Skyrun

Chapter 22; Empty skies.

By morning, Thorn was gone.

Somehow he and his entire motley crew had vanished into the morning mist without a sound-- a feat that Liam never would have expected from someone who snored loud enough to shake the boards of the deck.

He only knew that from experience.

Thus, that morning he had awoken with a head blurry from ale and the previous night's revelations only to find himself wrapped up in a cloak of Sinclair's with both the quarter master and Thorn's entire bloody ship gone.

Springing to his feet, Liam had passed several of his own crew members on the way to Valentine's cabin-- namely Coin and Raven, asleep in one another's arms, and Tophsy and Ezra, only just starting to stir.

Nodding a good morning to Tophsy, Liam made his way to the captain's quarters, not bothering to knock, then immediately wishing he did when he stumbled in on Valentine changing into her day clothes.

"OUT!" she roared just as he slammed the door shut, sure that his face was flushed a deep red.

Behind him, he heard someone clear their throat and turned about to see Sinclair standing there with a look on his face that was akin to amusement.

"Having a pleasant morning so far?" he asked lightly.

Liam bristled, his cheeks heating up even more as he averted his gaze. "Shut up." he growled, hating the way the man grinned at him.

Thankfully, Valentine reopened her door before the quarter master could tease Liam any further and with a flourish, she bade them to gather around her small table that held the map.

"Now then," she said briskly, "My head's been pounding nearly all bloody morning and I wanted to get this ridiculous map business over with before we enter empty skies. Hawk, I'm not entirely sure why you're here, since I only asked for Sin, but blimey if I'm not at least a bit happy to see you, you bloody twit."

Liam blinked at her. "Erm... thank you, captain?"

"Think nothing of it, lad. Now, what did you come to tell me?"

"Only that Thorn and Ryder and the lot of them are gone."

"I'm only drunk, Hawk, not blind. I'm well aware that they left-- and with my best barrel of ale as well, the scoundrels!" Valentine sighed dramatically, "Uncle always did have a knack for taking things that didn't belong to him... there was my father's leg for a start--"

Mercifully, Sinclair cleared his throat, stopping her. "Captain? The map?"

"Ah, yes! Well done, Sin; the map. Now, according to the route you've directed us in, we still have a bit of a ways to go till we reach the treasure and thus, I propose a rest at the Nimyan Islands. We can re-supply there before continuing on."

Frowning, Liam raised his hand till the captain took notice and nodded at him to proceed, even though she rolled her eyes at him raising his hand in the first place.

"Didn't we re-supply not long ago?" he asked.

"Dear gods, you must have not been paying attention to the fifty or so other lads who ate up nearly all our stock last night. We have enough to get to the islands, but we'll need food for the rest of the journey. And this time we'll hope my uncle doesn't pay us a second visit, the old fool."

Liam wholeheartedly agreed.

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For the rest of that day and the next several days afterwards, most of their time was spent in heavy toil.

Through he heat of the day and well on into evening, the crew was subjected to every sort of chore imaginable aboard a ship.

And Liam was no exception.

Thus, as much as he loathed work of any kind, it was a kinder alternative to what Sinclair would have done to him if he had tried to hide in the coolness of the decks below. 

And it was only the thought of punishment that kept Liam going as he pulled ropes till his hands burned, or scrubbed the decks until his knuckles were raw from scrapping against the hard boards. 

Glancing about as he knelt over his bucket and scrubbing brush, he spotted the quarter master barking out orders to Ezra and Burn as they struggled to bring up the sails on the sides of the ship. 

A curious thing they were, those sails, and to Liam they seemed to be more like wings sticking out of the sides of the aircraft, meant to catch the wind on breezy days and carry the ship faster than its propeller would have. Nevertheless, they tended to be dangerous sticking out for very long like that, seeing as a stray current could hit only one of the sail and send the entire ship spiraling. 

Grinning slightly, Liam watched as Ezra and Burn struggled with the mass of the sails, their faces contorted into expressions of frustration as the stubborn pieces refused to give. Yet the smile quickly vanished from his lips when Sinclair spotted him and yelled at him to get back to scrubbing or he'd make him clean the privies.

Liam sighed, quickly going back to swabbing the deck before he was sent to an even worse fate. For seemed as though Sinclair had never changed his attitude toward him since he had told him of his past the previous night. Granted, the silver-haired pirate was certainly friendlier than he had been when they had first met-- he had not said that Liam was a twit for ages now, for instance. Yet while he was still cold and rather distant most of the time, Liam was certain that Sinclair liked him at least a bit...

He'd would not have told him of his past otherwise.

But as much as Liam would have liked to dwell on these thoughts, it was not long before he was ripped away from his bucket and scrub brush and thrown into another chore, this time being told by Sinclair to tie knots for whatever purpose.

Liam wondered if it was simply to get him out of the way from where people were walking, each one of them unafraid to step on his fingers.

Perhaps that meant that Sinclair cared a little. Either way, tying knots was much more preferable to scrubbing floors. For Liam, at least, it reminded him of when he had lived back in Janus and the girls of his town would come to his home, begging him to do their hair. Even now, with a coil of rope between his slender fingers, the boy felt the familiar ease by which he looped the thick strands over and under one another as though it were locks of hair.

But as all good things come, they must also come to an end and soon he was needed again under the boiling rays of the sun, carrying out whatever orders Sinclair yelled out to them.

By now, a good majority of the men had stripped off their shirts while the woman had opted for half-shirts that exposed their bare mid-drifts. Every one of them was coated in a fine sheen of sweat and it wasn't long even Liam, his awkwardness forgotten, cast aside his own tunic.

Granted, a few of the pirates teased him when he did so but Liam only rolled his eyes, his mind going back to the day he and Phillip had been on the airships docks and a group of girls had giggled at them, saying rather dreadful things that he had wished to forget. Yet that had been months ago, and though he had changed he found that whatever it was they had remarked about did not matter much now. For that had been back when Liam had been scrawny and pale, with his ribs showing through thin skin. And now... well, now Liam was still pale, though perhaps less than what he had been, and his arms and chest were toned with sleek muscle. And though he was certain that his facial features had not changed by much, he wondered if perhaps he looked more rugged. More grown up, perhaps. 

He had scars now, and calluses that Phillip and his father could be proud of. He had learned so much traveling the skies-- most of it having to do with how little he knew of the world. And women like Valentine. Yet above all, he found that after all he had seen and witnessed and experienced, the girls' dreadful comments of him simply were not as important as he had once thought them.

Stepping back slightly now from the rigging he was working on along with Tophsy and Ezra, Liam surveyed his work proudly, wondering what his father would say had he been here. Would he be proud of him now? Would he want him to come back home?

If only Liam knew...

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