Tales from the Seas

In a time before arriving at Icarous Island...

Shiri stretched her arms as she woke up to the sound of familiar waves crashing against wood. The furniture in the room swayed slightly with every rock of the waves, a pen rolling along the floor back and forth. Sun rays shone in through the window next to the hammock, warming her face. The rest of the ship was quiet. Whether or not the only other resident on board had woken up was up for debate — Shiri had exited her room close to dawn for a glass of water just the other night, only to find the lights still shining through the gap underneath the door of the research lab.

She gracefully rolled out of the hammock, her feet landing gently on the wooden floors beneath her with a small thump. A brush of her fingers through her hair to undo the knots as she tossed a wayward pillow back up onto the hammock, and she knelt to retrieve a small journal tucked away inside her belongings, hidden from the public eye amongst the minimal drawer and cabinet space scattered around the room. She used her foot to stop the pen as it tried to roll past, kneeling down and picking it up in her free hand with practiced ease before the ship could shift and it could roll away again. A pause, before she simply plopped down and sat cross-legged on the wooden floorboards, uncapping the pen.

It had been a few days since she'd boarded the still unnamed ship, and it had been a quiet journey so far. The ship itself certainly wasn't particularly large, though it was far too spacious for just the captain and herself. Even just a week ago, there had been other temporary passengers on board the ship, but they’d all disembarked when they had said they would, and it was just the two of them once more. Shiri could feel the phantom sounds of footsteps and voices just beyond the walls, like ghosts haunting the ship. The empty rooms warded the two remaining passengers a level of privacy that Shiri wasn't used to, but it was a feeling that she enjoyed, especially after hopping from ship to ship for so many years, so maybe it was true that there was always a silver lining.

She tapped the end of her pen to her chin and flipped the journal open to add to her logbook.

Shiri’s Log : XX/XX/XXXX

A quiet morning.

She glanced up through the window in her room.

Clear skies. No land yet.

A pause, as she thought about what else to write, until a seagull's cry drew her attention to the deck. She caught the shadow of a wing flit across the window, and closed the journal. There would be time to write more later.

When she made it out to the deck, a News Coo was sitting on the rail, tilting its head at her. It ruffled its feathers and squawked scoldingly.

“Hey, cut us some slack,” Shiri said, pulling a few coins out of her pocket and tucking them into the satchel at its side. “There’s only the two of us on board here, we can’t come rushing as soon as you yell for us.”

It huffed and handed over the newspaper.

"How far did you even travel? A few hours? A few minutes?” Shiri guessed. “Shouldn’t you be glad for the extra few minutes of rest?” The seagull raised its eyebrow at her, which was impressive considering birds usually didn’t have eyebrows. Had News Coo seagulls been genetically bred to have eyebrows? Shiri shook the newspaper. “Well, if you’re not going to appreciate the rest, shoo,” Shiri said, waving it off. It spread its wings and squawked at her one last time before taking flight, circling the ship once before flying northward. Shiri squinted, her gaze following it for a moment, but she couldn’t see any other signs of life on the horizon. How did they know where to go? They weren’t literally flying at random, right?

Newspaper in hand, she wandered to the kitchen in search of breakfast. The rest of the ship remained quiet, even when Shiri paused to listen for more signs of life… Had Avis fallen asleep in the lab? Or maybe she simply couldn’t hear them from this far away. She’d need them awake to make sure the ship was still sailing in the right direction. Even equipped with a log pose and a map, Shiri couldn’t guarantee they’d make it to their next destination on her own.

Shiri poured herself a glass of orange juice with one hand, while the other shook out the folds of her newspaper. A few bounty posters slipped out from between the folds in the process, and she let them sit on the floor as she glanced at the headlines on the front page.

