The thunderous claps of Guttermouth Hairyhead sent Agnes' head into an overdrive. A distant memory at sea played through her head, clearly irrelevant, with hitches and glitches. Her mind was a blank space, an empty canvas, and within it her grandmother, Maria Bismil's voice orated a story.
A hazy memory of her velvety voice enunciating the words.
Words.
Everyone has them.
People have so much to say.
About themselves or others.
There's always perspectives, opinions and judgements, regardless of the place we are in or the circumstances that follow. Because strangers that pass us on the streets— hasty and nonchalant in big towns, prying and curious in small towns— are not just secondary characters in the script of our lives. They are the protagonists of their own.
Talks like these keep some men going. Lively. When surrounded by water on all sides and the only guests to come by are high tides and thunder storms, one indulges in a world of make belief.
You look at a person and stare. Think of all the possible outcomes they could have encountered just to be in front of you in that moment. You judge, regardless of your choice to act upon those biases. It's an instinct.
When you see something beautiful you stare, admire, praise, gawk, want to attain it. Possess it. Treasure it.
When you see something that does not pleases your eye, you turn away, badmouth it, curse it, disrespect it, belittle it. You create humor at its expense.
For not all men know how to appraise a diamond.
A gem. Lost at sea. Bundled in her obnoxiously large coat that warmed her nights with its comforting embrace. The coat was a gift from a stranger whom she trusted with all she had. Now Sienna is stuck at sea, unwinding ropes and cleaning dirty decks for death wasn't an option and life was never a choice.
"Who is Sienna, grandmum?" Agnes distantly remembers asking.
People said a lot about her.
"Girl on board, must Yeager go crazy like that. I say we offer her to Poseidon one fine day. What an ugly little thing to look at."
"She a curse, I say. Death follows where she goes. It lurks around the corners. Beware."
"Poor lass. Tis a misery, tis is. I reckon, sad sod had a lonely life being picked and thrown. I've heard tis killed a man who touched tis cake. Jailed tis, eh? Was it 10 years or so? Tis escaped, I've heard. Ran to the sea, you see."
And among those talkers, there's always a listener. A silent observer on the high ground, looking down at her ruby head bobbing as she scrubbed the planks clean. He found her small frame, working with all its might, to be absolutely endearing.
"Ah it's the prince! Isn't he, grandmum?"
He's an inconvenience.
Whenever she would be out of his line of sight, he'd run back to his brother's chambers and drop a new a bottle of ink pot on the main deck. Then, someone from the crew would yell at her and she'd be back again in his line of sight, scrubbing the ink away as if the stain of struggle from the deck of her life. It made him smile.
That is, until, his brother would catch hold of him.
"Zephyr, for the love of our King and Queen, can you stop being an absolute nuisance for once?!" He'd drag little Zephyr from his collar push him inside their chambers and stare down at him.
"Don't you have anything to say to me? Anything, Zephyr?"
"Do you value the ink pot over me, brother, is that my worth?" He blinks, mocha eyes concentrated in a look of supreme betrayal.
His brother took in a sharp breath, cursing under his breath. "Yes Zeph, the inkpot cost me 20 crowns and you, my brother, I got you in my life for absolutely nothing!"
"Ditto, brother. One day, I just woke up and had everything," Zephyr smirked, eyeing sidewards as they were now handing out food to the crew members.
His brother stuck his index finger with his thumb and rose it skywards.
"You see that, that's how much you're worth," He smile in contentment of having possibly offended his shameless little brother.
"Woah, the sky— brother dearest, that's much! I never knew I was invaluable in that context," Zephyr grinned, standing proudly with his chest puffed out and hands on his waist.
"Invaluable...tch, you're just uselessly abundant," His brother gritted out venomously and left Zephyr to his own business. There was no having a conversation with him without one's brain cells depleting.
"I wouldn't call me useless."
Zephyr walked up to the railing again, looking down only to witness something that would set his life on an entirely new course.
"All men needta eat more, be big. Safe the boat and keep ya pritty gals happee, innit?" The giant meaty-man slurred in Sienna's face, bending down to meet her eye level. The little girl clenched her jaw, eyes focusing on anywhere but at the man in front.
"Plate, señorita," He placed his hand between them and Sienna begrudgingly compiled, handing him her food for the day as the other crew members whispered good-for-nothing pity words while hiding with their plates.
"What a good gal!" He patted her back, more like shoved her into a coughing fit. "Ahoy mateys! Where is ya all? Let big man a pound!" He called out in his rough accent, munching on her bread, dirty smile now directed elsewhere. He waddled inside and Sienna finally took in a few hasty breaths.
There goes her food for the day. Again.
She'll have to stake out at night and steal from the kitchens. Again.
Another day ruined by that ink boy. She knew he was up there, standing, watching, probably smiling at her misery. She detested him.
