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Rohlak



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Sun May 03, 2015 3:57 pm
Auxiira says...



The story of Rohan (@Craz) and Solak (@Auxiira) from the Everyone Has Their Demons SB, from the first time they met.

Links to different parts:
Kiddie Rohlak
Distanced
Grown-up Rohlak

This won't have the Sweepers, we're just using their back story and the characters themselves because they are Fluff incarnate when together.
Last edited by Auxiira on Sun May 03, 2015 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
You read faster than Usaine Bolt sprints xD - Deanie 2014

I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. - Cathy, Wuthering Heights





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Sun May 03, 2015 5:02 pm
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Auxiira says...



¦Slave 371¦


The child screamed in the hands of the men, twisting and squirming and biting until one of them slapped her. She fell silent, holding her cheek with her newly freed hand and glaring up at the man who'd hit her. He met her gaze with equal ferocity.

"Don't look at me like that, you little bitch," he snarled, raising his hand again. She shifted backwards, but still glared. A foot caught her in the ribs and she tumbled across the room until she hit the wall. The new scuffs of dirt were barely visible on the filthy sack she wore as a semblance of a dress.

"D'y'know how much money you've lost us? You're not worth the trouble you cause." His voice was low and threatening. She curled against the wall, baring her teeth at him, growling.

"Gods, you're an animal. Put her back in the cage." A crony bent over and picked her up by her wrist, throwing her over his shoulder. As they left the room, a torrent of abuse flowed from her mouth, aimed at the slaver. He raised an eyebrow, but went back to his books. The brat was utterly unprofitable. Five times she'd been returned to him in the last three months each time with more vehemence than the last. She was making him look bad.

"Don't give her any food for a couple'a days." No matter how he punished her, it didn't affect her any more. He pushed the books away from him and wondered how much it would save him in the long term to get rid of her.

~

The girl sat curled up in the cramped cage, her forehead on her knees so as to not hit her head on the bars above her, her collar biting into her neck at an angle. She hated them, she hated them, they had no idea how much she wanted to kill them. If only she could. And she wanted to get rid of the parents who sold her. And the thieves who wanted her to steal for them and the ladies who bought her to carry their shopping and the man who tried to touch her and everyone who just walked by as her face was ground into the soil. The world would be better without all of them.

She wouldn't be bought, she didn't care how much they hit her, she refused to be used. She didn't care how much money they weren't making from her, she didn't want to know about 'reputation', being passed around like a doll disgusted her. She knew her number by heart. 371. Slave 371.

She keened lowly, knowing how difficult it was to ignore her. The noise raised the hairs on the back of the men's necks. The child was wild, unearthly. One of the men kicked her cage and she lifted her head very slightly to growl at him. It echoed through the storehouse.

As the day passed by, she could feel the bars cutting into her skin. The lines only added to the bruises and cuts colouring her. She chewed on a strand of hair, aware they wouldn't give her any food. It was like that every time. She drew blood when she bit the man who came to give her water and bared her teeth with satisfaction. If she was wild, they couldn't sell her. They'd let her go. Then she could grow up and get back at them. Hateful scum.

She sniffed as someone came to hand out scraps to the other slaves. The very faint odor of food crept to her and she hugged her knees tighter. She wouldn't give in to the hunger trying to claw its way out of her stomach. If she begged for food, they would just laugh. She hated the other slaves for having food. She hated the slavers for keeping food from her. She knew that she was just bones now, it made her harder to sell, she was sure.

She revolved around one thing: being impossible to sell. She knew if the slavers couldn't sell her they would get rid of her, she had heard them say it. And that could only mean freedom.

She knew night came when someone came and picked up her cage, taking her to the ship. It was dark and she wanted to see the stars but she couldn't tilt her head backward. The fresh air filled her lungs. She could hear the echoed calls of early morning fishers further down the port. She kept up a low growl as they moved, earning her a couple of shakes of the cage and more than one whack against the wood as they made their way into the hull of the ship. She was slid into a dark corner, against the wood. The ship was filled with the sounds of slaves being brought onboard and the slavers getting ready to leave.

Another punishment. She didn't hate the dark, she didn't hate being alone. It was a way of forgetting her, of making her think they had forgotten her. She hated that. She gnawed on the ends of her fingers, her nails already bitten down to the quick. She would get back at them one day. The leather collar around her neck irritated her, but she had worn it for years and knew how to ignore it. She closed her eyes, no difference between the dark and the back of her eyelids and listened to the waves beat a steady rhythm next to her head.
Last edited by Auxiira on Sun May 03, 2015 5:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
You read faster than Usaine Bolt sprints xD - Deanie 2014

I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. - Cathy, Wuthering Heights





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Sun May 03, 2015 5:07 pm
Craz says...



|Cabin Boy|


Wind whistled in the boy's ears and his head roared with the sound of his blood, yet it was a peaceful night. The sea had paused, maybe in exhaustion, from tossing the ship into the sky where the storm clouds had blacked out the sun and back to the hungry water, where by some miracle the Queen's Bastard had danced out of the sea's mouth and into safety. But, the boy preferred to think that the Mother of the World was holding her breath in anticipation, for that was what it felt like. The air had a certain tension about it that he claimed as proof. She was watching them, with her great eye of the moon, to witness the bravado of her children.

Being the youngest, smallest, and therefore the lightest of the rest, the boy swayed within the crow's nest, adapting to the bending of the mast in the wind with ease. His keen eyes scoured the beautiful black and glittering mass of saltwater that lapped at the starry horizon. All of the torches had been put out on deck, and the only light came from the moon. The world seemed to have shaken off its plumes of color and opted for a landscape of silvers and blacks, the true heart of the world. The boy felt that these sights were just for him, and only for him, and it instilled a sense of privilege. Yet, it reminded him at the same time of how small and insignificant he was, like the four-limbed creature he was clinging onto a scrap of wood at the edge of the world.

He search the waters again, and started when he spotted a flickering light on the horizon. It was not as white as the crests of waves, or as unearthly as the stars above, but like a single match lit in the dark. Shaking off his surprise and then riding his sudden flush of excitement, he turned and leaned over the edge of the crow's nest. He whistled a sharp, harsh tune, then a series of different pitched sounds. The ship slowly began to gain speed.

The boy had never seen a slave ship before.

The Queen's Bastard sailed low and steady, boards creaking quietly as ghosts moved to and fro on her deck. The groan of cannons and the grunt of men were the only sounds that didn't seem to echo from after death. The black ship tailed the ship of light like a shadow.

As they neared, the boy picked out individual figures, and watched with excitement as they gradually as if from a deep grogginess began to move, then dart, then shout. He turned and began scampering down the ropes, calling in his strange clipped whistles, eagerness making him loud. One of the shadows hushed him harshly. The boy gripped his dagger and grinned.

A figure of immense stature shifted his feet at the wheel of the ship. With the colors gone with the fleeting sun, he appeared weaved together by darkness, his harsh scowl and the feathers adorning his shoulder the only things kissed by silver light. When he stopped moving, he was another pillar of the ship, strong and uncompromising. When he did move, it was as if the boy was glimpsing one of those wild cats again, black fur flashing quickly through the thick leaves of the island before disappearing with the same enigma. A long sword that was cast in shadow hung at his waist. The boy turned his attention to the bow when he heard a shout.

Someone shouldered him away. He stumbled backward, then with a sudden realization covered his ears. There a violent vibration that nearly shattered his skull, but yet it stayed intact, leaving his ears ringing. He shook himself, a bit angry at his inattentiveness, then darted past barrels and ferocious yelling shadows towards the port side. Another cannon fired, but the boy wasn't as fazed. He crouched in the darkness.

His small size and his ability to fold himself into acutely uncomfortable positions is what saved him from being spotted. He waited quietly, gripping his dagger, watching as men ran to and fro. He could not tell who was which, but they all passed by him with equal distrait. He watched as a man was stabbed near the barrel he huddled by. He closed his eyes and wished it wasn't one of his own.

He wasn't sure what told him when it was right to move. He fancied it was the moon, because he liked the moon better than saying that it was only some boring part of his head that calculated it. He liked to think that his carefulness was guided by the moon, that it shined light only where he did not need to pass through, as to keep his path dark, and that at the end of his dark path would be his destiny. He didn't like to believe in coincidences.

He also didn't like to think about how terrified he was. The previous elation had stayed and hidden in the crow's nest, as well as most of his bravery. Yet he powered on.

At one point a man had come up behind him, slashing down with his sword. The boy couldn't remember the incident too clearly. He had raised his hand to defend himself, then suddenly the man was gone, disappearing into the pit of slashing shadows. By the time the boy reached the trapdoor to the bay, he had forgotten all about it, instead focusing on his task.

He slipped inside.

He knew that this was the men's sleeping quarters, because lanterns were placed at random intervals on the walls. Barrels had bottles and cards scattered on them, blankets were spilled onto the floor, and knotted up hammocks were suspended between the pillars. He proceed forward cautiously, but he figured that everyone was either on deck or dead. He wasn't sure if he was right, but he found the trapdoor leading further down without being caught.

He didn't know how it was possible, but it was blacker under deck than any kind of blackness he had experienced before. He fumbled blindly, his hand knocking something to the ground. It shattered.

He stopped moving and listened. Bodies shuffled, and a moan. But nothing that sounded violent.

He waited a bit longer before moving forward. His nostrils burned with the acidity of human waste. He began whistling, in his strange bursts of sounds, before his hand found another object by his right. It was a candle. He fumbled in his pocket for matches and lit it.

n the flickering light from the candle flame, he could see the slaves huddled against the outer wall of the ship, shying away from the light. Though they looked malnourished, they weren't skeletal, and some of the men seemed strong. Iron cuffs chained their legs to the hull and their wrists together. They observed him warily, unsure of who he was and his purpose here.

He walked towards them, ignoring the few that shied away. He approached an older man, who tensed, eyeing him, but didn't protest any more.

The boy motioned towards his shackles. "Do you know where the keys are?"

The man stared at him for a few seconds. "There's a hook down near the stern." He watched the boy amble away. "Aren't you just going to sell us on? Why free us, child?"

The boy returned with the keys and didn't answer for a moment, instead fiddling with the locks. Then, with a quiet and stern voice, he said, "Because men do not belong in shackles."

The man rubbed his wrists, watching the boy with a curious expression. "That's a very admirable sentiment." Taking the keys from the boy's hands, he moved to remove his neighbor's chains. "You should go down another deck. I think you could help the person there." Taking a small key from the fob, he handed it to the boy.

The boy looked at the man, then nodded. Leaving the newly freed slaves, he moved towards the third trapdoor, hidden behind a rotted crate that smelled like bad oranges. He coughed, then hefted the door open, carefully stepping inside with his candle held high.

From a corner of the stern came a low, continuous grumble, cut for a few seconds by an indistinguishable mumble. The boy raised the candle higher and managed to make out a small cage wedged between two crates. As he moved toward it, the grumbling stopped, the figure in the cage tensing.

The first thing he noticed was the hair. It knotted and tangled down the creature's back, over its face, and threaded in dirty strings to its feet. Rope thin arms gripped knobs for knees, its skin so blackened and covered in mucky silt that it was difficult to distinguish a limb from a clot of hair. Eyes, narrowed to painful slits from the light of the candle, glared at him in a shocking contrast of green. He realized, even though he had identified all of the body parts that it constituted, that the creature was human. And was, judging from his or her size, younger than him.

"Uh." He said ingeniously. The boy crouched down in front of the cage, reaching out with his free hand. With a sudden burst of movement the slave lunged towards him, but the gaps in the cage were only large enough for its fingers. He stumbled back regardless.

"I'm here... t-to free you," he said nervously. The slave keened then bared its teeth.

He approached more slowly, inching along, ready to jump away if need be. When the slave didn't immediately launch at him, he began to whistle once more, this time his notes cheery and peaceful. The slave cocked its head to one side, its eyes shining curiously from behind the strings of hair.

He touched the lock tentatively. Then, his eyes locked on the slave inside, he reached in his pocket for the key. He slid it inside the lock and turned.

There was a begrudging click. then the cage door propped open. The boy scrambled back, then crouched a little distance away, unsure what the slave would do. Its eyes flicked from left to right, sweeping the deck before coming to rest on the boy. They watched him warily, the rest of its body tense and immobile. Its fingers were curled around the bars, latching it into the cage.

"It-it's okay. You can come out now. Look, no more bars, no more shackles, no more slave traders. You're free now." The boy said. A sound resembling a short bark came from the slave.

Footsteps thudded on the stairs and the man from before sat on one of the steps.

"She won't come out." He remarked. "It normally takes two to get her out once they've put her in."

The boy regarded the figure crouched in the cage. So it's a girl, he thought. He sat up straighter, pursing his lips stubbornly. A childish daringness filled his chest and spurred him forward, overbearing his chary regard of the girl, and taunted him when his limbs didn't move confidently enough. The boy shuffled towards the cage, resuming his whistling tune.

Her eyes home with curiosity again. Putting a hand to her mouth, she chewed on her thumb as he whistled. After what seemed to be a deliberation, she let go of the bars with her other hand and stretched her arm toward him. Finding her reach came short, she retracted her hand, hesitating. After a few more minutes of him whistling gently, she shuffled forward very slightly and reached out to touch his pursed lips briefly before snatching back her hand.

The man and boy both sat where they were, stunned. The boy had stopped whistling, his lips still a misshapen pucker from the press of the girl's finger, and his ears became warm. Then, the boy grinned, and began to whistle stronger.

He held his hand out to the girl, who stared at it, then at his face.

She closed her eyes and listened to his whistling for a while. Once she opened them again, they seemed more trusting. She touched the palm of his hand with her fingertips, resting her head on her knees. Despite her previous hostility, her expression had softened.

"There we go," he cooed. He glanced back to the man on the stairs, and motioned him over with his head. The girl immediately tensed and retreated back inside her cage, and bared her teeth. The boy resumed whistling to calm her.

"Can you watch her? I have to see if it's safe," he said. The man glanced between the two, and reluctantly nodded. The girl began to growl.

"It's okay, it's okay," he assured the girl. "I'll be right back, see? No, no, it's okay, he won't hurt you. See? Everything's fine. I'll be back in no time."

She frowned, but stopped growling. She turned a ferocious glare on the man, her eyes almost glowing with a warning. Her fingers clutched at the bars of the cage again. The man raised his hands and perched himself on a barrel across from her.

"Go ahead. She should be fine for a while."

The boy nodded, then began to climb the steps.

"Wait," he said. When the boy turned around, candle in hand, the man was peering up at him with a peculiar expression. "What's your name, boy?"

He blinked, then smiled. "I think... it's Rohan. Yeah. They named me Rohan." Then he disappeared to the upper floor.
"we'll fasten it with some safety pins and tape and a dream, and you're good to go, honey."





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Wed May 06, 2015 1:30 pm
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Auxiira says...



|Slave 371|


The slave gripped at the bars of the cage, watching the man the boy had left to watch her. He had red chafe marks around his wrists and ankles. One of the other slaves. He observed her just as intently. She could feel the bubbling animosity under her skin, but the boy had told her it would be fine. She was curious about him. He seemed ernestly gentle and determined to help her. She hadn't encountered that before. And the noises he made were interesting.

"He's freed all of us, you know." The man's voice interrupted her thoughts. She went to bare her teeth at him, then stopped. She cocked her head, deciding to listen to what he had to say.

"If you go with him, you'll be free." The conviction in his voice made her purse her lips. She wanted to believe it, but she knew things didn't work out that way. Silence settled between the two of them again. She fiddled with her strands of hair, sucking on the cracked skin over her knuckles.

"Why..." he broke the silence again, "Why do you resist so much? If you did what your buyers asked, you wouldn't have any problems."

She frowned, picking at a scab on her knee. "Why don't you?" Her voice was hoarse and crackled as she ground out a whisper. Her throat was dry and sore. "Thieves, rich bitches, whorehouses, they'se all t'people who's going'ta buy me. Filthy scum."

The man blinked at her language, then sighed. There was no reasoning with her.

After a few more minutes of silence, the boy returned with a clatter of footsteps on the wooden stairs. She turned her head to watch him.

He was grinning, and this time he had a lantern. In the greater light, the two could see a smear of red across his cheek and nose, and that his hand was inked in blood. His clothes were a bit more rumpled than when he had left. He lifted his lantern proudly.

"It's safe," he said, a bit breathless. He handed the man the lantern and crouched in front of the girl, extending his cleaner hand. He started making those wierd noises again.

She frowned at the red across his face and hands, unsure whether it was his or someone else's. She reached out to take his hand, and touched the smear with the other, dragging her fingers down his face. A worried sound rattled her throat, surprising herself a little. She shuffled out of the cage and came closer to him, frowning further as she found a cut across his cheek.

He winced a bit, but smiled. "It's only a scratch. I'm okay, see?"

He took her hand and looked at her earnestly. "We're going to go above deck, okay?"

She chewed on her lip, tasting the bitter iron of blood and mud there. She had heard the sounds of fighting above her, but now they had stopped. If the boy was here, then it wasn't the slavers who had come out on top. She let a small, feral smile part her lips at the thought. Reaching out a hand, she pressed on the crate as she stood up.

The three of them manouvered through the decks, then emerged onto the main deck. As Rohan lead the girl forward, there was a gunshot and then a thump. The girl peeked over Rohan's shoulder as he stopped, putting an arm out to stop her from moving forward.

The first thing she picked up on was the slavers, knees on the ground. One of them, not the leader, lay prone of the deck, a pool of red surrounding him. Her lips twitched slightly in satisfaction. He only got what he deserved.

