On The Wings Of An Albatross

Of Pink Skies And Promise Knives

Four years ago

The sun was in rapture, returning to the heavens and stealing back the sky from the stars as they blinked away from the faint glow of morning. It was stunning, apricot and violet washed over the horizon in wide strokes of a brush held by a being that seemed to have woken with a lightened spirit. The morning was warm and the sky was clear and Sanem's arms felt like they were going to fall off. The good mood, inarguably, hadn't been extended to her.

Spending all day climbing the rigging playing nurse to the fabric of a sail that seemed entirely held together by sutures of cotton thread and sheer force of will had left her arms in need of a nurse themselves. But for the hours she'd spent up there with Tursuan hanging from ropes, the muscles were not objecting nearly as strongly as she'd expected. She was getting stronger - still. Not to the degree of it being unsightly, but no one would have expected the tone in her limbs or the tan on her skin to have fit the body of a baker's daughter. A mere sapling turned into... maybe not a whole tree - but a shrub, she thought. A shrub she could accept, for now.

Sanem scrunched her nose then, maybe that wasn't the most charming of metaphors. Whatever.

She'd described herself as feeling like a duckling once, hadn't she? Something about a little bird trying to paddle through a vast ocean. Turns out wings are pretty useful when you learn how to use them, and even the flyways of mallards could span continents. Sanem grinned.

The sails had been set to take them back to Touson after a return visit to L'île d'argent. Can had insisted on it - for some reason. Sanem couldn't fathom what value the repetitive detour could possibly have had, and he'd been weirdly dismissive whenever she'd asked.

But crossing an ocean still treacherous, they'd been stationed to keep a keen eye on the horizon. It was clear now. The most entertaining thing in Sanem's sight being Gypsy, napping atop an oakwood storage barrel by Sanem's side, purring, and noticeably less chubby than she had been. Remembering to feed her had become necessary now that she'd slaughtered the very last of the rodents stowing away under the decks and floorboards of the Kral. She'd done her job too well, but Gypsy seemed just as happy with fish scraps.

Are you even able to contemplate how far away from home we are? Sanem wondered as she tickled a hand under the cat's outstretched chin, the vibrations thrumming through her fingers. Not a half-bad life for an ex-farm cat, though quite the contrast to chasing mice through golden wheat fields.

Sanem heard footsteps then, looking up to find Deren approaching with mugs of promised tea in hand. Sanem thanked her as she passed the second into her hands, a rattly old thing made of tin, it's contents as unappetising as the first time she'd tasted them. Foul, was the word that had come to mind, but she wasn't going to complain, it was still markedly better than the alternative. Family seemed a very... complicated thing to have to balance while sailing over miles of hostile seas and dark open oceans. Huma was a testament to that.

Sanem wasn't sure if she should have been, but despite everything she couldn't help being impressed, and it was remarkable really, that the older women had somehow managed to coordinate one of the largest and longest-lived alliances in pirate history.

"How many of them are there?" Sanem asked.

"How many of... uh," Deren stalled. "How many of what? Did I miss the first half of this conversation?"

"Sorry, I'm thinking out loud, mostly." Sanem shook her head faintly, hoping it would pan out the background noise there. "How many ships are there," She started again. "In the Mavi Canavari?"

Deren hummed, taking a sip of her tea as she settled over one of the barrels not occupied by the cat. They made convenient chairs when furniture wasn't around. "Well. There's us, one of Can's old friends who also used to work on his mother's ship - Akif, the delightful Huma herself, and normally at least one other ship. Whichever poor soul Huma has her claws in at the time."