was beginning to run out of pages.

A few minutes turned into twenty, by the time she felt content with her sketch and finally looked back up at her surroundings she found the fisherman had been joined by a friend and both were eyeing her with suspicion.

This was why she didn't make a habit of visiting little villages like this one, they were too nosy, everyone knew everyone and strangers would be picked out in an instant, just as quickly as the gulls had noticed and descended on the discarded fish. But she hadn't had much of a choice. The supplies had been running alarmingly low because of the bloody rats, they hadn't even given her the chance to reach Touson - their usual port of choice. She really needed to do something about those damn things.