On The Wings Of An Albatross

Sailor's Take Warning

Four years and eight months ago.

The morning was pink. A timid blue sky blushing with the rosy glow of sunrise as cold light fell on cold water, the colour catching on the waves.

It was a tragedy, really, that Sanem was paying it no attention, as she sat with her hand rushing black lines over white paper, her nose buried reverently in the sketchbook pressed against her lap. Wings unfurling and tilting as they caught on the breeze, dark eyes in elegant, beaked faces, plumage a rainbow of colour, as she tried to capture each and every delicate feather.

She'd been doing little else for the last five weeks.

Her arm protested the movement, as gentle as it was; stretching in an attempt to work out the knots that had formed in her limbs. The anticipated consequence of Deren so kindly throwing away all trace of kindness in sparring practise the previous afternoon. Sanem had, at the time, agreed that four months was probably long enough to be babied while holding a sword, still, the speed that Deren's blade had rushed at her had been enough to make her squeak. But she had lost no limbs, as much as it might feel like it, and had managed to do more than just stand her ground. Out of breath and red-faced as they both witnessed Deren's sword clamouring onto the wooden floor beneath their feet - a trick Sanem's eyes had stolen through watching the others, a trick her limbs seemed to reenact entirely of their own accord. Deren had nodded in approval, her eyebrows raised.

Their little lamb was growing horns.

And every single muscle in her body ached from the effort of it, the pencil held sturdily in her hand despite how easy it would have been for the little stick of wood to slip from between her fingers.

Cold wind shuffled through her hair in concern over the precarious choice of location for her sketching. It was a cold that reminded her of winters back home, days before the snow would fall when she and her sister would sit around the warmth of the ovens, eyes peering out through frost tinted windows for the first fragile signs of snowflakes.

It was a thought that made her smile. Until the memory turned hollow in her heart a moment later, aware that Leyla probably thought her dead, that her whole family probably thought her dead. She blinked the image away, shaking her head.

The sudden wobbling of the platform underneath her caused her hand to brace against the balustrade, watching as Guliz's face appeared from below, arms pulling her up and through the open section in the railing of the crow's nest. Her smile of greeting unsurprised to find Sanem there.

"Morning," Guliz tried to stifle a yawn through the words, her eyes quickly scanning the horizon though the vantage point revealing nothing of concern. Nothing at all. Save for miles and miles of gentle waves and brisk water.

"Morning," Sanem replied, tapping her pencil against the pages absentmindedly, before she felt Guliz settle down opposite her, fully aware that this space was not designed to house two people at once. But Sanem had learned that boundaries of personal space seemed little more than guidelines to most of the people living on this ship. She had adapted to recognising the coziness of it rather than the infringing of etiquette she had been raised with.

She watched as Guliz fumbled through her pockets, pulling out two apples before throwing one towards Sanem, who had been so taken aback by the sudden appearance of fruit that she narrowly avoided letting it tumble down onto the deck a distance below.

Sanem stared at it for a moment in her hands. "Where did you find these?"

"There was a tree in someone's garden on that last place we stopped at."

"You pirated apples?" Sanem asked, trying not to smile.

"They would only have gone to waste otherwise, no one can eat a whole tree of apples on their own." Guliz reasoned, biting into her own with a crunch.