Then she noticed the mountain of a figure standing over them. She involountarily took a step back, thumbing the hem of the boy's shirt before letting her hand slide off. He exuded intimidation and ire. She could tell he was the captain. A low grumble started in the back of the throat, like a cornered animal.

The leader heard the sound and glanced over to her, a deprecating smirk settling onto his features. The mountain looked in their direction. Feathers from many different birds were stitched to his shoulder, intertwined in his beard, dangled on small jewels at his ear, and gathered at his belt. It would have looked ridiculous on any man, yet the feathers did not seem silly on this one, but seemed to hold the same ominous merit as prizes of war. Gold chains hung around his neck, and his fingers glinted with heavy jewels. Large opaque eyes smoldered under eyebrows as thick as three of the girl's fingers.

Rohan had gone stiff. She realized it was with fear. As the captain stepped dauntingly in their direction, Rohan appeared to shrink. He avoided gazing upon the large man and instead focused on a board that jutted out from the floorboards, memerizing its splinters, its uprooted nails, the swirling lines of the wood.

"Boy," the captain said. His voice was low and disturbing, like the storm that had passed them by. "Bring those slaves here."

The boy found and gripped the girl's arm behind his back. His head was ducked low and his shoulders were hitched high as he inched them forward, but he stopped a few feet short from the captain.

"C-C-Captain, these two don't need to be tied up with the rest of them-"

Rohan skidded across the deck and slammed into a barrel, his head thumping against its corner, and then slid quietly to the ground. The hulking man returned his hand on the hilt of his sword. He didn't look upon the boy he had just struck, but instead towered over the two freed slaves. His eyes reflected the moon.

The girl stared up at him, then over at the boy before flicking her eyes back to the mountain before her. From her low point of view, the man blotted out the sky. She felt a flicker of fear, but nothing like the terror that had gripped her when she had been sold for the first time. She wouldn't be afraid of him.

Behind her, the man Rohan had freed stayed immobile, unsure of what to do. As the girl looked back to the prone figure of the boy who had freed her, the grumbling in the back of her throat turned into a growl. She glared up at him defiantly. If he acted no better than the slavers, she'd react like for the slavers. She bared her teeth. Crouched low to the ground, she seemed utterly feral.

A snicker came from the bound slavers. The girl's attention flitted to them and her eyes narrowed in hatred.

"Try biting this one, girl. He'll knock you into next week, like he did to that guy who freed you." The leader smirked. She started to work up a gobbet of spit to fling in his direction, but flinched back when the shadow of the colossus slid over her. Her attention returned to him, the rumbling growl returning.

The captian gave no heed to the talkative slave, but instead stood over her. His silence held its own gravity, and gradually the slave's jeers died off. His intense eyes smouldered their own hidden fire, yet there was no noise, no crackle of flame nor hiss of embers. A small breeze rustled a silver feather on his ear. Finally, his salt-cracked lips parted, and he spoke.

"I will not have animals on my ship." He continued to look down on the feral girl, but addressed a more nimble man that stood off to his left. "Catullo, I want this ship and its cargo out of my sight by sun up. Bring them to the nearest shore. Sell it. You know what to do then."

His glaze lingered upon the growling slave then he turned around and began to make his way to his own pirate ship. With his back still turned, he added, "and take the boy. He doesn't belong in my crew."

~

The girl crouched on the balls of her feet next to the boy, waiting for him to wake up. Her back was pressed against the crate he had hit his head on. She had a hand of her ropey hair grasped in a fist so it didn't get in the way. Around them, the ship was being brought into movement. The pirate called Catullo had left to organise the other slaves and no one had bothered the two of them yet.

She had her arms crossed on top of her knees and rested her head on them so she could watch the boy. He had helped her. He had been hurt helping her. No one had done that before. She smiled into her arms.

The boy woke up with a groan. Flinging a hand out, she stopped him from sitting up. When he glanced at her, she shook her head, hair dancing.

"mustn't move," she instructed him in her hoarse whisper. The slave the boy had freed had told her that before being taken back to everyone else.

He thumped back against the crate, then winced. He tentatively began to tap the back of his head with his fingers, which skidded over his skull like nervous birds, and then flinched away from clotted lumps of hair every now and then.

"Just a scratch," he said. Then he realized that he was still on the slave ship.

His expression was almost like the peeling of an onion. Out first, it was blank, then gradually turned more stunned. Then, it began to become smaller, more subtly strained, then fell into anguish. He watched Catullo shout orders and watched the inexperienced slaves scramble and stumble to follow them.

"They... they left, didn't they?" He whispered. "They're gone, aren't they? They... they left me."

The girl gave a small nod. She didn't understand why he was so upset, but maybe he had liked being part of the pirates. It was something she couldn't understand.

"I's sorry." She mumbled. "T's my fault." She hunched her knees closer to her, until she was curled up like an impenetrable ball, using her appearance as a shield to fend off attachment.

He tried to smile, but it didn't look right. "Don't worry about me, okay? I... can figure something out. Yeah. I'll... figure it out..."

He seemed to be saying it more for himself than her. He sat up, waving her off, and removed a red sash from his waist. He whipped it a few times then wrapped it around his head.

The boy stood shakily, leaning on the barrel, and she moved as if to stand as well. "No, no, stay here. I have to... see Catullo."

She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again, like a fish gasping for water. She nestled back into the angle the crate made against the outside of the ship. She had made him lose something he liked. It was her fault.

"I's'ont move." She nodded into her knees. She'd wait.
You read faster than Usaine Bolt sprints xD - Deanie 2014

I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. - Cathy, Wuthering Heights





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77 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 2453
Reviews: 77
Sat May 09, 2015 1:43 pm
Craz says...



|Rohan, the Orphan|


Sometimes it would be as if sea foam had sprayed into his eyes, just a sprinkle, just enough so his vision turned white and blurry and pain sliced into his head so he'd suck his breath in and blink rapidly until it went away, and when his vision finally cleared he would shake his head and walk on. But, instead, he would blink and alternatively of white it would be black, as black as the entrails of a slave ship, and he'd stumble and reach his hands out and find himself leaning against some other pillar, near collapsed against it, and inhaling desperately for air. Then the pain would subside, and he could see again, and he would take a few more steps, a few more staggers and tilts, before his heart beat and it repeated again.

At least he was out of the girl's sight. He knew that, without his reassurances, she would have attacked someone and have gotten killed by now. But, when she was not looking, he could afford to look weak.

He knew that it was not the time when he finally crested the stairs to the quarterdeck. But, he was young, injured, desperate, and didn't care. Leaning on the rail and huffing, Rohan carefully made his way to the wheel. Catullo finally noticed him and sighed.

Whilst the Captain (he had never known the man's true name, and while he wasn't technically Rohan's "Captain" anymore, he lacked what to call him otherwise) had been built out of the black volcanic rock and hardened by the pressure of the sea, Catullo had been weaved from seaweed and drifting rope from fallen ships, and knotted together until he was his own bending mass of twisted man. He was tall and nimble, as dark as the depths of a barrel, and whose skin shined with seawater. Rohan did not know if his inherent features were handsome or ugly. He wondered, often enough that if he voiced any of the questions he held for Catullo that he would be immediately abhorred for his bluntness, what had happened to cause the man's skin to become so marked with pits and knobs and swells and craters and jagged slashes and an eye that did not see. He knew, from what the ship hands had whispered when they thought that no one was awake, that someone or many someones had thrown acid on Catullo when he was young, cut him up badly, taken the sight from his eye, and left him floating in a river. They also said that his body floated out to sea and that the Captain rescued him, but Rohan wasn't so sure of that.

"Catullo," Rohan said. "Please, Catullo, let me-"

"I know what it is you want to say boy and I do not care. I have but a handful of skinless bastards that cannot tell a sail from a fat woman's ass to drive this piece of rot and shit to a harbor before we all sink or end up at the edge of the world, and I do not have time nor the authority to deal with your problem, so it is best if you turn and hobble back under deck, where you are out of the way until we reach port." Catullo snapped. His way of speaking was always strange to Rohan; always rounding around curse words as if unconfident in their language, and then articulating everything else in an educated manner. The boy's ears were unaccustomed to it, so he dubbed it to some sort of accent from a place that he has not been to before. Asking where he learned to talk was another one of Rohan's questions that he cautiously assumed he would get punished for asking.

The boy's face transfigured into determination, ignoring the pang of nausea. "I can prove myself. Please, let me try. I can work."

"In your condition?" Catullo snorted, an odd sound. "Go away before I have to get one of those pathetic slaves to make you."

"Let me be the lookout!"

"No."

"Catullo-"

"I said no! I will not scrape your mangled body off of my decks because you are too idiotic to realize that you are half dead. It is your own mouth and lack of respect that got you put in this situation, and you deserved what you got. Now, go, before I have to hit you too."

Rohan stood there, or more accurately leaned there, and his chest twisted. He turned and began to wobble back down the stairs, but inwardly he thought this is not over, this is not the end but he felt alone again, could I make it on these streets ahead of me and outwardly he could not tell what face he had on. He did not feel like consoling the girl in that moment, when he felt the tangible possibility of becoming a beggar, a thief, an orphan again.

But his feet had betrayed him. He had been walking towards the barrel, the barrel with a dent where his head had gone, and where the dirty figure crouched in such a feral jagged array of joints that Rohan could have easily mistaken her for a dead, emaciated dog. He could tell when she saw him because she shifted on her feet and placed her hand on the barrel, as if she hoped to use it to lift herself up and go to him, but instead remained in her corner. He smiled, for her sake alone.

"It's okay, it's okay," he cooed, and crouched in front of her. For a moment his vision went black once again, and he was unsure if he was still in his body or if his soul had been plucked out by death, but then he could see again and nothing had happened and the girl wore the same worried expression she had on before his spell. He smiled again, though it cruelly stretched his wounds.

"Catullo has ordered us down below to rest," he said. "He'll come tell us what to do in the morning. We're going to the nearest city where all of you can be free again."

She frowned at him, then reached out and pushed the corners of his lips out of the smile he was holding. "You'se a good liar." She muttered. "But don't smile i'you sad."

Rohan's lower lip quivered, then he stubbornly pursed his lips. "Don't worry about me. I can handle this. Just, let me lie a bit longer, okay? Come on, let's go get some rest. In a real bed. Or, well, close enough."

He stood shakily, then he smelled something particular. He curiously pried open the barrel with his fingers, and the scent became stronger, until it breathed into his memory to where, even though he could not see into it, he was sure of what it was.

"Here," he said. He reached inside and groped. He pulled two of them out and handed one to the girl. "You haven't eaten in a while, right? Don't eat the skin. You have to peel it off. It's an orange."

"'Ank you." She took it and turned it over in her hands before attempting to pick at the rind with non-existent nails. After a few tries, she felt around it, then stuck her thumb through the center and pulled the skin off from the hole she'd made. Once she reached the flesh, it was gone in a matter of minutes, leaving her with sticky fingers and juice around her mouth, leaving trails of slightly cleaner skin as it picked up the dirt on her face. She swiped at her mouth with the back of her arm, then let out a little cry as the juice touched a cut on her arm.

"There are probably some spare clothes down stairs too," he said. He looked at her worriedly, his own issues forgotten. "You'll need to bathe, maybe get a haircut... no, definitely get a haircut. Then those cuts will need some seaweed, and we'll need to borrow some coral..."

The girl looked at him warily. She wasn't sure if she liked his sudden distracted, furrowed expression, while he muttered to himself.

"Oh but we can do that in the morning." His attention had been turned back to the girl, and he pulled out his dagger and cut his own orange in half. Handing one cut to her, he then held her hand and gently coasted her back down below. She resisted out first, her eyes flashing in panic, then at the soothing sound of Rohan's whistling she allowed him to bring her back down.
"we'll fasten it with some safety pins and tape and a dream, and you're good to go, honey."





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Sun May 10, 2015 9:24 pm
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Auxiira says...



|The Girl, Slave 371|


She had managed to clamber into the hammock after a little while of wriggling and a lot of help from the boy, but after a while, she had found herself unable to sleep and had half-climbed, half-fallen out of the hammock, taking the blanket with her as she found a corner to tuck herself into. The hard wooden deck was more what she was used to, and she quickly fell into a fitful sleep.

She woke to the boy softly nudging her and shot upright, huddling into the corner, before realising who he was and relaxing a little. His eyes were gently wary as he waited for her. She glanced past him as saw the hammocks empty. Everyone else was already awake. She blinked at him once, twice, then stood up, the blanket tumbling to a pile on the floor.

"What we doin'?" She asked with wide eyes as she chewed on the skin around her thumbnail.

"Well..." It was then that she noticed that he was hiding something behind his back. He shifted from foot to foot, trying to hide it, but the unnatural clench of his arms gave it away.

She cocked her head at him, her brow furrowing slightly. "Whassat?" She tried to peek around his midriff. He moved to still block the object behind his back, but he stumbled into a patch of light from a porthole, and she recognised the flash of a blade.

Her eyes widened as she bared her teeth, a low rumble starting in the back of her throat. She slid into a crouch, leaning away from him. Distrust flashed in her eyes as she backed into the corner. Rohan watched her, uncertain, then sighed and lowered himself into a neat sitting position. He pulled the blade from behind his back, then put it down between them. It was strangely slender, and relatively clean, with a thin bar for a hilt. Then, he pulled his own dagger out, the one she had seen him holding the night before.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "I borrowed that one from one of Catullo's hands. It's a razor. I was thinking, well, that you might feel a bit better if you had your hair cut."

As he talked, her growl stopped, and she settled from her tense stance. Her wide eyes flicked from the razor to him. After a few seconds, she glanced at the strands of hair in front of her face. They were matted together with mud and blood. Knots gnarled right to her roots. She wasn't sure she had seen them any other way. She chewed on her thumb again. With the heel of her foot, she pushed the razor back to him.

"'Kay," she mumbled around her thumb.

The boy visibly relaxed with relief. "Okay, then. Turn around."

She did so. As he tentatively touched her hair and picked up his dagger, she felt how foreign the sensation was, the odd discomfort of her scalp being pulled not by an angry fist but by a strange boy. She felt weight lift from her back and then fall away, and every time the blade sheared off another clot of hair, she flinched. Then, for the first time she could remember, air caressed her nape.

He switched to the razor, and brushed the fallen hair away. "Now, don't freak out," he said, "But I have to cut a bit closer. I'll try not to cut you."

He began to make those strange sounds again to keep her calm. Then, she felt the kiss of coldness on the back of her head. She stiffened slightly, a shiver running down her spine. The cold paused and she closed her eyes, listening to the strange sounds he made. He had said he wouldn't hurt her, so he wouldn't. She had to try and trust someone. She let out the breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding and dropped her shoulders. After a few seconds, the cold scraped across her scalp, taking hair with it. She blinked as a few strands fell onto her eyelashes.

The boy scraped the razor over her head, making those strange noises the whole time. Once he was done, he set the razor down. As she heard the clink, she put a hand to her head. The remnants of stubble met her fingers. It was a strange feeling. She felt something small touch her hand and jerked it away. A black spot sat on the dirt of her skin before disappearing. She stared at the spot on her hand where it had been. She turned to the boy, wide-eyed.

"What 'as that?"

"Lice," he said. "Small bugs that live in your hair. This should get rid of most of them."

He stood, then vigorously began to brush his clothes with his hands. He shook them, and stray hairs littered the floor around him. He looked down on her when he was done, and smiled kindly.

"What do you feel about a bath?" he asked.

She chewed on her lower lip. Baths normally meant they were trying to sell her. Baths meant her being shoved into water and pushed under until some of the dirt came off. She looked at the boy, at the hair on the floor. He wouldn't sell her. She had to try and trust him. He was nice. He hadn't hurt her.

She looked at her bare feet and nodded, balling the rag she wore in her fists.

He held out his hand and she took it. Navigating through the hammocks and supplies, he lead her to the back, where there was a makeshift sheet nailed to the ceiling. There was little besides that, and little besides the sheet that marked it off from the rest of the unassorted mess surrounding it. There was a halo of light that shined through a porthole. Behind the sheet, the boards were especially worn, warped from excess water exposure. Buckets, some empty and other sloshing with light sea foam, were lined against the wall. On a small stool sat a lump of grey and a bizarre looking object, bleached pale.

The girl went over to the stool and picked both of the objects up before sitting down. The lump of grey slid out of her hand and across the floor and she frowned at it as the boy picked it up again, smiling.

"Whassis?" She asked, holding up the other thing. It was softly squishy. She turned it over in her hands, pouting curiously. "Whas it for? Whas that?" She pointed to the lump in his hands. She found herself curious. It was an unusual feeling.

He laughed, then went to bring over one of the buckets. "This is soap, and that's coral. It helps get you clean."

The bucket was heavy, and he dragged it over with a huff. "You can just throw your clothes over there."

She pulled the rag she was wearing over her head, wincing slightly as the movement pulled the bruise the slaver had left on her ribs. She trailed her fingers down her side, touching each bump of a rib until she found the spot that hurt. She felt along it, seeing how big the bruise was. It only hurt because he had hit the same place as before. Walking her fingers across her stomach, she found the cut on the other side. When she looked up, she found the boy watching her.

"'m good at makin' 'em angry." She said as an explanation. She knew he couldn't see the rest of them, along her legs and arms. She wondered what his reaction would be then.