SEASHORE PIRATES BROUGHT DOWN, A PROMISING FUTURE FOR MARINES

GRAVEROBBERS ALL FOUND DEAD EXCEPT ONE, BODY IN GRAVE MISSING

LOUD APPLAUSE FOR A SOFT LULLABY, JELLYFISH MUSICIAN CHARMS AUDIENCE

Nothing about any of the headlines stood out — in fact, other than the raid and the missing body, it seemed like the paper was having a bit of a slow day.

Shiri used her boot to shuffle the bounty posters on the floor, glancing through them with half-hearted interest. Most of them seemed to be updates on existing bounties, though a new bounty for the ‘Primordial Hunter’ stood out. Rather than a traditional photograph, the only thing depicted in the portrait were a pair of glowing red eyes.

Weird.

Kneeling to pick up the bounty posters before anyone could comedically trip over them, Shiri glanced at the second article, the missing body catching her eye.

…

“I-i-it was terrifying,” the eyewitness, the sole surviving member of the incident, tells reporters. “It was just- it was supposed to be a normal job, the family’s known for being rich as fuck, but someone must have switched the bodies, or, well, it was just — I didn’t really get a good look, one second we’re pushing the lid open, and then they’re all dead and there’s just— red eyes, staring at me—”

The eyewitness is taken away by Marines before further statement can be recorded.

She placed the bounty posters onto the counter and sipped her orange juice before pulling open a few drawers to find something to eat. There was no mention of any pirate crews related to the incident, so she simply commited the epithet ‘Primordial Hunter’ and the red eyes mentioned to memory and moved on to the next article.

A recent midnight raid led by Marine Ensign Ambrose Bathory has propelled them to fame with the local islanders.

“I saw them moving in from my window,” a local claims. Mary lives near the raid site, and says she happened to look out her window in time to see several troops of Marines surrounding the area. She was shocked to learn that most of the Marines present during the raid were newly-graduated cadets. “They looked like seasoned veterans! Maybe there’s still hope for them yet.”

The Marines rounded up the Seashell Pirates, a vicious pirate group despite their gentle name. The group is notorious for fighting sea monsters and then trading the harvested parts, and had been terrorizing Seashore Town for the good part of the past several months, using the town as a base of operations.

While all of the Marines involved equally contributed to the raid, several stood out in particular.

“Things got a bit tricky in the middle,” states an anonymous Marine who had participated in the raid, “but Cadet Pia was calm in the face of all the chaos, especially when the Seashell Pirates launched that surprise rebuttal attack, and a lot of us would have come away with more injuries if she hadn’t been with us.”

The rest of the article named a few more cadets, and then interspaced interviews with retellings of the raid itself. Shiri hummed, taking note of the area this particular Marine group was active in, and poured some nuts she’d found into a bowl and drizzled a layer of honey over the top. If they were really as capable as the article was claiming, she’d need to keep an eye out for them in the future. Competent Marines were bad news for a pirate looking to lay low.

Shiri read through the rest of the articles diligently, though none of them contained anything about what she was primarily looking for. She wasn’t sure if she was glad or disappointed — it was a familiar feeling, one she’d felt ever since she’d first started growing suspicious of her life with the Charlotte family. She’d spent ages secretly scouring newspapers, trying to piece together the missing gap in her memories, but the Orange Pirates had done too good of a job sailing underneath the radar while she’d been with them — there were no articles about them directly, though there were traces here or there of what might have been them, of sightings of a new flag sailing the seas or traces left behind after a black market trade.

Shiri munched on honey-covered nuts all the while as she sorted through the information the paper did provide. Someone was singing lullabies in town centers, apparently. It reminded her of someone she’d met recently — maybe Aria had finally set sail. A cute girl was running around the seas on skates, delivering mail in place of the familiar seagulls. There were rumors of a swordsman going around being challenged to duels, looking to lose. Why a swordsman wanted to lose, Shiri had no idea, and the person writing the article seemed just as baffled. It would probably be fun to meet them, just to see what kind of person they were like.