It made her blood run cold and senses overcome by aggressive thoughts. One day, she'll drown him in the sea for sure.
"But she can't, grandmum, he's the prince!"
Infuriated yet having no place to vent, she threw the cleaning rag into the ocean, gritting her teeth as she clenched the railings.
They'll reach the shore in two days. Two more days and she can run away. Freedom. She'll survive. She has to. There's a lot she needs to do. Like eating the Queen's Special.
"Oh it's the cake she couldn't eat on land!"
Yes.
She was determined to tolerate it all, until he marched into her life like a catalyst of chaos.
Literally.
He marched down the stairs, grabbed her arm to turn her around and shook her by her shoulders. Hard.
"How?! HOW COULD YOU GIVE HIM YOUR FOOD?! IT WAS YOUR FOOD FOR THE DAY!! FOOD IS IMPORTANT!! YOU DON'T GIVE IT AWAY!!" he shouted in her face, mocha eyes blown wide and eyebrows almost kissing his hairline as bewilderment beheld his face like an old best friend.
So like any sane person, Sienna pushed him away and slapped him. Hard.
A little too hard.
The poor boy lost his balance and fell sidewards to the deck. With a scandalized expression, he turned with a hand on his cheek and eyes almost tearing up.
"What was that for?!"
Sienna blinked, trying to process the spectacle in front without bursting into laughter.
"I-uh-i was scared?!" She coughed out, covering her smile by squinting at the sun.
"So you swatted me away like an insect?!" the boy wailed out, enunciating each word with exaggeration, as if he were a betrayed wife.
Sienna rose her eyebrows as her lips curled in an upturned smile.
"You sure were irritating me like one," She grumbled out in amusement.
She wiped her hands on her dirty coat, contemplated helping the boy up, but decided against it and proceeded to walk away from the scene of incident.
"Well I was worried, you see, I have observed that crew members only get a meal a day," Zephyr spoke, getting up from the deck-board and following Sienna around.
"I don't need no worries of you," Sienna announced, nostrils flaring and eyes searching for something.
"What do you need, tell me, I'll get it for you!" Zephyr raised his hand, waving enthusiastically, with a bright smile.
"Oh my favourite part is coming, grandmum!"
Sienna turned to look at his small and lanky form and a pooling teal robe. She walked up to an unsuspecting Zephyr and pulled at his shirt. Hard.
The boy screeched, partly like a banshee on loose, before Sienna could gag his slimy mouth with her fingers and tear an obnoxious slant of his shirt robe. His heart hammered with fear of the unknown, mocha eyes widened and lost in her silver ones, "Rag, I needa clean," she whispered as calmly as she could. "I threw mine off the ship." Her eyes pointed at the raging waters underneath.
Zephyr nods a jammed nod, eyes simultaneously shifting between the girl's fingers in his mouth and the raging proximity of her silver eyes. Noticing the gross contact between them, Sienna groans out loud, pulling her fingers out of his mouth and wiping them on his clothes. Disgusting. Slimy. Gross.
"You're filthy, stay away," her words were icy in tone, almost as cold as the Ocean of Eda beneath them. She walks over to rub the ink spots again and Zephyr's mind plummeted into an afterlife of conversation starters.
What should he say?
How should he continue?
He wants to talk to her.
But how? About what? What if she breaks his jaw?
His small hand inevitably hides his mouth, another pocketing itself in his pant pockets and feeling up the leftover peanuts he had stolen from his brother's cabin the night before.
Peanuts.
Yes!
He pulls out a fistfull and shoves his hand in her perspective again, opening to the sight of roasted small nuts, a strangeness to Sienna.
"What are them?"
"Peanuts! Salted from Ocean of Eda! The best in all world! You can never get hungry with them around! Have some!"
Zephyr's mocha eyes compel her to have a try, her grumbling stomach weakens her resolve. They are oddly good convincing with their purity of intention. Sienna gulps, genuinely feeling hungry, but she had duties to do. She raises her dirty hands for Zephyr to see.
"Can't some."
Zephyr smiles a smile again, picking up a peanut and inserting it in her unsuspecting mouth. Her silver eyes widen to saucers as her tongue accepts the taste, blinking in disbelief of deliciousness.
"Delicious, aren't they?" His empty hand clapped against his thigh.
Delicious they were, yes, as always, as last resort, to Agnes.
The peanuts in her pocket.
She opened her eyes, sweat-ridden forehead hidden under the cover of her ashen hair. The man beside her screamed for his life as Mr. Tuna crushed his toes with his faux iron ones.
This is the moment to do whatever.
So raises her head, pulls her hands from behind her back and flings out the two peanut packets from the pocket of her breeches, announcing, "I've got loot! It's salty peanuts from the Ocean of Eda!"
And the alleged Nightmongers lurch at her like moth to fire. You can take a sailor out of the sea, but you cannot take the sea out of a sailor.
Or a Pirate.
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