He nodded, then decidedly reached for his makeshift bandage around his head. He ripped it off, wincing, then tossed it aside. As the fabric fell away, flakes of blood floated to the floor. There was clotted blood on his forehead, but otherwise his wound was covered by his hair.

"We both seem to have a habit of making the wrong people mad," he said, taking the coral from her and dipping it in the bucket. He swished it around then held it carefully over the rim.

"You might want to close your eyes."

The sea water splashed over her head, and she gasped. The salt water seemed to revel in finding her cuts and burrowing into them, drawing out a pain she imagined would be like someone prodding her with an iron rod, fresh from the furnace. Then the boy began to scrub her back, and her skin felt like it was being seared off.

She whimpered, flinching away from the sponge. The boy took the sponge away, glancing at her back. A rash of welts trailed up her back, leaving only a few patches untouched. She waited until she could breathe properly.

"My last ... owners," she spat the word out, "embers." The burning died down and she relaxed slightly. She glanced at the floor, seeing the dirt from her skin mixed with the water.

"This'll... this'll heal them," his voice quivered. "You don't have to worry about this ever happening again. I'll-I'll protect you, okay? I'll make sure that you're safe."

The sponge touched her back again, gingerly. She did not look back at him, but his once sure hands shook against her skin, and tears streaked down the boy's face. He was deathly silent, stroking her back, her shoulders, her arms, and occasionally dipping the sponge back in the bucket. When he promted her to turn around, the tears were gone, and his face was kind.

Finally, he exchanged the rough coral for his makeshift bandage, and he scrubbed it clean in the bucket. The boy reached over and carefully rubbed the dirt off of her face, making those soft sounds, until her pale skin turned pink and the grime was gone. Then, he stood and reached into a cluster of brooms and brushes and handed her a square of dingy fabric.

"Use this to dry yourself. I'll go find you some clothes." And then he disappeared behind the curtain.

She dabbed at her skin, wincing as the water touched her cuts again. She thought about what the boy had said. He'd said he'd protect her. She tossed the words around in her mind. She smiled a little as warmth spread through her. She could trust him. He had been upset for her, she wasn't used to it.

Glancing at her arms, she took account of the cuts and bruises there. If she thought hard, she could remember who had given her every one. She had burned it into her mind, the hate for them, the people who had given the hurt to her. There were the bands of raw, chafed skin around her wrists and ankles, the number burnt onto her shoulder, the tattoo underneath, scored through with a thick scar.

She traced the number with a tentative finger. 317, traced with ridged, red skin marking her forever. She scowled at it, then looked away.

When the boy returned with clothes, she gave him an attempt at a smile that wasn't grim. It felt strange on her face.

"Thank you," She did her best to articulate the words.

He paused, and then grinned. There was a dimple that appeared over his left cheek, and his eyes (it was the first time she noticed them, and the light from the porthole revealed that they were intensely green) twinkled playfully. He plopped down in front of her with an armful of plain clothing that would have been ridiculously large on him, let alone her. Rohan handed her the clothes and she slid into them skeptically. When they were on, she could almost slide her body through the neck.

He looked on her ponderously. Then, he reached for his dagger (assuring her as he did so) and began to hack at the sleeves. Slowly and meticulously the fabric shrank until she could successfully stick her hands out without having to roll them up. He pulled some string out of one of his many pockets and tied a knot to the neckline so it wouldn't fall, then twisted the sleeve so it was successfully fastened high enough so she could move her arms freely. He continued to work until the clothing would fix her better, then finished it with a scrap of rope around her waist.

"That's better, right?" he asked.

She nodded, smiling. It was strange, being clean, with clothes that weren't in rags. She tugged on the hem of the shirt. It felt different. If she thought about it, he had changed everything. Tentatively, she reached over and wrapped her arms around him, holding on for a second before quickly letting go.

She didn't meet his eyes, looking out the porthole. After a few seconds, she turned back to him.

"C'we go outside?" She asked quietly. Suddenly, she remembered how he had been last night and looked at him with wide, apologetic eyes.

Misunderstanding her worry, he laughed and nodded. "Come on, let's go."

She frowned, chewing her lip, but took his hand and followed him onto the deck anyway. The slaves followed Catullo's orders, more adroitly than the day before. Tugging on his hand, she pulled him over to the gunwale of the ship. Her head only just reached the top of the wood, and she pouted, before letting go of his hand and running along until she found a crate that she could clamber onto to peer over the edge.

She smiled as the wave's spray flicked in her face. Grey animals swam next to the boat, right next to the hull. She turned to the boy.

"Whassey?" Her eyes shone. Before he could reply, she scrambled off of the crate and across the busy deck to the mast. She stared up the mast, at the full sail, before darting through a crowd just as the boy almost caught up to her. Scurrying up a set of stairs, she found the person she wanted to talk to standing next to the wheel. She moved closer to him tentatively.

"Mr Catullo?" she asked qiuietly, tense.

The man turned to her, his expression harsh. Two different eyes scrutinized her - one silky and pale, the other glistening and black. Scars and uneven skin ravished his face and shaved head, and a crevice split his scowl diagonally, segregating the smoother puckers from the worser disfigurements. The little girl started, but then her determination solidified.

"Get off of my deck and out of my sight before I put you back in that cage you're so fond of," he sneered, then returned his attention to the wheel.

She scowled, crossing her arms. She wanted to growl, but she didn't think it would help. "No. Y'don't scare me." she met his glare with equal ferocity as he looked down at her again. "Let'im do somting. You'se hurtin' 'is pride." She could tell. She knew pride. It was all she had had for years.

"Pride? What, that boy?" He scoffed. "He deserved it. For lacking respect."

He met her eyes with meaning. "You do not know what you speak of, slave. Mind your business until we reach port, then get as far away from the coast as you can."

Her eyes narrowed as she bared her teeth. Then she looked at the clothes she was wearing, and remembered the desolate tone the boy had had. She scowled, bending her stubbornness.

"Please." She ground out, the word tasting bitter in her mouth. She didn't beg. Begging was weakness. She knew her feelings shone through in her eyes, her tense jaw, her clenched fists.

Footsteps rushed up the stairs behind her, and she swiveled around, tensing up at the sudden noise. It was the boy, Rohan, and shock found her when she saw his face in panic. He ran to her side and grabbed her hand a bit forcefully. When he stopped next to her, his head was bowed, but he stood straight as a board.

"Apologies, Catullo," he said. "I'll bring her below. She won't disturb you again." She glowered at him mutely. He ignored her.

Catullo raised his chin and nodded. "Keep that slave under control" was his only comment when he returned to the wheel. Rohan hurriedly dragged the girl off of the upper deck until the two were out of the man's sight. She snatched her hand out of his with a small growl, fuming. She turned her back to him, clambering onto a crate to glare at the waves, a scowl fixed onto her face.

"Ise will disturb 'im 'gain." She muttered.

He sighed. "Please, don't."

"Why?" She refused to look at him, still prickly about being called a slave. Twice.

"Look, I don't know what you said to him, but he will decide whether or not we'll make it to shore. Once we're there, y-... we'll be free."

He sighed again and sat down, leaning against the crate with his feet strewn out in front of him. He was quiet, thinking. She glanced down at him.

"I'll be free. You'se free here. I'se not blind." She clambered off of the crate. "Stay. Leave me alone." She turned and disappeared back into the belly of the ship. He wasn't sure if she was talking about that instant, or when they reached shore.
You read faster than Usaine Bolt sprints xD - Deanie 2014

I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. - Cathy, Wuthering Heights





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Sun May 17, 2015 2:58 pm
Craz says...



|Rohan|


Rohan sighed. His chin pressed into the uneven hardness of the metal around the porthole, sticky with salt, warm from his skin. He sat on a barrel propped up against the wall, conveniently tall enough so he could sit on it and look out with little trouble, yet his body has long since been complaining of the unnatural bend of his spine. His fingers clenched at the edge, and dangled outside of the ship. His cheek was shoved against his eye and nose. The night was calm, a near mirror to the one before. The moon shone over the lapping waves with a maternal aura of power and cognizance, soothingly bathing its children with its nebulous light. Rohan thought that it had so clearly outlined itself for him, as if it knew his confusion and wanted to reassure him with a mother's grace.

He remembered exactly when he had heard about the moon. He had dashed off to enjoy himself on the streets of a swelling port city, confident that his ship would not leave for five days, when he had stumbled across a sunken huddle of decrepit seamen, deep into their stories. Something had urged him to stay and listen.

The oldest, by far the most aged, spoke of the moon, the mother of bastards. He said that all men, all creatures that devoted their lives to the sea, the moon's rebellious and unforgiving blood child, will be taken under her grace. The moon, he said, revokes all names and severs all ties with the land of those willing to bear the wrath of her child, and makes them into true nameless bastards - pure from their life on earthen ground, pure under the wash of her white haze. The moon becomes their mother, he said. They become creatures of the waves and children of the moon.

Then each newborn child under her watch is given a destiny, the man continued. The moon gives hope to the barren, heart to the soulless, and meaning to the desolate. Even a bone thin orphan as he was could be given life again, if he truly relinquished his fate and soul to her.

He earnestly wished the meaning the moon had for the last day and night. He had become one of her children, yet the moon had allowed him to be sentenced to land, the province where she could only watch, yet not interfere. She glowed the same beautiful luminescence as before. The boy felt that it was a betrayal, yet could not become angered, and instead sat bewildered and forlorn, ardently searching for a reason where he knew he would not find one.

"Hey, ah, Rohan." He heard far from his right. He started and unwedged himself from the porthole, his skin harshly pressed pink with the grate of wood. Rohan turned towards the voice, and even though the figure was thrown into darkness, he gradually recognised it as the man he had freed first. They had spoken earlier and he had expressed that he used to be called Mordechai.

"Catullo wants you," he said. The boy looked gravely at him for a moment then slowly slid off of the barrel and ghosted up the steps behind him. His shoulders were weighed with anxiety.

The deck was as quiet as he had ever heard one be - then again he had grown into the crevices of the livelihood of lawless men, and subdued wouldn't be a word he would use to describe it. The moon followed his steps doggedly. Mordechai stopped in front of the captain's quarters and to the side courteously, allowing Rohan access to the unadorned door. The boy looked at the man quizzically, with more than a twinge of apprehension, then slowly slid through the door.

It was dimly lit inside, with the customary clutter associated with the former slave ship. Instead of crates and rotting barrels, however, maps and diagrams were spread over the table, emptied mugs rolled on the floor, and a stiff looking cot was shoved up against the wall to make room for the enormous table that dominated the closet. There was one chair, cramped in the corner, and Catullo sat on the cot, perfectly able to rest his elbows on the table.

He hadn't looked up because he had been already glaring at the door before Rohan had entered. He swallowed and closed the door behind him.

Rohan knew Catullo as in the first mate Catullo. He was the captain's shadow, the ambiguous yet perpetual presence by his side. He would hear his voice, harsh and demanding, shouting commands more than he would hear his captain's. Yet he had never broken words with the mangled man. In essence, he was just as terrifying as the man that he had traded his freedom to. When the captain would be raging for blood, reason fleeing him long before, Catullo would be standing quietly by his side, then lean in close and whisper words of wisdom.

Rohan did not know the captain Catullo, however. Would he be harsher, more inclined to punishment? Would he drive the men, still slaves in his eyes, into the floorboards? How would he treat a mere boy like him?

"What's your name, boy?" He demanded.

He shifted uneasily. "They named me Rohan, sir."

"I didn't ask what they named you, I asked you your name."

"Rohan, sir."

He grunted. "Can you read?"

The unusuallness of the question dumbfounded him, and he stood there, fumbling for an answer, steadily becoming more panicked when his mind continued to stutter. Then, he choked out, "Sparingly, sir."

Catullo snatched one of the papers on top of the clutter and flicked it towards him. "Read this," he said.

Rohan paused, then quickly stepped forward and held the paper carefully in his hands. In truth, his reading was limited to the things that he had picked up when he was younger, a savage little weed clawing and biting other little weeds for scraps. But, he had been alive long enough to recognise a death note when he saw one.

"It... It's a death note. Man unidentified. Body at sea." Half of it he guessed. But, apparently, it was close enough.

"Slaves," he said, "Are unskilled, uneducated, and incapable of tasks of normal men. Their lives are expendable. That's why they're so popular - if one dies, go buy a new one. If a skilled man dies, there goes six years of training."

He looked at Rohan pointedly. The boy was unsure of what Catullo meant.

"These slaves cannot sail a ship for the life of them. Nor can they, apparently, handle heights very well. That is the third that fell from the masts since we set sail."

Rohan's brow furrowed. He looked at Catullo with apprehension, trying to gauge what he was getting at. He was too cautious to hope.

"A man cannot wrestle with the sea if he is blind. He cannot find shelter from a storm if he cannot see a shore, he cannot navigate his ship past the jagged teeth of coral and rock, and he cannot ensure his men's safety if he cannot foresee the dangers eyesight warns him of. Someone, who will not die as soon as we hit a crest, needs to be my eyes. And no one under my command will sit idle while the rest work."

He paused.

"Boy, Rohan, you will be my eyes. You start when the sun rises."

Catullo ruffled some papers and turned slightly to the side, bending over a map. When Rohan didn't immediately leave, the man looked up and barked, "Dismissed."

Slowly, Rohan turned, reaching for the door handle slowly. He opened it, quietly slipping through the crack he made. Before he was fully out, Catullo snapped, "And, boy, tell that slave girl the same. I want to see her cleaning the deck until it's as polished as a mirror."

He nodded, then realised Catullo couldn't see his head. He muttered a "sir" then darted out of the door, shutting it heavily behind him. He let out a breath he didn't realise he had been holding.

He looked up, out first to the crow's nest, then it slowly registered that the moon hovered just behind the main mast, where the it swayed. It was a beautiful, glittering image, his senses aligning to what he felt. He could not accurately describe what that moment was like when he would attempt to recall it, to summon it, to conjure it to mind, and it would remain as a ghost apparition in the back of his head, forever reminding him of things he would long forget. He inhaled the crisp salted air and slipped below deck.
"we'll fasten it with some safety pins and tape and a dream, and you're good to go, honey."





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Mon Jun 01, 2015 5:51 pm
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Auxiira says...



|The Girl, the savage|


The girl looked up from her kneeling position as Rohan scampered down the rigging. There was the thump of a rope being thrown to the deck and she tensed as the ship moved slowly closer to land. She could almost feel the heavy metal around her wrists and ankles again.

She gripped the rough wood of the scrubbing brush in her fist, barely feeling the harsh prickle of splinters against her raw blistered hand. Catullo was to sell the slaves. Catullo called her a slave. She couldn't bare to be sold again, to have another owner, to go back to struggling so hard to not be used. She almost almost almost wanted to crawl back into the cage and revert back to the growling, biting, feral child she had been so as not to be sold.

Her eyes darted across the deck until they found Rohan. His back was tense too, upset and stressed and distressed at the thought of his eviction from the crew, from losing the ship and the sea. The slaves shuffled edgily into a line on the deck when Catullo's men ordered them to. Slaves to the bone. They couldn't change. Her eyes skittered across the men, searching for Catullo and quickly finding him. She met his gaze for a brief moment before flicking away as it hardened.

She threw the brush into the bucket and scrambled to her feet, running across the deck barefoot to grip Rohan's hand until her knuckles whitened. He glanced down at her, then squeezed her hand reassuringly. Catullo eyed them before turning to talk to the man who had just arrived on the deck. The girl looked him up and down, then moved closer to the boy.Slaver. She almost growled, but didn't want to draw attention to herself. She could feel herself shaking but attributed it to anger and anticipation rather than fear. She couldn't allow herself to be afraid. She wouldn't be afraid.

The new man moved amongst the slaves with a critical eye, checking the men's build, evaluating the women, prising open mouths to check the state of teeth. The girl remembered that. She remembered biting far too many people in an attempt to be let go. She hated being treated like an object, like livestock to be sold, even if that was the truth of the matter. She moved to shuffle behind Rohan's back, one hand still gripping his, the other thumbing the hem of his shirt.

The slaver's gaze slid over to the two of them, set aside from the group of slaves, but not with the crew, and measured them up quickly. He turned to Catullo and the girl felt a deep ache in the pit of her stomach. She wasn't afraid, no, she couldn't be afraid.

"These to be sold?" He demanded in a thick accent. The girl watched Catullo, waiting for his reply, gripping Rohan's shirt ever tighter.

He regarded them heavily, and his expression was stoic. "Those," he said, "we will discuss later. However, I want 500 for the lot of these." The girl chewed at her lip. He hadn't said no. He might still sell them.

Catullo gestured to the line of weary slaves. The slaver regarded him for a few short moments, glanced at the slaves, then shook his head.

"Not worth that. I give you 300."

Catullo scoffed. "4."

The russet haired man pursed his lips. "350."

"375."

The slaver threw one last look over the slaves. "Pah. You have deal." He gestured across the side of the ship, and a man came onboard with a small chest. The slaver counted out the gold, then handed it to Catullo. His gaze landed on the two children again.

"Those?" He gestured to them with one hand.

Catullo looked down upon them again with the same weighted stare. His gaze rested on the girl, before sliding onto Rohan. It lingered there, and in response the boy puffed his chest up and stood straighter. Yet, he gripped her hand as tight as she gripped his.

"The girl," he said slowly. "10."

"5."

"Deal." And Catullo turned around, dismissing them, and reached his hand out for the single coin that the slave dealer dropped into his hand. The man holding the chest put it on the floor and casually snatched the girl's upper arm and arm and began to drag her over to the rest.

