"It was pure luck, really, that this hadn't happened sooner. Two years of keeping out of his reach had really been testing the limits of fate, and the sane voice inside her head kept telling her she would have to face him eventually. The world was b...
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Five Years Ago
Sanem had learned that there was nothing comparable in the whole world to watching the sunset out on the ocean, how the orange glow would sit warm and candescent over the water before it would depart in a blink of colour over the edge of the distant horizon. It was something she was going to miss when she left, and something she'd been trying for the last few evenings to capture in her sketchbooks, but the stubborn grey of her pencils had failed to do it justice and the spectacle refused to allow itself to be captured through mortal hands.
If she'd been counting correctly, then she only had a few days left on the ship. With the freedom of the book in her lap and the pencils in her hand, time had been slipping through her fingers.
Her birds were back, at least, most of them. Pages in her memory had sadly been lost but most of her favourites had been the rarer species anyway, so she was certain those she'd forgotten she could easily find again.
Somehow, through exposing this side of herself to Can's sailors, they had gradually become something more than just accustomed to her presence on the ship. Deren remained, well - Deren. But Sanem found, so gradually that she almost didn't even notice, that Can and the redhead were no longer the only two people willing to strike up conversation.
Having not spent much time around inlanders, many of them were curious about her life, asking more questions than would be considered polite, but in a way that was endearing rather than being overbearing. About home, her childhood, working in the bakery, her family and the village. She didn't mind sharing, and she found it helped them to unravel their own histories for her to hear.
One by one, she learnt everyone's names (or whatever nickname they had chosen to go by) and soon found they'd adopted to calling her 'lamb'. She wasn't sure if that was supposed to be abasement or just fond teasing but it wasn't nearly as bad as the names that had been gifted to a few of the others, so she didn't complain.
For all the worry she'd gone through over letting Gypsy loose amongst those she had seen as barbarians, they'd all taken to the cat far faster than they had taken to Sanem herself. And, consequently, the little tortoiseshell had gotten fat from whatever it was she was chasing down in the cargo hold, added onto whatever scraps everyone (especially Can) kept feeding her at mealtimes. Which was a feat to have achieved in only thirteen days.
Sanem sat with her back against the wood-panelled wall that surrounded the cabins, having given up on the sunset and starting instead to draw the scruffy cat as she dozed on top of a wooden barrel beside where Sanem was sitting, her stomach looking significantly more podgy than it had two weeks prior.
The sudden clearing of someone's throat beside her made Sanem jump, having been too captivated in what she was doing to pay attention to her surroundings, glancing up to see Metin looking slightly sheepish for having startled her, and then looking back down to notice her pencil had taken an unfortunate and unintentional arch straight through her sketch.