It seemed like whoever was in charge of the comics page in the back had found some humor in the swordsman’s article: there was a short comic featuring a scribbled ‘swordsman’ (a stick figure holding a more detailed sword), being defeated by other stick figures that were holding anything from a sword to a tree branch to a toothbrush. Shiri giggled a bit, checked the back pages for any interesting information — a few obituaries, but nothing much else of note — and folded up the newspaper and placed it on the bounty posters.

Carrying the rest of her honeyed nuts with her out of the kitchen, Shiri went back out onto the deck. The lack of clouds in the sky made it easy to find the sun floating close to the horizon. She ate another spoonful of nuts as she watched the waves rock the ship back and forth.

It was still in the early morning hours of the day, but there wasn’t much to do in the long run. The News Coo had already come by, so she’d gotten her newspaper reading done. She hadn’t woken up in time to watch the sunrise this morning, but if she went to bed early enough tonight, she’d be able to tomorrow morning. Shiri didn’t know a lick of navigation, so she couldn’t do anything with the direction of the ship until Avis got up and helmed the wheel. They were currently in the middle of the ocean, so she couldn’t leave the ship to restock their kitchens or anything like that…

Shiri peered into the ocean again. Oh, she could fish. She could make a fish stew for lunch, if she caught one quickly enough.

Finishing off the rest of her breakfast, Shiri made her way back into the kitchen to return the bowl and find the fishing rod. Maybe she could go through some of the empty rooms and see if any of the former passengers had left anything behind. Maybe she could go sit in the crow’s nest and watch the horizon… Well, there wasn’t any rush to get things done today. There was always tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow, and every tomorrow after that.

Shiri’s Log : XX/XX/XXXX

A quiet morning. Clear skies. No land yet.
No news of OP or T.
Spent most of the morning fishing. A came out of the lab around lunch time. Made a fish stew. A set the ship on course and then left me to helm the wheel while he checked on our supplies. Not a great decision. We’ll probably have to correct the course tomorrow.

Shiri’s Log : XX/XX/XXXX

Saw the sunrise today, just barely through the clouds. There’s a storm brewing — heavy gusts of wind are stirring up the sea. Spent most of the morning with A, making sure everything on deck was locked down. Spent the afternoon in the crow’s nest, enjoying the wind.
No news of OP or T.

Shiri’s Log : XX/XX/XXXX

Light storm shook the seas. Went around the ship to check for leaks. No worries — ship is small, but sturdy.
If A is going to run a full ship though, he’s going to need more crew members. Z taught me how to fix leaks and other small things around a ship when I was still with BSP, but major repairs will need to come from someone more experienced. Water 7 has an island full of shipwrights, but we can’t reliably cross the seas to get to Paradise every time the ship gets damaged.
Truly, nothing can stop the News Coo seagulls from arriving with the daily papers. No news of T or OP.

Shiri’s Log : XX/XX/XXXX

No news of T or OP.
A received an invitation to some pirate festival.
I doubt T or the others would go normally. It sounds interesting — a whole island to explore! Definitely somewhere I would’ve asked to go before. But there’ll be a lot of attention on anyone who shows up. Bad move if I want to keep a low profile.
It’s been years and I haven’t been able to find signs of T or OP. Maybe it’s time to get my name out there a little… Well, Avis is still deciding if they’re going to go. If they do, maybe I’ll hitch a ride and see what it’s all about. Not interested in the mystery power, but if making myself more famous will get my name to reach T or OP, maybe I’ll finally find out what happened at the tea party.
It’s been long enough, BM probably doesn’t even remember me anymore. PK did way more damage than I did at that other tea party.

…

…

…

Captain’s Log : XX/XX/XXXX

The ship is no longer quiet. The crew is a little scattered. The captain’s no longer the captain.
The Evergreen Passerine is a nice name for a ship.
I came to Icarous Island prepared to stand in Av’s shadow, but here I am.
T would do a better job of leading this group, but he’s not here. The winds of change are blowing. Guess I’ll have to ride the gusts and see where they head.