The girl felt the pit in her stomach fall out and fall into the sea somewhere far away. She couldn't - wouldn't - never ever be a slave again. Enough, she had had enough. She screamed as if touched by a branding iron again, thrashing against the man's grip. He responded by tightening his hands around her arms. Lashing out with her legs until he let go of one of her arms, she spun around and bit him until the coppery taste of blood trickled into her mouth. The man cried out and shoved her away from him.

She slid across the wood of the deck, then scrambled to her feet in a crouch. The man nursed a bleeding ring on his wrist. She spat his blood out with a thick gobbet of spit, then bared her teeth. A low growl rumbled up her throat.

The slave trader stared at her, astonished. He turned to Catullo, an indignant frown on his brow.

"You sell animal, not slave!" He stabbed a finger at the girl, watching them with hostile eyes. "I cannot sell that. I don't want that."

Catullo simply glared at the girl, anger burning at the back of his eyes.

"Give me money back. I don't take her." He held his hand out demandingly. "5."

Catullo's glare turned on the man. He tossed the coin, seemingly aiming for the man's feet, but it skipped and skittered away and off of the side of the narrow deck. The slaver stared at him, then reached for a dagger at his hip.

The pirates responded in kind. Cooly, Catullo said, "Take your dogs and your slaves and leave, while you still live."

The slaver hesitated, his hand still hovering at his hip for a few seconds, before he dropped it. He nodded to the man, who scurried to take the coin, before picking up the chest and turning on his heel. His men ushered the slaves off of the deck and he followed, with a chilled glare at Catullo as he disappeared.

The girl stopped growling as he left her sight. She almost slid out of the crouch, but decided against it as she met Catullo's glare. She felt her shoulders tense. She refused to let any words pass her lips. He had no need for her words.

"Kadrian." He snapped. One of the pirates, with long scraggily blonde hair, turned. "Take the girl below deck and tie her. Gag her as well."

Kadrian looked between Catullo and the girl, then sighed. He approached her warily, his hands raised carefully. She bared her teeth at him, her eyes darting from the gangplank, to him, to Rohan, then back again. As he moved closer, she took a step back. Not getting caught was the first course of action. A low grumble slid from her throat. She had been gagged before. She had not liked it.

Her eyes flicked pleadingly to Rohan as the pirate came closer. She didn't want to leave him, didn't want him to leave her behind. He looked desperately at her, then strangled out, "Catullo!"

Rohan darted in front of Kadrian, and the dagger that the girl had seen before was in his hand. He slashed it in front of him, and the pirates laughed.

"The boy continues to defend the savage!" One of the pirates belted. They chuckled.

"Please, Catullo! See reason!" Rohan pleaded.

"I've seen plenty reason, boy. She is a savage."

"She can scrub the decks! Help with the ropes! You can't run a ship with this few people!"

Rohan continued to block the pirate, who sighed with exasperation and turned to Catullo. The mangled man glowered, then barked, "Take them both down."

The girl gave a choked cry. "Not Ro'an!" She straightened up, stamping a foot. "Ise t'bad one, not 'im." She glanced from Catullo to Rohan, a contrite frown pulling her lips down. Her gaze settled on Kadrian, her lips pulled in and thin. His arms were still raised in front of him slightly.

The pirates jeered at her protest and she turned to hiss at them. They laughed in return.

She balled her hands into fists. She didn't like this. She didn't want Rohan to be hurt, but didn't want to end up back in the dark again. She didn't want to be the savage they called her.

"Me. Juss me." She uttered, stepping around Rohan to confront Kadrian. "...please."

The man paused, and glanced back towards Catullo. He glowered, one hand gripping his dagger, then swiftly turned away. Kadrian shrugged and took the girl carefully by the arm. She was rigid and tense, he lips mashed together so as not to do anything she knew she'd regret. Kadiran felt her tremble under his hand. She glanced up at him wild eyed before her gaze spun away and fixated on the deck. None of her moved except her legs as he ushered her towards the hatches, a bundle of pent up energy.

She dug her heels in as he opened the hatch to go down into the hull, but glanced at Rohan and made to go down the stairs. Kadrian caught the movement and dropped the hatch noisily.

"Ach, Catullo, this ain't right." He stood his ground as Catullo turned his glower on him. "She ain't a savage. She pretends to be one, and mighty well at that, but she ain't one. She's just had ta fight all 'er life."

"Would you like to join her, then?" Catullo growled. "Or would you rather join the slaves?"

The pirate paused. His eyes darted about the deck, to where the slaves had dissappeared on land, then to the girl in his hands. He sighed, then resolutely reopened the hatch. He ushered the girl down.

She didn't say a word as he took her down to where the slaves had been kept. A whimper escaped her clamped lips as he tied a rope around the raw skin of her wrists. He tied her ankles to one of the rings attached to the hull, then turned to her with a regretful frown, a handkerchief in his hand. He crouched down in front of her, meeting her wary eyes.

"What's yer name, kid?"

She shook her head at him and responded in a quiet voice. " 's girl, or bitch, thing, creature, animal, savage. I's has no name."

He observed her with pitiful eyes. "How long 've ya been a slave?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. Can't 'member not being'un."

He fell silent, twisting the square of cloth in his hands. After a few minutes, he held it up. "Can I?" She nodded, opening her mouth obligingly for him. He tied it around the back of her head, then stood. "I'm sure this won't be fer long. Catullo'll see sense after a while." With that, he turned and left, the hatch clattering as he shut it behind him.

The girl sat staring at the dark. She hadn't missed this, the empty, lonely dark. She shuffled closer to the hull, trying to lean against the wood and take pressure off of her shoulders. The dark was one of waiting. Waiting for food, for water. Waiting to be released. She would wait.
You read faster than Usaine Bolt sprints xD - Deanie 2014

I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. - Cathy, Wuthering Heights





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Tue Jun 09, 2015 9:45 pm
Craz says...



|Rohan|


Rohan dangled dejectedly on the railing, the heels of his threadbare shoes thumping against the wood. His fingers, callused and bit down to the nail, picked at his splinters distractedly, and blood welled out of his open cuts. The waves were choppy, and occasionally he would shift to maintain his balance on the edge. The sun, which was especially heavy and humid that day, weighted down on him with an unpleasant condescending eye. The boy perspeirated softly and whistled to himself.

He had forgotten where he had learned the tune. It played in his head, like a fanciful conviction, whispering with the distant throb of memories that he could not find the reach to grasp. It frustrated him, sometimes; he could sense an importance tingling at its tail, but it eluded him. Other times, he simply whistled its enigmatic song, content in its rises and falls, finding home in its familiarity, even if he did not understand it.

That was what he was doing now. He needed that sense of refuge.

He glanced up, squinting against the harsh sun. He figured it didn't much like this little stretch of cliffs that they were anchored to, with its sun bleached white clay buildings, its withered plants clinging and clawing between cracked rocks, and its wandering, panting street dogs, which appeared as if apparitions on the streets to snatch at a chance scrap. The dirt was dry and chipped, gasping for moisture and coughing up plumes of dust. The city, clustered together against the wind, seemed to rise out of the bones of creatures long starved of life and buried deep beneath the ground where it was yet cool.

He felt the urge, like he always did when they landed, to explore the city's secret nooks. It was his inclination to leave something, anything, where no one would find it - simply as a promise of his return. He rarely had the occasion where he did return to a city he had been to before, except for the few that his Captain visited frequently. However, he felt that he could not do it this time, in this city. At least, not without the strange girl, with her eyes darting about with curiosity and wonder, at his side.

His whistle dipped down an octave, and for the first time he noticed the blood slowly trailing down his hand. He wiped it hurriedly on his pants and stuck his bleeding fingers in his mouth. He had not realized he had been picking at them again. He sucked on them, gazing at the horizon.

"Rohan!" The boy started and swiveled around, nearly slipping from his perch on the railing. He clambered down and quickly paced himself over to the man, the scarred man, the broken man, the mangled man called Catullo, who waited, in his narrow stature, with his arms crossed and his eyes accusing (as they always were).

"Yes, sir!" Rohan replied, tucking his hand behind his back and lowering his head. The boy's eyebrows knitted together involuntarily, and when he realized this, he forced them straight. He was scared, a fear long ingratiated into him from his growing up under the vengeful fist of the Captain, of any one above him. And, only being a boy, that was most people.

There was a pause. There was always a pause when speaking with Catullo. "Boy," he said, "how many people are needed to run a ship?"

In the surprise of the question, Rohan stumbled with a response. "At least fifteen." Then added "sir."

"And, how many grown men are on this ship?"

"Five, sir."

"So, how many do I need to recruit?"

"... Ten, sir."

"Good, good. At least you know how to count," Catullo said curtly. "I need you to go on land and spread the word. A child is less conspicuous."

Rohan wasn't sure what 'conspicuous' meant, or if he liked being called a child, but he nodded. He was about to turn away, but then Catullo stopped him.

"And, boy, bring that savage out for a walk. Maybe she'll get lost and become someone else's problem."

~*****~

Rohan towed the girl behind him as gently as he could, while still making sure that she couldn't stop and stare in the middle of the street. The light still simmered on the horizon, barely brushing upon the ground, and the sky seemed to burn with the sun's extinguishing fire. It was not yet dark enough to slip into the taverns. He felt that it was his job, at least until it was time for him to really work, to keep the girl from stealing out of his reach while he wasn't looking.

He paused and glanced around him carefully. To his left, the sea lapped against the docks. To his right, sailors began to meander inland, disappearing into doorways, either home or to spend that day's earnings. He was about to keep moving when he felt the girl let go of his hand.

She was crouching, her shaved head bent close to the ground. Cornered between her caged fingers, a crab darted two and fro, and as he watched she pounced on it and trapped it in a small bubble in her hands. She held it there for a moment, then yelped and stuck her finger in her mouth. The crab hurriedly scuttled away.

"Whassit?" She said around the finger in her mouth, looking up at Rohan. He sighed and smiled.

"It's called a crab," he replied. "They live all up and down the coast. I've seen some as big as my hand."

Her eyes widened and shone with wonder. She took his hand and splayed it out in front of her. "That big? Can's we eat them, then?" Her question reminded Rohan that she had barely eaten since she had been put down below. Kadrian had snuck her a few bites, but nothing that was enough.

"... Yeah, you can eat them." He glanced towards the darkening sky, then scanned the line of buildings again. He watched as a man ambled towards one of them whose door was cracked open, light glowing from the inside. His skin was withered past his years, deeply tanned like the boy's. Rohan bent down and took the girl's hand again, pulling her out of her crouch, and followed the man inside.

He glanced around quickly before he bent his head and scurried to the closest corner. Instead of taking a table, he squatted and leaned against the wall, pulling the girl with him. His eyes remained on the men in the tavern, darting to and fro as they shifted and moved.

"We have to wait a bit longer. It's not time yet." Rohan carefully pointed to the men, whose backs were weighted and hunched with unknown hardships. "They're too old, too beaten down. I used to watch the 'Capt recruit, or, well, those that he would send. You go for the young ones. The ones with no future."

Rohan's attention switched to the door as it swung open enthusiastically, and a man swaggered in. He was young, his steps hindered by an early visit to the bottle, and his right arm was encircled with a coiling snake. His hair was long and hung in blonde clumps. He laughed to nothing in particular and then collapsed at a table.

The boy pointed to him more directly. "What can you tell from him?"

The girl glanced at the man, tilting her head. There was a sense of neediness in the way he downed his ale, his unkempt presence reminded her of those the thieves had targeted when she had been with them. The way his shoulders slouched towards the ground and his brows were pulled down wasn't something someone who was confident about tomorrow had.

"He haven't got a job, and he don't think he can get'un." She crinkled her nose. "An' he drinks alot."

Rohan nodded. "But look at what he's wearing. Look at his tattoo. Fishermen don't wear tattoos - thieves, bandits, arms for hire, pirates do. People like him is what you look for."

The girl nodded, taking a mental note of the advice he was giving her. She understood what he was doing, on a certain level, giving her this lesson of sorts. Make her useful, give her skills that Catullo wanted so that he wouldn't throw her out, maybe let her in the crew. She touched the tattoo on her arm briefly, tracing the scar barring it. She knew thieves had tattoos. She didn't know whether pirates liked thieves or not. She didn't like them in any case.

"'Ow do you get'im?" She asked, peering up at Rohan in the dim light.

He shifted uneasily and tightened his lips. The boy was nervous - he still was not sure of his status as a pirate, and knew that his success or lack thereof could tip the scale. He readjusted his feet, as if anticipating himself for a plunge into icy water, and then stood.

"Come on," he held his hand out for the girl. "I guess we're going to find out."
"we'll fasten it with some safety pins and tape and a dream, and you're good to go, honey."





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Sun Sep 06, 2015 12:07 am
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Auxiira says...



|Little Flame|


She trailed Rohan through the town dejectedly, fingering the edge of his shirt so she didn't lose him. A bruise was blooming across her left cheekbone. Rohan's back was stiff in front of her. She hadn't seen his face since she had been hit, since she shielded him from being hit. Her lip wobbled as she tugged on his shirt, trying to get him to stop.

"Ro'an, too fast." She stumbled and tripped, sniffling as her knees hit the cobblestones. "I's sorry."

He halted when he felt her grip on his shirt jerk downwards, his arms lurching forward as if they were still pulsing with the stiffness he had clenched them into. There was a brief moment when the golden slenderness of his back did not invoke warmth and kindness, but a frigidness of anger that was familiar to her with maybe her slave holders, maybe with the black beast of the captain, but not with her Ro'an. Then, it rippled away like water, and his shoulders eased with an exasperated sigh.

He stooped to her level in a paternal way that she had begun to associate with him. His thick eyebrows were notched in concern, and his mouth frowned carefully.

His fingers fluttered over her steadily darkening cheekbone. "That fist was for me, little flame," he said. "If there is one thing I can do right, it's to get hit. Next time, let me take it like I should, okay?"

She pouted sulkily, turning her head away from his fingers. Just because it was meant fo him didn't mean he had to take it. He had saved her, and she was in no way close to repaying him for it. She wasn't sure if she ever would feel like she was. But she wanted to help him. And she didn't want him to feel guilty about it.

His ridiculously hopeful nickname lurched around her heart, making it twinge with something she was sure she had long forgotten. She sucked in a breath, meeting the endless forest that was his eyes.

"I's better at it. An' it don' hurt." She lied she shufflde to her feet. She turned around, scanning the streets until she found the way back to the ship. "We's asked 'nough people, no?"

He stared hard at her for a moment, then sighed once again. He looked at the black sketeton of masts gently rocking in the steady water unenthusiastically.

"I guess we'll find out."

She huffed, then worked her fingers into his hand, until their hands were clasped together again. She tugged him along gently until he was the one leading them back to the ship. He approached it with trepidation, even more so once he'd noted the open door to the Captain's Quarters.

"'S fine, Ro'an." She whispered, squeezing his hand gently.

His lips tightened and he gave her a short nod, but his expression did not change. He took a deep breath and knocked with forced bravery, shoving his body into full view in the doorway. He puffed up his chest, almost like one of those small strange birds that bicker over bread crumbs, and clasped his arms behind his back. He waited for Catullo to finish shuffling and scribbling on his papers.

When he did, thin wires were twisted around his nose and eyes in a half circle, and it took her a moment to realize what they were - glasses. Catullo's smouldering black eyes watched them almost predatorily, and then plucked away at their shuffling feet and averted gaze with a quick glance.

"Well?" He asked, leaning back in the chair he sat in. His scrutiny unsettled her and she shuffled along until she was half hidden by Rohan, away from the eyes that saw through any of her lies. "Can I assume that you managed to recruit men, or did our savage get into a fight?"

He knew that they wouldn't have dared to come back empty-handed. Though he wasn't the Captain, she found that he imposed respect rather than terror. And Rohan wanted to stay on the ship. Rohan was happy on the ship. So she'd help him stay there. She shook her head slightly, having understood that it was better to let Rohan do the talking.

"Just a little too much drink, sir." Then he paused and corrected himself. "One of them had a little too much to drink. Sir."

Catullo flicked his glasses onto the desk. "How many should I expect?"

She let go of Rohan's hand, spreading out hers in front of her and lifting up a finger for every man who'd said they'd come. Frowning when she realised she didn't have enough fingers, she still showed them to Catullo, peeking around Rohan's side.

"Tat many an'..." She dropped her hands and lifted four fingers. "Tat many."

"Fourteen?" He inquired, his expression not quite fitting into any mein she knew. She wasn't sure what number that was, but she assumed it was the one she had shown him. She nodded.

He did as well. So did Rohan. They all bobbed their heads in confirmation. The girl dropped her hands, then clutched at the back of Rohan's shirt. She didn't like this man, this strange mix of culture and sea brine that was harsh at one point then docile at the next, but always hard. There was a hard kernel in him that made her falter.

As if noticing her discomfort, he dismissed them with a wave of his hand. "We'll see what they're like tomorrow." As they shuffled out the door, he looked up again. "Oh, boy, Kadrian's got the keys. Put her back under deck."

Rohan stiffened, but nodded. They retrieved the keys from Kadrian. She ignored his regretful stare that landed on her and stuck to her skin. The girl didn't say anything as they trailed through the few members of the crew sleeping and down another deck. She handed Rohan her hands silently, staring at a knot in the plank in front of her. She wouldn't be a savage, maybe, but it hurt. It hurt seeing the outside, then being confined again. It hurt having Rohan lock her up then leave. Being a savage hadn't hurt like this. She didn't know what was preferable.

"I'm sorry, little flame." Rohan's whisper broke the silence filled with the clicking of the chains.

"I's fine." She rested her forehead on her knees. That way he couldn't see the beads at the edges of her eyes. A few beats later, his hand stroked the bare skin of her head before trailing away. She waited until she couldn't hear his steps before letting the tears drop.

~~~


The next day announced itself with the thud of boots above her head and the gentle lap of waves somewhere nearby. Huddled against the hull, she had tried her best to stop the cuffs from chafing. The raw burning around her wrists told another story. She'd find something to cover her wrists if she went out that day, she decided silently. She knew it made Rohan feel bad.

She was almost surprised when Kadrian came down with the key swinging from his finger, a small smile on his face. He set his lantern down next to her and sat.

"Coming up with me? Cap'n din't say no. You got ta stick to me though." She nodded vigourously, rubbing her wrists gently as the cuffs came off and scouring the small circle of light for something she could use. Kadrian's sunny disposition faded as he took in the red bands.

"Has you got somt'in' for..." she trailed off with a lopsided half-smile as he held out a handkerchief. She tore it in two and gritted her teeth against the stinging that came as she tightened the rags around her wrists.

Following him outside, she blinked as the sun pricked at her eyes. She glanced around the deck, and then the port and noticed some of the men that she and Rohan had recruited the night before. Catullo stood next to the wheel, surveying the crew. His gaze picked at her before flicking across the deck to where Rohan was scampering down from the mast. The boy's eyes caught hers and he gave her a smile before turning back to whatever he was doing.

The girl reached over and tugged gently on Kadrian's shirt. "What's I meant to be doin'?" The man tilted his head as if he hadn't actually thought about that.

"Let's ask the Cap'n." She followed him hesitantly across the deck to Catullo, feeling Rohan's inquisitive gaze on her back. She noticed him move so that he was within hearing distance, then linger and try and look busy as they stopped.

"Cap'n, she wants ta be helpful. What can she do?" The girl wasn't sure if his forthright manner was the best way to talk to the Captain, but hovered behind him all the same.

He glanced distractedly at him, but didn't seem phased by the offhanded way he was addressed. "I don't know, Kadrian. Do something with her. Just get her out of the way."

"Sure, Capt." He clapped Catullo on the back, and the girl sucked in air through her teeth. The knarled man turned slowly, his eyes those of a black plague, but Kadrian whistled and whisked down the slightly curling steps. The girl quickly followed.

"Okay, so," he started. "The Cap't is a busy at the moment, so I'm gonna show you how to check whether the ropes are safe or not." He considered her for a few seconds. "D'you know what a frayed rope looks like?"

She looked up at him, frowning for a second before shaking her head. She didn't even know what frayed meant. A few seconds later, a small length of rope was pressed into her hand. She turned and saw Rohan hovering next to her. He offered her a small smile before looking up at Kadrian with wide eyes, as if he were asking to stay. Kadrian sighed, then nodded.

"See here? The rope's started gettin' thin, and that's dangerous. Rohan here might be light, but the rest of us aren't and if the rigging's like that, then someone's gonna fall." He took the rope from her and twisted it between his hands and then tugged. It gave way with a sharp snapping and her eyes widened.

"How's you check t'riggin' ten?" She cocked her head at him. "I's light, I coulds check?"

He shrugged. "You could try."

Rohan shifted nervously next to her. "Wouldn't it be better if she tried something else? It is her first time."

The girl turned and glared at him. "I's could do't."

Kadrian paused, contemplating and nodding his head as the two children glared at each other. Finally, a decision crossed his face. "Rohan, why don't you go on up there with her?"

He hesitated, but then nodded reluctantly. "I guess... I could."

He looked upwards, towards the tangles and the brambles of the tendons of the ship, each slash of rope blackened by the whispers and the wails of the blue water and deepening sky. As the little girl tipped her head back to listen to the rustle and crack of the ship's language, she saw the silhouettes of hardened men swinging through the vast expance above them like graceful birds, and tasted the saltiness of freedom on her tongue. When Rohan turned to her, she turned to him.

He asked, "Are you ready?"

She expressed her eagerness the best she could. She yearned to touch that world above her with her fingertips, and grasp it with the same surety she has come to clutch the older boy's hand. She yearned to feel the rope sway below her feet and to look down on the world, the world that had tried to cage her beneath it's gritty and dank skin. She yearned to look up and to see Rohan, a boy who was so thoroughly a native of the stretching canopy above, a boy who could listen to the ship's language and decipher it with a knowing ease and respond in the same fluency, a boy whose eyes said everything, to look down at her with a smile and a sigh, gently extending his hand out for her to catch.

"Try to step where I step. If you feel yourself slipping, call out to me." Rohan hoisted himself onto the ropes, and when he was a decent enough height up for her to get on, he turned and waited patiently.

She glanced back at Kadrian quickly, then set a foot on the twist of the rope in front of her, testing her weight on it before leaning forward and grabbing at it with her hands, wincing imperceptibly as the skin over her knuckles cracked slightly. Unsettled by the way the mass of intertwined ropes moved beneath her as she placed her hands and feet at the same points that Rohan had. Above her, the wind whistled between the masts, making the taut ropes running up them crack and snap against the salt blown wood. The whistle reminded her of the comforting sounds her friend made - reminded her that he was there with her.

She moved upwards towards him, bouncing along with the rigging, her toes curling on the rough rope. Arriving just underneath Rohan, she looked up at him, a small smile glinting in her eyes. She could almost feel a silent music pumping through her. Her toes slipped slightly on a sea-sprayed patch of rope, but the skip of her heart only made it more exciting. This, she thought, was being free. Or maybe even just a part of it.

"Higher." Her voice came out as a breathy command, almost giddy. She met Rohan's eyes. She wasn't sure how she looked to him, but she could feel her eyes wide, a grin splitting her face. "Higher." This seemed a part of her that was slowly fitting into a hole she had never known she had, one that had been swallowed by bigger ones a long time ago.

A hesitant smile tugged at the boy's lips, until he was grinning along with her. "Higher," he repeated. Eagerly, he pulled and twisted himself farther up, intertwining his thin body with the rope that snaked around him in the wind. It almost appeared that he had gotten himself tied in a knot at a certain point, until he emerged without pause on a clean stretch of sky. He was heading towards the crow's nest.

He was just as ardent to show her his world as she was to plunge into it.

She crawled after him as quickly as she could, her unacquainted feet throbbing with her heartbeat. He waited at the top, his fingers already gripping the lip of the small wooden box. When she was safely behind him, he crawled inside, disappearing in a flash of light as the sun blazed and stung her eyes. A narrow arm reached out for her, made finer by the white sunlight, and the girl was whisked within.

She settled inside the crow's nest, resting on the balls of her feet for a few moments. She wasn't used to using her body that way - her arms and legs and shoulders burned comfortably with the effort of having hoisted herself up the lengths of rope and knots. As she listened, she could hear the gulls and the wind and the snap-crack of the ship's ropes with more acutely than before. They thundered through her ears like the chorus of a song - unforgettable and beautiful.

After a few seconds, she grasped Rohan's proffered hand and pulled herself to her feet. The view imposed itself upon her and she drunk it in, unable to contain her awe. She had never seen more than dark rooms, or alley ways, or expanses of ocean. She had never thought that the land stretched so far. Looking down, the men on the deck and waiting for Catullo's signal to board were so small, so inconsequential that she couldn't help but giggle slightly. She turned to Rohan, stil watching her, and gave him a quick squeeze, the most she could manage in the reduced space.

"Ank you, Ro'an."

~~~


"Come on, little flame!"

Rohan swung from one stilt of wood to another, with much more confidence than an undergrown and undernourished boy should have been capable of. When he reached the other side, his arched feet landed easily on the wood, and he turned to swish the rope back to where the girl gripped the mast. His face was elighted - even though he had never quite suffered the same tragedies the girl had, his skin held thier own mysterious landscapes that only he knew the map of, and he had never known what it was like to play with another around his age.

When the rope came to her, she gripped it nervously in her small hands. She looked from the boy to her feet, and the faraway harsh reality of the hard deck in between her wiggling toes. She looked at the boy again, unsure of her ability to not plummet to her death.

He called to her, called out his sweet little name for her, but he seemed to be particularly far away.

"Ro'an!" She called. She did not want him where she could not follow, and for now that was the flight in between the masts; a monsterous distance for the little girl.

She watched as his wild, brilliant smile faded, and a small whispy breath of curved lips replaced it. She recognized it: he often smiled like that when he had to help her repeatedly, usually with a task that he could have done much quicker. He motioned for her to toss the rope back, and she did so degectedly.

"One day, little flame," he said as he gracefully landed next to her, "you'll be able to go anywhere on this ship. Don't worry about it if you can't now."

She nodded, and together they descended. He had already shown her where the frayed ropes were, and told her how often they wear. She carefully held this knowledge in her mind, as if it were a precious stone or a particularly scandalous secret.

When her toes touched the uneven wood of the deck, Rohan was already planted still, his head ducked and his shoulders stiff. She did not need to see his crooked shadow or hear the rumbling timber of his voice to hear who it was.

Catullo stood over them, and a string of unfamiliar faces peered from behind him. She looked up at them with wide eyes and thumbed the back of Rohan's shirt as she shuffled closer to him.

"Sir." Rohan said, staring at the tips of his threadbare boots.

He stared at the boy for a long moment, then turned to the curious expressions behind him.

"Does this look like a daycare?" He exclaimed to them. They shouted as one beast their disagreement. "Do my masts and ropes look like a playground, and not a place where men slave away and fall to their demise?" They shouted, a little more reverently, their answer.

"If not, then why are there children treating my ship as such?" They did not reply, and Catullo turned his frigid glare upon them. "Get out of my sight, slaves."

The girl bristled at the word, tensing. Before Rohan could calm her, she was stamping her foot and hissing at him. "Ro'an i'nt a slave. Take't back."

Rohan's head immediately swiveled around to stare at her in terror. He snatched her hand roughly, squeezing until she could feel each bony nub of his fingertips. "Don't talk back to the Captain, little flame," he whispered huskily under his breath. He scowled and gritted his teeth, almost like he was going to punish her right then and there, but his eyes flashed a frantic message that told her to play along and be quiet.

Her lips mashed together contritely, her stick-like limbs trembling with barely restrained anger. Rohan could see the fury smouldering in her eyes. Even if she had contained the act of a savage, there was still a primal energy that moved her that seemed to threaten people with its mere presence. She opened her mouth to respond and he wasn't sure what she would reply.

"Little flame?" Catullo's scornful voice cut through whatever she had been about to say, mocking the name with his mere tone. She turned those burning jade orbs on him, unable to even articulate the anger that made her impossibly still.

"Remove yourself from my deck and stay below. Both of you. Next time I hear either of you breathe, the slave girl must have an actual name and the tween deck better be so spotless that I can eat off of the floor. If it isn't, then it's a lash for every speck of dirt I see. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yessir." Rohan said quickly, then took his chance to drag the girl below deck.

The girl twisted and squirmed until he was forced to let go of her for fear of breaking her arm. Anger smouldered in the depths of her eyes, but she no longer seemed close to combustion.

"I hate 'im," she spat, before whirling around and storming down another deck. Rohan could hear the wet splash of water from a bucket and the girl's indistinguishable muttering. He sighed, and grabbed a rag off of a nearby crate from himself. She could hear him moving things around from where she sulked.

After a while, she broke the silence. "I's ne'er had a proper name before."

The shuffling paused. After a moment, she heard him say, "Well, neither did I. Catullo named me."

She started, glancing over to where his voice had come from. "Really?"

"Yeah." He had begun to scrub the floor. "I don't really remember it clearly. Sort of like I don't really remember ever coming here. The 'Capt's ship was just always there. And one day - the sun was really hot that day, and I had been covered in something greasy and red, maybe some kind of oil, I think - and Catullo just looked at me and said, 'A boy like you needs something proper to go by' and next thing I knew the crew started to call me Rohan."

The girl remained silent, beating down the rearing head of jealousy inside of her. She'd never had someone care for her like that, except maybe him. Even though he had a place he belonged, he hadn't necessarily been treated well.

But he'd had a place he belonged. He still had one.

And she wanted one. She wanted one so badly it hurt. What she had with the boy seemed like the beginning of somewhere and she was fighting for it, she was fighting for it how she knew, but she wasn't sure whether it was working. The words to tell the boy that fell just short of her tongue, dropping into the pit of unsaid things her mind harboured. They lay there, writhing and squirming, festering. And like that, she pulled back a little.
You read faster than Usaine Bolt sprints xD - Deanie 2014

I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. - Cathy, Wuthering Heights





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Craz says...



|Rohan | Finding Home in the Moon|


Rohan didn't quite know what to call this feeling.

He felt it often as of late. It made him uneasy, skittish, and it rested in the ache of his bones like a plague. It would sneak upon him at inopportune moments, snatch at his breath, and steal away with his peace of mind. What made it worse was that it often came and left him feeling helpless and desolate - a burden that was strapped and buckled down upon his thin shoulders with little reprieve. And, what he noticed, it mostly came to him when he thought of the girl he saved those weeks ago. And what might happen to her next.

His body throbbed with injuries both old and new. While Catullo himself wasn't one for physical contact, he wasn't the only fist on the ship that could touch him. As the girl's mistakes and outbursts piled up, so did Rohan's daily backhands and bruises, as word had gotten out to blame him for what she did. She didn't know it, and she never would. He made sure of that.

The ropes creaked underneath him. He turned, the pale sliver of moon in the sky reflecting in his whitewashed green eyes. The girl smiled up at him, her darkened and usually dirty skin painted grey and her face a half circle of innocence. He was momentarily taken aback - an image of the growling little thing crouching in a cage rising in his mind - before he shook himself and returned her greeting with a quiet smile.

"Ro'an, there'r lights in the town." She said, pointing. "Why's that?"

"I don't know." And, indeed, a faint halo of warm color glowed amongst the winding streets of the port town, as if a small palm sized sun had been placed under its cobblestones, chasing away the peaceful slate grey of the night. He pondered the sight for a moment, and his acute ears picked up the familiar banter of human activity of padding feet, conversation, and ghostly music.

"A festival, maybe."

"What's that?"

He often forgot, and was often reminded, of how much she wasn't aware of yet. "A festival is when people celebrate something together, sort of like a holiday. People sell and eat a bunch of stuff and play games and dance."

He heard her gasp in excitement. "Could we go?"

Despite himself, he turned to once again look at her face, alight with wonder. He was tired. So, so tired. He yearned for a solace that he could no longer find among the sleeping mumbles of the men on the ship, or one he could find when he lost himself in the winding tales he would spin for the girl, some half truths and other utter lies, as her eyes drifted closed and as she tucked herself further under his arm. The only peace he felt was when he gazed up at the moon and she gazed down on him, during that hour when the ocean would finally seize its lapping tongue to listen to her lullaby of silence and Rohan would taste that strange word Home.

He felt his will wilting. He could not say no to her.

He cast an uneasy eye on the captain's quarters, where a sole flickering candle winked at him through the warped window. He sighed, and the girl grinned, as that was his signature way of going with whatever expedition she concocted. They both lowered themselves down from the ropes, careful to avoid the floorboards that creaked, and slipped off to the mainland.

The docks were quiet except for the occasional bark and keen of a stray dog. A chill had worked its way in through a brisk wind from earlier, and it sank into his bare shoulders like poison. He shivered and casually rubbed heat into his arms. When the winding streets became noticiably more lively, he slowed and brushed his hand against the girl's shoulder, quietly motioning for her to slow down as well.

She brushed him off and darted forward, bumping into people as she passed, who grunted in indignation. As her small form disappeared beneath a curtain of heavy boots, Rohan shook off his surprise and chased after her, ignoring the swearing that followed him.

"Wait!" he called, chasing a shadow of the girl. She slipped between bodies, moving with a grace she hadn't had before. As music began to fill the air, her steps would turn into little skips that moved with the beat from time to time, allowing him to catch up before she moved away again. As she disappeared further into the crowd, her haphazard route gained a sense of purpose and she moved toward the edge of the crowd. He managed to find her for a second as she paused in a little bubble of calm, a grin splitting her face, but then she was gone again.

"Out of the way." The deep ostentatious voice wasn't particularly loud, but carried its presence over the congregation of shuffling bodies. In a split second, Rohan processed three new sounds that he hadn't noticed before - the clop of clean hoofs on cobblestone, the surprised cries and scattering of feet, and the clink of metal on polished metal. He turned, but Rohan knew status like he knew the curve of his cracked hands.

Four elevated helmets bounced softly as their tamed beasts strode forward, their proud heads snorting as people stumbled out of their way. Rohan watched them as he would watch a thief cut a sleeping woman's throat - with disgust, panic, and horror. He took in their pointed beards, their patches of rank, and their gloved hands resting on the hilt of their pristine swords, as if they expected sudden violence out of a crowd of bent faces. Out of a habit he hadn't known he had learned, he spat on the ground.

Then, he noticed a familiar little shadow standing by the horses' feet. The girl stood perilously close to the animals, gazing up at the knights with wide eyes. They shone with a gleam akin to what light them up when he showed her something new, a look he had thought reserved for solely him. An object fell from the saddlebag of one of the knights and a flash of panic caught him as she darted forward to grab it from the floor. She had disappeared into the crowd around the knights before anyone had even noticed, swifter than he had thought.

Rohan immediately chased after her. She was quick, but Rohan had always been quicker. He followed her distinct hunched figure and hitch in her step, both from her years in a cage and chains, as she swerved into a jagged maw of an alley. When he reached its mouth, the alley was still.

"Little Flame?" he called. There was a moment of silence, and then he heard the shift of feet sliding on wet stone, and he saw the flicker of the reflecting moon ripple as a body slid underneath it and then recede back behind the cover of a stack of rotting crates. Rohan sighed and approached the girl's hiding spot.

"I see you, you know." He crouched down and crossed his arms on his knees. The girl had folded herself into a small ball, cradling the stolen object in her grasp. The moon's light flashed briefly in her tentative eyes as she glanced at him.

"What were those people?" Her voice was quiet, the usual rasp from unuse a distant hum.

"Knights," he said flatly. "Stay away from them."

"Why?"

"They're bad."

She gave a noise of protest. "What makes them so bad?"

"They kill people like us."

"People like you," she said sharply, but then squeezed her arms together in apology. After a moment, she relented her grip on the hidden object enough to show Rohan. "What is it?"

He touched the object, flashing it down so he could see. "A book. Catullo has some of those." After her slightly bewildered look, he explained. "People write things down in them so they don't forget."

"Oh." She looked down at it with a renewed expression, and opened the leather-bound cover. Her fingers rubbed into the first page, feeling the charismatic grooves of words she could not yet comprehend. She squinted at them, but could not force the gibberish to make sense.

"Hey." Rohan's tone made her look up. "We need to go, now. We need to let Catullo know they're here."

"Why's that?"

"I told you," He gave her a steady look, "they kill people like me."

Rohan's skin seemed suddenly etched in shadows - his usual rich skin tone and flushed cheeks gone, and replaced with a landscape of greys and whites and blacks. His body appeared to have gone more still, and the severities of his inherit features were aggrandized, as if someone had taken his flesh and replaced it with metal and glass. The usual richness of his irises leaked and in their absence materialized a slate silver. He glistened and glittered in one startling moment, like the shimmer of pale moonlight on a nervous tide, before he took a haggard and surprised breath and in a blink of his eyelids blood rushed to their home in his cheeks once again.

He coughed, shivered, and decided to ignore the strange fit, writing it down to the humid air. "Come on," he said more kindly, and gently tugged the girl away from the bustle of the town. When it was safe, when he felt that it was safe, he pushed them into a run, and then into a sprint. He didn't particularly care who watched them or who they irritated, as long as they made it to the docks as soon as possible.

The wooden boards thudded beneath their harried feet. When they smacked onto the deck, Rohan barely allowed them enough time to catch their breath before he dragged them to the colored glass windows of Catullo's office.

The girl smartly tucked the book behind her back as Rohan pushed the door open. Inside, Catullo was seated at his desk, a stick of charcoal in his hand and papers scattered across its surface. He looked up, his smoldering eyes narrowing, and the flickering candle light danced upon the puckered scars across his slick arm, chest, and cheek.

"Knights," Rohan gasped, interrupting the Captain from questioning him first. "Spotted in the city. Heading towards the docks."

Catullo paused, his mouth parted, most likely halting in a lengthy reprimand listing all of the reasons why Rohan should not have barged into his office unannounced. Then he closed his mouth, a serious expression stretching at the man's scars.

"Are you sure, boy?"

"Yes, sir."

He looked at Rohan for a moment, as if weighing the possibility of the boy seeing wrong, and then commanded. "Go wake them up. Tell them we're setting to sea."

Rohan nodded, not looking back to watch the man unfold his lengthy body from behind the desk, the girl following on his heels. Before he opened the hatch, he turned to her.

"Go ring the bell," he said. She nodded, darting off a second later, and Rohan slammed open the hatch below. Thumping down the stairs, making as much possible noise as he could, he yelled, "Get up, get up! All on deck! We're going out to sea! Get up!"

Mumbled groans and curses was his reply, but bodies began to stir and dress. He jogged down the length of the ship, shouting, waking them up. "Go! Go!" He snapped. He didn't want to see another knight ever in his life again.

As the ship steadily woke, Rohan turned and scaled the stairs, the alarm bell striking his eardrums. He climbed up the ropes, darting up to the crow's nest, not letting himself breathe until he was safely to the top. He took gulps of air until he could see clearly enough to watch the criss cross of streets that collapsed onto the docks. No sign of the knights, but he could still feel their horses' precise clop-clop in his veins.

He squatted there, one eye on the city and the other on the darting figures below, at the girl still ringing the bell and nervously keeping the book behind her back. The anchor was finally raised, and the sails beneath his feet fluttered free before snapping against its tethers. The ship painstakingly drifted away from the dock until it caught wind, and headed out into the expanse of lapping water.

They sailed away from land for a good hour, a sharp command from Catullo keeping the lanterns unlit. The city was no more than a glimmer, a dark mirage against the glittering waves, and at some point the girl had clambered up to watch it beside him, rubbing the rough leather of the cover of the book fondly. Finally, at shouts from below, the ship began to kindle with light, ghostly lanterns floating and bobbing one by one.

"What does it say?" Her quiet, curious voice startled him, and he turned to her.

He peered into her lap, where the book rested. He squinted. He could barely read himself, and the low light wasn't helping.

"I don't know... something about knights." He pointed to the word he vaguely recognized. The girl ran her fingers over the pressed lettering, and then carefully flipped to a random page, pointing to another word. Rohan pronounced it, if roughly, before she ran her fingers down to the next one. And then the next. And the next.

Finally, she paused on a word, her fingers rubbing at the ink. "What's this one?"

Rohan scrunched his face at it, trying to place the letters of the alphabet that he knew to the word. "Uhm... Bo... So... larce? Late? Lak? Solak?"

"Solak?" She repeated. "What's that mean?"

"I don't know." They both stared at the word, as if willing it to make sense.

"Solak..." He heard her whisper under her breath.

"Do you like that word?" He asked hesitantly. Her mouth was open, mouthing the word over and over again. She quietly nodded.

"Solak." His head nodded curtly. "Do you want that to be your name?"

She twisted to him, the answer written across her delighted face. It changed her into another person, he thought, when she smiled like that.

"Solak," he said, his mouth quirking to the side, "Solak, my Little Flame."
"we'll fasten it with some safety pins and tape and a dream, and you're good to go, honey."





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Auxiira says...



|The Little Flame - Solak | Divide in The Moon|


Solak danced among the stars.

Her mind wandered as Rohan pointed out the different shapes - constellations, he had called them - that the stars were meant to make. He whispered to her in the crow's nest as the ship swayed gently in the night, gazing up at the growing moon. She had thought it was a large star, slowly breaking apart to become more stars, and then they gathered again. The few glimpses of the moon had been enough to fuel her fantasies for years. But Rohan told her stories of a woman, a mother to all the pirates and those who sailed the seas without a family. She wondered whether the moon was her mother then. She wasn't sure if she counted.

Shaking her head slightly, her attention strayed to the book that followed her almost everywhere now, to the stories and legends that filled the pages. From what Rohan had managed to read, knights were heroic and they always saved people. She ignored the twist in Rohan's lips every time she asked about them. Tucking her head into the crook of his shoulder, she nudged him slightly.

"Is there a knight?"

He shifted so that they both fit more comfortably together. "A knight here, you mean?"

"In the stars." She frowned slightly. "In the consell- const- constellations?"

His eyes flicked across the sky, darting from twinkling star to twinkling star, as he thought. "I think... yeah, I think I remember a knight one. I don't see it here, though. The moon only lets a few constellations out at a time, so maybe it'll show up later."

"Oh..." A slight wave of disappointment rolled over her. "Oh well." She hesitated a few seconds. "You really don' like knights, no?"

There it was, that look again. His mouth twisted, his nose wrinkled with distaste, and his eyebrows frowned over his averting eyes. However, it was brief; his face quickly fell into a neutral state that was only slightly disgusted. It was as much as he could do to pass off as unprejudiced.

"Knights are... complicated," he offered. "I've never met a knight like in those books, Solak. I don't know if those kinds exist or not."

A rise of protective loyalty swept her, solidifying her pout.

"Juss cause you don' know, don' mean they aren't there. An you're a pirate, so course you won' have." She pouted, pulling out of their hug slightly.

Rohan stiffened at the prod. He didn't look at her, instead continuing to gaze at the stars, but somehow it seemed different. Solak watched him, his side profile, the moon's light and shadows upon his young face that held an emotion older than what suited it. He said, distantly, "Yeah, I wouldn't know. But I do know that wherever a knight is, there's a dead pirate dragging behind him. I don't want that to be you or me."

She mumbled something under her breath, then wrapped her arms around his waist. "Don't worry Ro'an, it won't be." She snuggled a tiny bit closer, then looked up. "Promise." The importance of a promise had been quickly imprinted in her mind, even after the short time they had known each other. And she meant to keep her word to him, for as long as she could.

She thought over her idea. She was almost certain it would work. And Rohan would forgive her once he knew why. But he wouldn't be okay with it now, that she knew. She wasn't sure how to leave yet, wasn't sure why every time she thought about it, her chest seemed hollow. She had seen the bruises he tried so hard to hide from her, and knew they were because of her. Her place was not on a ship with pirates. Her place was not with him.

Nuzzling her face into his chest, she yawned. "I's tired."

He sighed, wrapping his arms around her and stroking her hair until she fell asleep.

~~~


The cobbles were cold in the morning. Her bare feet ghosted across the ground as she moved further from the ship. She'd reasoned that if she left early enough, no one would stop her. The distinct lack of protest from the few crew members awake allowed her to leave without waking her Ro'an. She had broken into a run once she reached the first buildings, a slight tingle of fear echoing in the air at the feeling of being alone and free. It crackled down her spine and settled in her heart.

Firm earth under her feet and the beginning of sunlight glinting against the tips of her growing hair, this was what she was born for. The hitch in her step frustrated her - she pulled her spine straighter, ignoring the discomfort. She could handle discomfort. Her hands unconsciously circled her wrists.

It wasn't hard to find the garrison. Rohan had avoided the streets around it. All she had to do was go where he wouldn't. Her steps slowed as the imposing gates came into view. Already she could hear noises from behind it. Loud grunts and noises of what she assumed was sparring reached her ears and longing rustled in her chest. She stumbled the final paces up the steps and laid a hand on the gate.

After a few seconds of hesitation, the gate gave way under her hand without prompting. She blinked, tripping backwards as 2 solid bodies walked into her. She gazed up at them for a few seconds before scrambling to her feet.

"I's Sola-"

"Why are they letting the beggars around here again?" Her hackles shot up before she could calm them, a frown firming on her brow.

"I's- I'm not a beggar." Her hand bunched amongst the fabric of her trousers.

The teen in front of her wrinkled his nose. "Of course you aren't. Just go back to whatever hovel you came from."

Solak's pout deepened. "I want to be a knight."

The teens- squires, she realised now- looked at each other before dissolving into laughter. "A knight? You? A street urchin?"

She gritted her teeth. People would always be the same. Her hands circled her wrists, disturbing the fabric there. Her chin jutted out defiantly. "Yes."

Their laughter stopped as they narrowed their eyes at her. As one took a step forward, there was a call from the gate.

"Enough you two, get back to your drills." They stiffened and pivoted, hurrying back inside. The man pushed off from the gate, his eyes sweeping her up and down. Analysing her. She stiffened, disliking the look he gave her. It was too close to that of the slavers for her taste.

"You want to be a knight?" She started at the lack of scorn in his voice.

She nodded. "Yes...sir."

A smile played on his lips at her reluctance to defer. "You said you were called Solak, yes? How old are you? Where are you from?"

"I think I's- I'm ni-nine?" She stared at her fingers for a second. "Nine. And I don' know where I's from." She gnawed at her lip for a few seconds. "I was a slave."

"Oh?" The man's voice turned sharp again. "And where's your master?"

"He was killed by pirates. They took us all, then I escaped. I'm not good at being sold." She shuffled her feet, curious about the questions, but not wanting to jeopardize any chance she had.

"Who named you?"

"A friend." If she looked carefully, she could see the edge of a number under the bottom of his sleeve. Maybe he had been a slave too.

The knight scoffed. "And is this friend of yours okay with you running off?"

"He don't know yet." She folded her arms over her chest, feeling the need to protect herself from the questions.

The man's eyebrows raised to his hairline, then took on a thoughtful dip. "It's not easy. You'll have to give it everything you've got, and then some."

Her lips curved upwards and the man was struck how different she looked, another person entirely. "I ain't died yet."

"Quite." He murmured in reply. His eyes fixed her for a few more seconds before turning. "I'm Nathail. Come with me."

She tripped after him, watching the gate close behind her.

"You do everything I say. You listen to the instructors. If I decide to let you become my squire once you've finished, I'll take you to have those marks covered up. For now, you deal with them. If you can make the others accept you despite that, then you're doing well." He stopped to look at her. "They will hate you, just for who you are. If you react, they'll get you thrown out."

"Were you a slave?" Her eyes darted to the ends of the numbers under his sleeves.

He nodded. "I'm giving you the same chance that was given to me. Don't waste it."

She followed him inside, where he showed her where she would be sleeping - a room full of similar cots - then to a seamstress, who looked her up and down, then tutted and handed her a pile of clothes and recommended a bath. Nathail showed her the baths, and waited for her to finish cleaning herself in the strangely warm waters before showing her where his rooms were.

"In the morning, as soon as you've finished eating, go into the courtyard and ask the instructor what to do." A pause underlined his next words. "Try and get there before the others. Once you've finished doing that, find the schoolmaster and introduce yourself."

She nodded, her head swirling. "What 'bout today?"

His lips tightened slightly at her common turn of phrase. She would soon learn to clip her drawl. In a way it was a shame. Having someone so markedly different would be good for the knights.

"Today you don't have to do anything." She stared up at him, at a loss of what to do if she didn't have to do anything. "Maybe you should say goodbye to your friend."

Her lips tightened unconsciously. "I'll wait outside for him. He'll find me." She turned to make her way toward the gates, then stopped, turning and bowing to the knight. "Thank you."

~~~


The sun was burning the tip of her nose, the steps warmed her legs. She ignored the jibes of the others who passed through the gate behind her. If she didn't move, Rohan would eventually find her. So she waited.

And waited.

It was when the sun was low and the shadows unwound from the mismatched buildings and the people traipsed home from a day's work that she noticed that one of the shadows watched her with a pair of cutting, brazenly green eyes. He was so still and figureless that he almost could have been mistaken as nothing more than a persistent presence of spots from being under the sun's blaze for too long. But Solak knew those eyes from anywhere. She had spent enough time looking up into them.

Solak slid from her cool rock against the knight's enclosed wall and padded over to him sullenly, dreading the argument that she knew was to come.

His narrow shoulders were made large and awkward from the coat that he wore, which swallowed up his thin arms. His head was wrapped in a borrowed scarf. The only part of him that she could see were his narrowed, accusing pupils. One of them was encircled in a darkening half moon of purple.

Solak cried out. She reached for him, but to her shock, Rohan flinched and shifted away.

"After everything I've done," he spoke slowly, "and after all the warnings, all the reasons why you shouldn't, couldn't, this is where you run to when you decide to leave?"

She sucked in a tiny breath through her teeth. Her arms crossed over her chest, a barrier to him. A barrier for her. "Where d'you want me to go? I don' belong wit' you, Ro'an, no when I's gettin' you hurt."

Her words slipped back to how they were before, betraying the emotion she felt burning in her stomach. She didn't want to leave him, wanted him to follow her, but that wasn't a fair demand. He had a place where he belonged, and she had yet to find hers.

"I might belong here. I's don' know."

"You aren't a knight, Solak. Even if they let you in, you'll still be treated like a..." he paused, then his expression hardened into grim determination. "like a slave."

She managed to conceal the flinch in a bare twitch of her fingers. "I's can try." Her eyes flitted from his face to the gate and back. "I's can' stay."

"You won't belong."

"I don' belong an'where."

"You belong with me." His voice was strained. Desperate for it to be true.

Her fingers reached up to touch the bruise around his eye gently. "No." Her arms snaked around his waist, pulling him close to her small body for a few seconds of warmth before she let him go. "G'bye, Ro'an."

She felt his body shudder. He almost appeared frail underneath all those layers, as if he needed her almost as much as she had needed him. But that couldn't be true. Rohan had his own people. He didn't need her.

She stepped out of the shadows, turning to walk back to the gates. When she turned back to look for him one last time, only shadows greeted her. He didn't need her. The gate closed with a resolute click behind her.
You read faster than Usaine Bolt sprints xD - Deanie 2014

I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. - Cathy, Wuthering Heights





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Mon Mar 28, 2016 2:20 am
Craz says...



|Rohan | Fate Knows Her Irony | a Year Later



Girls were very nice, he discovered.

He and smiled, his teeth glinting like the silver bits that flashed in his ear, and made one corner of his mouth rise higher than the other. His red and dirty sash was knotted low on his hips. His arms, bare and threaded with a ropy kind of muscle (his very pride), were crossed, because he thought that it made his arms seem bigger that way. The brick was hot against his back, but he held his oh-so casual pose against it. His long hair, black and curling at his ears, tickled him, but still he refused to acknowledge any semblance of discomfort.

Girls were watching him, and he had to act natural.

One of them giggled. She was shorter, but prettier, with hair that shined a shade of gold that he'd never seen before; almost like poured sunshine. And her eyes were paler and bluer than anything he'd ever seen. Then again, he hadn't been this far north in his life. He didn't think that they had seen someone like him from so far south, either.

The other girl smiled shyly but politely, and whispered some wisdom in the pretty girl's ear. They both seemed to be related, maybe cousins. He smiled wider. The other girl was pretty, too, though she didn't have the same yellow hair and blue eyes. But he liked the way she frowned at him.

Rohan finally caved in and adjusted himself when a carriage blocked the pair from view. Peeling his burning back from the wall and tucking the hair behind his ears, he took another moment to quickly dust the dirt off of his pants. Then he gathered his courage and took a confident step towards them, around the carriage that had paused in his way.

When he rounded the carriage, swaggering with what he thought was the utmost charm, he stumbled into what must have been a living, breathing wall of heat. He halted, and accidentally ended up scuffing the back of the man's shiny and very expensive shoes. He staggered away as he turned. Before he had time to apologize, the heavy weight of the man's scarred hand smacked upon his shoulder and shoved him away.

"Back, you rotten thief!"

Thief?

He tried but could not catch himself, and fell into the strange ditch that ran down the middle of the street, which trickled with debris, rotting water, and what must have also been piss. He looked up indignantly, his hand already upon the handle of his prized bone knife that he had borrowed a couple months ago from a bartender down the coast.

He was not some petty thief.

But the man had already turned his back and was proceeding to climb upon the carriage's front. He watched, flabbergasted, as the horses began to pull away. Rohan became more appalled, and then angrily embarrassed, when he saw a flash of golden hair through the window, and then the pretty face it belonged to, snickering down at him.

After a moment, Rohan picked himself up and looked down at his dilapidated state. He needed to take a dip in the ocean again.

~*****~

The water lapped at the hairs on his forearms, tickling him in greeting. The shock of the cold water had instantly eased the strange intensity of the sun, and had balmed the rashes on his skin from the polluted water. And he relished in the feeling against him, at the relief of pressure in his head. He dipped underneath the tide and welcomed the immediate, whispering silence. When he emerged, he whipped his slick hair out of his eyes and began to undress.

The clothes stuck to him, and made a whining shlucking noise when he peeled them away, like toddlers who were being ushered inside while the sun still glimmered on the horizon. He scrubbed at them with his fingers, squinting against the occasional spray of water. He did not know when he would get the chance to clean his clothes again.

He also didn't realize that he had been spotted.

Not, at least, until he finally differentiated the very human shouts from the ancient roar of water in his ears, and a churning in the water that was the distinct floundering of someone trying to fight the waves and finding it resisting as he waded farther out. He turned, instinctively reaching for a knife that he suddenly and realized with horror had been left ashore where it would not get lost at sea.

Then he froze at the sight of a barrel, gleaming like a sacrilege.

Rohan had never been congenial with guns. He didn't like the way they looked at him, or the way that they conveniently went off capriciously, as if possessed by their own ambitions or will to slaughter as they please. He didn't like that a man could shoot a man from a distance and never look into his face, either. It was a coward's weapon. It was a weapon that scared him more than most things.

Of course, when he registered what held the gun, he realized then what scared him the most. The distinct black and dark blue uniform with gold trim was like a plague moving towards him, up heaving his precious sea, metal shoulders glistening with teardrops of frothy foam and the cap upon his head clinking with the trinkets that named him a god; a god that befitted the privilege to execute a deplorable scrap to humanity like Rohan. A knight with a gun.

The knight jerked forward at Rohan's movement to his waist, his gun raising to shoot. Rohan instantly put his arms to his sides. His clothes, nearly as clean as Rohan was intending to get them, drifted about him.

"Walk forward, now!" Rohan could tell from the timber in his voice that he was young. His eyes slid to the shore, and he saw that two of his seniors waited for them. It was a patrol. They must have somehow spotted him from behind the treeline, where he had been careful to not be seen.

"Now!"

"Would you like me to dress myself first?" Rohan replied calmly, trying to hide the disgust in his voice. The young knight's face twisted in indignation, but he glanced behind him uncertainly.

"Grab your clothes, now! You'll dress on shore, where you can't pull any tricks."

Rohan wasn't sure what tricks he could pull now, naked, with no weapon, and a gun aimed at him with only a twitchy finger keeping him alive. Still, he slowly gathered his clothing, and took his time wading to shore, with the knight stiff at his back. The elder knights, he noticed, were much less agitated, but their sneers were significantly uglier. He dressed as the knights wanted him to.

"Gods, Miguel, put that thing down before you hurt yourself," one of them said to the twitchy one. Rohan kept his arms out, exaggerating his defenselessness, as the young guy quickly latched his revolver into its holster. He glared at Rohan, as if his stare was just as threatening. Rohan gazed at him smugly.

"What's that in you ear, boy?" The ugliest one asked. He was shorter, rounder, as stout as a gnarled stump, with greasy hair that jutted out from under his cap erratically. His thin lips moved as if he were chewing underneath his carpet of a grisly mustache. He spat on the ground, and took a step forward. There was a flash of a dagger at his side, and then cold metal touched the side of his face.

Rohan held still as the dagger tinked against his two silver earrings, and as the blade slid along the edge of his jaw, just hard enough that it was uncomfortable. He watched him as he pretended to be inspecting his jewelry, and held his eye when he finally decided to look at him.

"You like keepin' your worth in you ear, boy?"

The boy did not reply.

"You know pirates do that so none of their blood money gets lost at sea, right, boy?"

He remained silent.

"Are you deaf or stupid?"

Rohan gave him a hard, long look. The dagger still remained on his face, and he knew that if he shifted any more to the right that it would finally break his skin.

"Oh come on, Bert," Rohan almost jolted from the interruption from the third guard, a middle aged man with pale hair and tanned skin. His hand remained on the hilt of his gun, but he seemed relaxed, almost exasperated. "He just a kid, Bert. He probably think he looks like two bits with that in his ear. No need to harass the boy. He was just nude."

The three of them, the gremlin, the twitch, and Rohan, looked between each other. Rohan smiled, but it was not warm. The twitch looked nervous. The gremlin scowled. And, most importantly, the dagger shifted slightly away, as if the gremlin had forgotten to keep it pressed. Rohan's smile grew.

The man's meaty hand began to drop. As it passed Rohan's shoulder, Rohan reached and snatched at it, his palm missing the hilt and instead gripping the honed edge. He cried out, but somehow creed kept his wits about him and twisted the blade the rest of the way out of the knight's hand. It was free, and for a moment, Rohan was free. He was movement and action.

And then he was shot.

It was pain that reverberated in his ears. For a moment he thought that it was the physical agony itself that had turned him deaf and blind, but then his brain reminded him, strangely astutely, that the gun's flash and smoke had caused him to close his eyes and that the sound of the barrel had caused his ears to ring. He waited, and his eyes focused. The ringing turned into a dull yet persistent blare.

The world had turned into a panorama of startling blue sky and of torpid white clouds and of jagged slashes of trees throttling in the breeze. He blinked at it. He began to scream.

"Godsdamned, boy, shut the blazes up!" Rohan was kicked in the stomach. He shuddered and moved as if to go into a fetal position, but his leg had been gripped in the teeth of some hellish beast. He clenched his jaw shut, blood surging into his face and neck, and huffed laboriously through his teeth, a technique he'd learned to keep him from calling out in pain. He turned his open eye upon the knights that stood over him.

They were swearing, and were in the throes of an argument about who was going to carry him back to whatever bloodstained hovel they claimed was the creed of justice. Rohan began to wiggle away, pushing himself up with his elbows, towards the dagger that now laid in the sand, dripping in his blood. The gremlin saw him and pulled his head back by his hair. Rohan sucked in a breath, and glared.

"Where you think you goin, you lil' shit? Miguel! Pick this piece of rubbish up already."

Rohan squirmed some more as the twitch complained and began to pin him down and tie him with rope. The twitch backhanded him with something unnaturally hard when it was obvious that Rohan wasn't calming down. It was the gun that he had shot him with. Rohan blinked the spots out of his eyes.

They dragged him through town, Rohan swearing through his gag at passerby's and at the knights that held him. Every time he opened his mouth for too long, he was hit on the back of his head. He could feel the trickle of blood tracing the line of his spine. His leg was consumed in fire.

Rohan knew that this wasn't protocol when they started leading him through side streets and alleyways and when they brought him through some shady back entrance to the garrison. At least, he assumed it was the garrison. He didn't want to think that they were bringing him to some other, unknown building. At least at the garrison, he knew where he was.

They ducked through an entrance that had been shoved between two overbearing buildings, both of which appeared to sweat from some unknown source of moisture; where cloudy water dripped from the discolored grey walls, there was a distorted skin of twisted metal, warped wooden beams, and swollen plaster. Ditches and potholes littered the street where the water trickled down, some large enough that Rohan could press his body into and disappear from view. The entrance itself was nothing more than a wooden door low enough that even Rohan had to duck down to fit, and which could have easily been the doorway to some squatter's crook away from the city's critical eyes, or even a broken piece of fence leaning into one of the random walls that sectioned this coastline town - if someone was drunk or inattentive enough to mistake it for that.

He tucked the knowledge of the hidden entrance into the back of his mind.

Rohan guessed that they had just passed through the outer wall of the garrison simply by how starkly uninhabited the other side was, void even from an occasional discarded rag. Another wall encircled the actual inside of the garrison in a gentle, white slope, forming a hallway of sorts. A white, smooth wall on one side, and a wall made of jagged stones on the other, sharp enough to cut a climber's hands.

They shoved his head down as they carried him. Rohan examined the toes of their worn boots as they shifted over the gravel. He contemplated how he was going to get out of this one alive.

He began to hear the distant murmur of conversation, most likely from some type of lower knights guarding the entrance. One of the knights holding him up placed a firm hand on the back of his neck, his palm hot and dry and wrinkled from calluses, as if it was a crime itself to look ahead of him. The guards exchanged words - "get a medic while your at it, will ya?" - and dragged him inside.

Rohan's body thrummed with pain and adrenaline, and it churned inside him with rage. He half thought of making a run right there, before they dragged him too far inside, and he tested his chances by sagging against the one who held him by the neck. He cursed - but didn't notice Rohan's quick fingers, pulling the dagger from him and sliding it into his sash. Still, they held him painfully tight, and the stumble made his foot knock against the ground. Rohan breathed heavily to dispel the quicksilver agony that laced up through his bones to his head.

In his stumble, he caught sight of the inside. All the buildings were whitewashed, both from age and from the mix of rock and painted plaster that made them into the squat, indistinguishable, and soulless homes of these glorified brigands. Shouts and the clamor of weapon upon weapon and body upon body meshed together to form a distorted anthem of struggle, and the circular structure of the garrison made the noise reverberate until he could feel the thrum in his leg.

Dummies were set up in a cleared corner of the inside, next to an overhang of fabric and where a single horse, saddled and impatient, waited for his rider, watching the action carefully. The knights hacked at their impromptu enemies, though the sight of them made a slice of emotion dart through his chest; they were all young, too young, none much older than he was, and yet their faces twisted with the faulty pride of an egocentric motto of morality.

Then, suddenly, voices rose and two of the trainees turned on each other. The scuffle was brief, barely long enough to do any real damage, as two of the knights watching over them pulled them halfheartedly apart as if this were a reoccurring event. One of them plucked the smallest one up and held him high and away, like a child having a tantrum, and the boy screamed in frustration, but allowed the knight to carry him away. He was caked in a noticeable layer of dust, sweat, and some blood, yet something sparked within Rohan, almost like familiarity.

Then his head was shoved back down, and the throbbing in his temple increased. They turned slightly to the right and the sun was abruptly off of his back and they were inside one of the buildings, and then someone was saying something and there were stairs, and there was pain and the ground and his knees and palms scuffed because they had thrown him into a cell. He moaned before he could stop himself. He rolled onto his back and stared at the stone roof where he could hear people stomping and discussing above. He thought distantly that he should have been heading back to where the ship was, three towns south, by now. He did not know how long Catullo would wait for him if he was late, if he would wait at all.

He heard rattling and the sound of someone coming down the stairs. Rohan reacted violently, pushing himself up and scuttling to the back corner of the cage, away from where his met the others. He watched as a hunched figure carrying a box trudged wearily down the line of cells. The other prisoners swore and yelled at the figure's presence, and one threw a tin mug at his cell door as the figure passed. The figure wasn't faced. A guard trailed in its wake.

To his horror, it stopped before his cell door, and waited as the guard manifested a pair of thick keys from his pocket and unlatched the lock. The door creaked open. Rohan shifted further into the corner, ignoring the discomfort of his back. It stepped inside.

It was an old woman, he thought, or maybe another gremlin. Her facial features disappeared into the creases of her face, almost like she was part of a spiderweb, or had the face of bark from a tree starved of water. Her mouth was no more than an indention of fabric folded over and tightened until it appeared into a malformed line. Her nose was horrific and had the telltale signs of a childhood disease, with the skin looking almost like it was bubbling. Her eyes sat deep into her skull and the bags underneath them seemed to spill over onto her cheekbones. Her head was wrapped in a fabric that gave her the impression of death. Rohan could not tell if she was smiling at him or was the arbitrator for his sins.

She shuffled inside. Her guard calmly tucked himself in the entryway, his expression cast in a shadow that made him appear both inhuman and cruel, yet his posture shuffled with hunched shoulders and unease. Rohan looked between him and the hag, who had placed the box on the floor and was now wearily getting down to his level. Each move of her bones was painful and slow.

"So," she said, her voice like rocky sand grating against his skin, and her accent like murky water boiling, "this is the dangerous, bloodthirsty pirate, eh? Looks like nothing more than a boy that's been in the sun for too long."

She began to unfold the box. Compartments materialized out of its side and swung open with a soft thud and whir.

"Roll up your pant leg, will you, pirate boy?"

Rohan glared at her and remained still and silent. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her hands, gnarled and warped like tree roots, as they picked and selected metal tools, a bowl, some kind of worn rock, and three small pouches made of twine. She placed them next to the box as she went through its contents.

"Hurry up and do it, boy. My body might be old but I will not think twice about making you sleep for the rest of your life."

Rohan glanced sharply at the guard, but he didn't respond. When he looked back upon the hag, she was holding a particularly sharp needle in the low light, and was polishing it with a strip of cloth.

"Wait any longer and I'll let the roaches eat your wound out," she said, placing the needle carefully on one of the compartments that seemed to act as a small stand. When she seemed satisfied with fiddling with the box, she slapped her hands on her knees and looked at Rohan. Her eyes, both partway translucent and partway tinted like rust, terrified him. Her expression was one of conceited vexation.

"Fine." She snapped her fingers, a dry, crackling sound, and made a motion towards Rohan. In an instant, the guard was inside, grappling Rohan, grunting as he squirmed away and fa\ought unceremoniously for freedom. Rohan even managed to slide in a kick to the guard's groin. But Rohan was on the ground, weak, injured, and dehydrated, and the guard was plainly stronger than he was. Too quickly the guard had him pinned in a painful grapple and he couldn't move.

"We can do this the conscious or the unconscious way. Which do you prefer, pirate boy?" She said bluntly.

In response, Rohan spat in her face.

She didn't blink, but remained unnervingly still. It frightened Rohan more, enough so that he was tempted to spit at her again, just to have her react. Instead, she calmly began to rifle through the box once more, and this time she pulled out another pouch. This one was lumpy and made from some obscure, thick black fabric.

"Conscious, then." Rohan began to thrash in the guard's grip at her tone.

~*****~


Rohan panted loudly, his gasps ragged, the air clawing the inside of his throat until it was painfully raw, to the point that he was sure he felt the warmth and twang of blood coating the back of his tongue. He gnawed on the dirty rag that gagged him, soaked in his sweat and saliva. The corners of his eyes were stiff with dried tears. They must've dried when he was unconscious.

He tried to thrash at the rancid smell that burned the inside of his nostrils. He shouted, a dry sound, and the pale root held in a gnarled hand moved away in time to avoid Rohan's kicking feet. When his eyesight cleared, and the guard had secured all of his limbs, Rohan allowed himself to have a coughing fit.

"You motherfucking-"

He screamed as her withered hand slapped down upon his freshly stitched leg and as she used it to heave herself up. She turned her back on his curses, and shakily bent down to pick up the box.

"You lot are so ungrateful," she said bitingly, "Should'a just left you to fester instead."

She placed her hand on her back as she stood and hobbled towards the cell door. She waved at the guard. He tied him to a loop in the cell wall and left the gag in.

As she passed through the cell door, she called up, "He's alive. You can come down now."

After a pause, boots thudded down the echoing stone steps. The guard that remained next to him stiffened and passed a fluttering hand over the front of his shirt, attempting to swipe the dirt and the wrinkles from their struggle away. Rohan cried out and struggled against his bonds. He thought desperately to the knife stashed away at his hip.

Two more knights rounded the corner from the stairs, both looking weary and exasperated, and one of them he recognised - the third guard that had brought him in. As they passed the hag, she snapped her fingers at him and beckoned him to lean down to her height; after whispering something in his ear, she slapped him lightly on the cheek and shuffled on. The knight jerked, annoyance making him appear uglier than he was.

When they entered his cell, the guard next to him ramrod straight, he bent down, propped his elbows on his knees, and examined Rohan. Rohan huffed through his gag, glaring, and propped his good leg up, crossing it slightly over his exposed midsection. They stayed like that for a moment, one vindictive and the other reticent and analyzing.

"So, son," he said deliberately, "tell me, where're your parents?"
"we'll fasten it with some safety pins and tape and a dream, and you're good to go, honey."





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Tue Apr 05, 2016 10:07 pm
Auxiira says...



Novice Solak | Only For Old Time's Sake


She wiped the trickle of blood from the side of her mouth, then grabbed a rag from her pocket and scrubbed at her temple. It came away brown and red, mud and blood. Every day, mud and blood. Sighing, she raked the tips of her hair away from her face then let them fall again. They were due for a cut again. It was her idea to look more like a boy. She was already picked on for her standing, for being small, for not being able to hit as hard as some, for training whenever she could because sometimes, sometimes she was scared to sleep. No need to give them something else to gripe about.

Cool her head, she had been told. Take a walk, don't go back to the yard until she was sure she wasn't going to start a fight again. As if it were her who had started it. She had only reacted to provocation, only moved to protect herself from the blunted weapon aimed at her legs. But it would always be her, so she had to cool her head. It was just another reason to train more. When she could hit harder than them all, when she could beat them all, when they respected her, if not for who she was, then for what she could do, only then would it not be her.

Some day, that would happen. She could wait. It wasn't anything compared to what she had already been through.

Wondering whether she would be able to find Nathiel, she trailed into the Keep, ignoring the slightly disgusted looks the knights shot her. She was accustomed to their superiority now. She had begun to learn to brush it off as one would dirt. Even the group of soon-to-be-knighted upstarts shoving her into the wall as they passed, sniggering, didn't immediately move her to retaliate like she used to. There was just the one person she couldn't do it for; that one upstart brat who made her want to shove dirt down his throat.

A low growl rumbled in her throat as she stood straight and tugged her tunic down. The glare she sported was full of a passing fury, enough for a knight to call her out on, if only because of her background. It would always be because of her background. She gritted her teeth and carried on, ignoring the slight throb in her head from when she had hit the wall.

She would always be called out on her background, she'd accepted that. While it sometimes irked her that they brought it up at every turn, she couldn't deny that it gave her one small advantage. A quick smile touched her lips as she cut down a small passage and entered the kitchens. She was greeted by a quick chorus of hellos and smiles. A bun was pressed into her hand before she had taken another step, and the head cook approached with a small bowl of food.

"How are you today, my lovely?" He asked as she settled onto a stool in the corner. His eyes plucked at the dirt on her trousers and the new bruises on her face as he crossed his meaty arms. "Not too much trouble, I hope."

"Only a little, Pala. But I'll always get into trouble for fighting back, you know that." She slurped at the broth, her knees tucked against her chest. "He's still in the yard though. I got told to take a walk."

"Just keep fighting. We'll always be here for you." It had only taken a few days for the servants in the Keep to show their support for her. It manifested in small ways: more food, an easy escape from the other novices, the odd present, warm words when she needed them. At first she had shoved them away. She didn't want to appear weak, to look like she couldn't take the training. She hadn't wanted the daily beatings to start again. She didn't want Nathaniel to have to move because of her again. But after the first week, when the instructors showed they favoured the high borns, when her bones ached from being hit and she was curled up in a corner of the baths, mewling for her Rohan to come back, that warm arm around her shoulder from one of the room maids had never been more comforting. It hadn't stopped the hurt. It made it bareable as she became stronger.

She handed the bowl back to the cook, then tore the bun in two. "Thank you." She stopped to groan appreciatively at the sticky sweetness of the bun, then she continued with a full mouth. "'Ave oo 'een Nathaniel?"

A grin pulled up Palatik's lips. He always delighted in seeing her happy with his food. When he had first seen her tear into a meal, he hadn't known what to think. Here was a child who devoured everything that was set in front of her, but never asked for more. He could tell that she had schooled her reactions, but when she believed that she would be scolded, there was sometimes a flash of the greatest fear he had ever seen, all contained to the very depths of her eyes. He only knew some of what she had been through, but from the scars the maids had told him of, that had been enough hurt for a lifetime already. So much contained in such a small body. It made his heart ache.

"I heard from one of the guards at the back gates that his patrol brought someone in. Seemed like their captive was hurt, cause they sent that old hag down to the dungeons. I don't know whether to feel sorry for the guy or not. You could probably look for him down there. Seems like he stayed back after Miguel and Bert left."

Solak nodded as she finished off her bun. "Thanks, Pala. Could I get some buns for Nathaniel? He won't have eaten on his patrol."

Two buns quickly appeared from the other side of the kitchen, pressed into her hands with a smile. She waved a goodbye, then hurried down the corridors towards the dungeons. If she wasn't allowed back in the yard - and she knew she wouldn't be for the rest of the day - then she could get Nathaniel to teach her more history, or maybe help her with her writing. A pen still felt awkward in her hand, and the teachers constantly sneered at the marks she made on a page.

She peered down the steps to the dungeon, supressing a shudder at the darkness. The air was dank and musty. She sucked in a breath, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. She would be fine. She wasn't on a ship. Finding an ounce of reassurance in that fact, she padded down the stairs.

She bowed very slightly at the guard on duty, stopping at the bottom of the steps. "Is Sir Nathaniel here?"

His lip curled, she almost knew the reply before the words dredged themselves from his throat. "Shouldn't you stay away from here? They might remember that it's where you belong."

Fire burned in her chest. He was one of those ones, and suddenly she didn't even want to share the same air as him. Yet she persisted. "Please, sir, I'd just like to talk to Sir Nathaniel."

"I'm sure you would, but we don't let your kind down there. Unless you want a cell of your own, of course."

Her teeth automatically gritted at the thought of being locked away. Bars. Metal pressing into her skin. She could hear the clink of chains. One breath in through her nose. Out through her mouth. She would not lose it here, in the dark, in front of someone who despised her.

"Just get out." The guard took a step toward her, raising his arm.

"Solak? What are you doing down here?"

A relieved sigh escaped her lips before she could contain it. Taking advantage of the guard's distraction, she darted past him toward Nathaniel.

"I wanted to bring you something to eat."

"Did you get kicked from the yard?" Nathaniel's voice didn't judge, but still there was a burn of shame.

She stared at her boots as they shuffled in the dust. "Sorry, sir."

"Well, if you're here, then you can help me. Maybe he'll talk to another child."

Her brow furrowed at his intonation, confused as to what he meant. A swift gesture with his hand had her following him further into the dark. Though torches blazed in their sockets, she couldn't avoid the tendrils of darkness that seemed to wrap around her ankles. In front of her, Nathaniel stopped. She looked up.

"Oh." Her heart seemed to have taken a life of its own. Nathaniel's gaze cut down at her. She had to look twice to make sure that she hadn't taken leave of her senses. The salt dried hair and sash, she remembered those as clearly as the day he had left. "Rohan?"

He jerked when she spoke, his head twisting around and his eyes, as fervent as ever, searching ardently into the darkness, where the circle of torches must have thrown where she stood in shade. Then, flabbergasted, he replied, "Solak?"

"What are you doing in -" She turned to Nathaniel. "What is he doing here?"

"Miguel and Bert think he's a pirate..." His expression turned contemplative. "You know him?"

"He's a friend from... before." Her eyes darted back down the corridor to where she knew the guard was standing. Looking back at Rohan, her eyes darted to his position, hunched over one of his legs, pain pulling at his expression. She crouched next to the bars, wrapping her arms around her legs. "Why is he hurt?"

"Why don't you tell her?" Nathaniel said, his eyes cutting from the small form Solak made to the boy in the cell. Rohan's eyes slowly lowered with his, and he focused on where he could see Solak's hunched and obscure form, but to her shock, his gaze was not as friendly as she expected.

"There's nothing for me to tell her." The bluntness that he addressed Solak with made something in her chest heave.

"Fine." She uncurled from her ball, looking down at him. "Lass time I was in t'cage. I know you hate it. But if you wan' to stay 'ere then I won' argue wit' you." The way of speaking she had forced herself into over the last year began to slip away from her control. Her hand circled the scarred bands around her wrists. "Stupid Ro'an."

She turned on her heel and started away from the cell, a deep frown furrowing her brow. The murmur of Nathaniel's voice reached her before his steps followed her.

"Don't you want to help him?"

"He don't want my help. I can't change that." Besides, she knew he wouldn't let himself die. She wasn't sure how, but she knew. "If I vouch for him, would that work?"

"You know they don't trust you. I doubt it would work even if I were the one vouching for him." They both fell into silence. "So Lask again, I assume."

"It was self-defence."

"I'm sure."

~~~~~


She wasn't sure if she had planned to wake up in the middle of the night or whether it was just through the growing habit of her body to be constantly alert, but she was awake all the same. Solak spared the full moon a sly grin as she slipped out of bed, her bare feet barely making a sound on the planks. The sound of creaking ropes almost echoed in the air. Her next slow breath tasted like salt. She couldn't ignore her pirate.

She ghosted down the corridors, making her way down the stairs. She wanted to at least talk to him before he found a way to leave; didn't want to part on them both being stubborn. She wasn't sure if she'd see him again. He was always drifting on the tides to wherever he needed to be. She was more of a migrationary animal, only moving when she had to.

Though there were fewer people around at this time of night, her preferred route led her through the servant's passages. The small passages were dark while the main corridors would still be lit, but she didn't want the risk of attention. Barred windows lined the wall, letting the fresh air in and showing the stars. She smiled at the memory of constellations. Her gaze lowered to the barracks, tracing the moonshadows the buildings cast on the ground.

A movement at the corner of one suddenly caught her eye. She wasn't sure but she thought- there! The shadow moved along the edge of the building. Frowning, she moved to the nearest door and slipped out, sneaking slowly closer to the shadow until she could make out the silhouette.

"Of course," she murmured. It would only be him. She waited until they were out of view from the Keep, then raised her voice to a carrying whisper. "Rohan!"

He had been skipping between buildings, and at the harsh murmur of her voice, he stumbled, fell onto the palm of his hands, and darted to the closest shadow. There was a dull flash, barely longer than Solak's forearm - somehow, he must've gotten a knife. There was a pause, where both of them were unwilling to finally acknowledge the other, before she heard him reply hoarsely, "Solak?"

"I knew I was right to be worried." She shifted over to his shadow, telling herself that the slight rise of his knife was nothing but a reflex. "So you're escaping, then." Without talking to me didn't make it past her lips, however much she wanted to say the words. She just let the quiet accusation glower in her eyes.

His teeth flashed, and the action jarred her, stirring old memories. Now it was her standing in the open, while he crouched in the darkness. She didn't know what to think of this.

"There's no reason for me to be here. And you can't stop me." His eyes flashed around her, towards the center of the garrison, as if he expected to see someone rushing towards them to drag him back underground. He shifted on his feet.

Hurt burned in her chest. "If you thought that I would ever call someone on you-" She cut her sentence short. "I haven't changed, Rohan. I'm still the same person."

Her eyes stayed trained on the knife in his hands from force of habit. She knew he wouldn't use it, but still she watched it.

The conviction in his face softened, and he almost looked wistful. "You changed the moment you saw those knights at the festival, all that time ago."

She watched him silently for a few minutes. "You can't blame me for that. After all that I've been through, you can't blame me for that."

He looked away, instead focusing on some point in the distance, his mouth tight and pensive. He fondled the knife in his hands, twisting the point on the tip of his finger. The skin on his face tightened with some emotion before he looked back to her, his expression grim and determined, and he straightened out of his crouch. Solak took an involuntary step back.

"We've both changed, Solak, and from this point forward, it's best that we pretend like we've never met."

She recoiled, numbness spreading from her fingers like ice. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. There was something collapsing in the distance or maybe it was inside her, because there wasn't any sound. She hadn't realised that she still clung to the possibility of him; the possiblity of still having him somewhere in her life. She hadn't realised that he would be the one to break it. She thought it would be some inevitable circumstance.

"I- No."

Pain shot across his face,and then he hardened and regarded her coolly.

"Goodbye, Solak."

He turned and began to slip away from her, nothing more than a liquid shadow.

He turned a corner and disappeared.

She wasn't sure when she had pressed herself against the wall, when her body had decided that it needed support to stand up, but suddenly, it did. She wasn't aware of the wall scraping lines into her arms as she slid down the wall, didn't notice the blood beading in the cuts. Her mind was scattered among the stars, and his moonshadow was gone, nothing more than a memory for her to think of. She knew that if she moved, if she got up and ran after him she could probably catch him, but her legs would not move. It felt as though the ground was holding down her body.

The corner he had disppeared behind seemed to taunt her from where she sat. The shadows crept inside her brain until everything felt numb. She distantly recalled that she should go inside, go back to bed, so no one would suspect her, so that Nathaniel wouldn't get into trouble because of her. Gathering the pieces of herself from the floor and the clouds and the stars, she stood and crept back inside, curling into a ball under her bed. It wouldn't be suspicious. After all, her mattress had holes in it, and one leg of her bed was an inch shorter than when she had arrived.

It was only when she closed her eyes that she allowed herself to accept the fact that he had gone. She allowed a part of herself to be scooped away, to walk out of her life. She could take it. She could let the first person to treat her as a human go. She didn't have a choice. Her pillow was wet. She couldn't mind.

~~~


There was only a quiet amount of fuss over Rohan's disappearance. None of the knights would openly admit that they had let a child escape from the cells, especially while injured. Nathaniel had taken her to one side and gently asked her if she had helped the pirate escape. She had firmly replied that no, she hadn't helped him escape. He had looked her in the eye, then dismissed it. They hadn't talked about him again. She realised he knew she didn't want to.

She threw herself into her training even more intensely than before. Lask picked more fights with her than she could count, and her growing resentment towards him answered every time, but she was no longer sent out of the yard, just sent to hack at a wooden dummy until she was judged calm.

She still thought of her pirate - how could she not? He was present in the aching absence in her chest. But then even that was fading. She wondered if he still thought of her, then shook her head. There was no point in that. It was better to keep on moving.
You read faster than Usaine Bolt sprints xD - Deanie 2014

I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. - Cathy, Wuthering Heights





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Sat Apr 23, 2016 4:58 pm
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Craz says...



| Rohan | The Beginnings of a Bastard | A Few Years Later |


The boy held his arm high, swaying rhythmically, the muscles that trailed from his wrist to his neck contracting and expanding under his brown skin. In his fingers, the tips pinched lightly together and the nails stained from some unknown solution, pooled two thin hairs of brilliant luminescence, and where they dipped together rested a delicate teardrop of deep sapphire, rich enough to glint faintly in the extreme lack of light. The boy's head was cocked and a genial smile played on his too-pale lips. His eyes, nearly black, examined the object dangling from his hand for a moment longer.

"Do you think I'm a fool?" he stated.

"Wh-?" scoffed the man, who wrung his hands together, but jutted his chin out defiantly. His voice rang with indignation. "A fool? If anything I'm the fool for even allowing your kind send a child like you in their place! My products are genuine. Are you sure he even knows what he's looking at?"

He directed the question to the three men that stood around the boy, who appeared bored and mildly inconvenienced. When it was obvious that they weren't going to respond, which took a spare second to perceive, he exclaimed, "Sapphire! Sapphire! Where else would you find sapphire, at my price?"

The boy didn't respond immediately. After a pause, he replied, "You're right."

"I'm right?" The merchant said, taken aback.

A drop of rain splattered onto the boy's cheek. It stretched across his skin, almost giving the impression that he was crying. A second one spattered onto his lips, dribbling down the left side of his mouth.

"You're a fool for trying to sham a pirate."

He dropped the glittering necklace onto the cobbled dirt and stomped on it with his booted heel. He ground the stone until it disintegrated into a pale blue powder. The necklace broke and disappeared, its shine rubbing away easily. The man cried out.

"That's mine! That's my product! How dare you-"

The three men shifted on their feet. The merchant quieted immediately, flinching onto himself, becoming smaller. The daggers in the three men's hands flashed with real metal.

"N-Now, let's act like adults here. There's no reason to act hastily, men!"

They did not respond.

"Taking orders from a child now, huh? I see how much his crew has deteriorated. Wait until the whole country hears about this."

The one on the left spat, revealing his blackened teeth.

The boy struck his hands inside of his pockets and turned around, facing the mouth of the alley. A third drop slid down the side of his temple. He looked to the sky, which was congealed with angry curdles of purple and black, almost like a festering concoction of bruises. He closed his eyes and fat drops of freezing water splattered onto his eyelids. Behind him, the hysteric merchant began to scream. The infectious sky opened up and rained down upon them with a delirious fervor.

He lowered his head slowly, and when he squinted through the downpour, his vision flashed shades of red until they adjusted through the blurry haze of blacks and darkened blues. The alley across from him thrashed, and through the shadow of an abandoned stairwell, he saw something that he knew was not actually there: a shifting of a shadow, a hunched back, spine protruding and ribs pronounced through its thin covering of fabric, snarling, eyes darting: a terrified little thing.

"..Mustn't move.."

"..Ro'an, Ro'an!.."

"..People like you.."

"..I'm still the same person."


The merchant's screams were muffled now, gurgling. The boy's companions emerged from behind him, blood staining their wrists, and the one with the blackened teeth held a short, thick object up for the boy to see. It was the man's tongue, retribution for telling lies. He did not need to look behind him to know that the merchant's cheeks also had deep gashes in them that ran perpendicular to the ground - it was a brand for the black market, labeling the merchant as a dead man and banished in the eyes of its denizens. He will never be able sell anything for the rest of his life.

The boy followed his fellow crew members and disappeared into the wailing storm.
"we'll fasten it with some safety pins and tape and a dream, and you're good to go, honey."








If I'm going to burn, it might as well be bright.
— Frank Zhang