"He's a shapeshifter?" Kasai asked. Sonus, sitting across from him, looked at Brinar, who nodded. They were sitting in Sonus' cabin; a first for Kasai.
In the middle of the room, a beautifully crafted rug displayed deep reds, dark cobalt, and a hint of pale green. Skulls from various animals were hung on the wall, while a small skeleton of a bird sat nearby.
There were also interesting photoglasses of different islands that were taken with en-glass hung from the ceiling or were propped against the wall, and an aged photoglass of Sonus, Brinar, and strangely, Kira, from when they must've been younger sat in a frame next to a bundled-up hammock.
Kasai fought not to stare at the aged photoglass of his mother, curious but not wanting to be rude.
Brinar nodded. "I wondered about the wolf when Kasai started caring for it. Most animals cannot take human-based medicines because their bodies are so different, but animal medicine didn't work on it."
Sonus raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
"And when it could stay awake it never acted afraid, never tried to attack anyone, and I never heard it howling or making any sounds other than a few whines in the beginning." Brinar shrugged, but Kasai could tell he had given this a lot of thought.
"But a true shapeshifter?" Sonus asked.
Kasai looked at Brinar. "A true shapeshifter? Is that a kind of genetic?"
Brinar sighed. "Well, yes, but they are so rare that only four have ever been recorded, and three of them came from the same island. Have you read the chapter on body morphing genetics?"
Kasai made a sheepish face and shook his head.
Brinar gave him a slightly annoyed look and continued, "well body morphing genetics can change any part of their bodies, or all of it, to look different from what it normally looks like. Mostly, they change their skin color, hair, or even the shape of their body, though some body morphing genetics can change parts of their bodies to be that if an animal."
Kasai thought about Doux; he must be one then, since he could change his skin to iron.
"Animal parts?" Sonus glanced at the door. "So, they can have fangs or claws? I thought the animal morphing's died out?" He must've heard of people like this before. He didn't seem as surprised as Kasai would have expected.
"No, they just don't appear often. A lot of them die soon after their abilities manifest as they don't know how to eat or survive with part of their body changing constantly." Brinar shrugged. "They can't adapt very well, and unfortunately, it seems like a lot of them revert from a human mind to a more animal like mind, usually to one that matches the parts they've developed."
"So why didn't he change back when we brought him aboard?" Sonus asked.
Brinar paused and stared at a skull with four horns, two curling forward and two upwards, before answering. "Possibly because he was injured and unable to heal, or maybe shifting while injured could've made it worse."
"Maybe he was scared of us, too." Kasai added. He knew he would've been, if something like this happened to him.
The older men stared at him for a moment, then Brinar nodded. "That...is a good possibility. After all, we bought him as animal and intended on either releasing him and Sonus said his pelt would make good cold weather gear if he didn't heal." He gave Sonus a pointed look as he spoke.
Sonus shook his head, looking a tad sheepish. "But why change now? Do you think he planned to shift back when we were away, or did he just shift back when he was well enough?"
"I'm not sure. I've never met the other true shapeshifters, and from what I heard, they sort of lost themselves in their minds when they managed to shift. Finding one that not only shifted completely with no human features, yet seemed to keep his mind complete, is a new experience for me." Brinar threw his hands up.
Kasai didn't miss that Brinar didn't meet either of their gazes when he said this however.
"What will we do with him?" Kasai asked. While he didn't mind paying to set a wolf free, the notion of owning a human made him feel disgusted.
The older men were silent for a few moments, then Sonus turned to Brinar. "You spoke his language; can you talk to him about what happened and figure out how we can communicate as well? Maybe if you act as translator, we can figure out how to get him home, or wherever else he wants to go."
Brinar nodded. "I'll speak to him in a little while, but first I want to check his wound. It appeared to have shifted on his body, so it may need a different treatment. For now, both of you leave him to me and I'll come let you know everything we talk about later." He stood and left quickly, leaving Kasai and Sonus alone.
Kasai watched him, thinking about the man and the past couple of weeks. He was startled slightly when Sonus spoke after a few minutes.
"That man makes me uneasy. He was in your room for nearly two weeks. He could have hurt you." The tension in Sonus' tone surprised Kasai.
"I don't think he would have." Kasai answered immediately, a tad defensive. He couldn't explain his strong defense of the stranger, but saw no evidence of him being bad.
He still remembered that when the wolf began to recover, he would sit by Kasai's bed as if to protect him. Not once had Kasai ever felt unsafe with him there.
"Really? You aren't concerned that he could have attacked you? I know he was hurt, but he was there while you slept." Sonus glared at him, clearly bothered by the younger mans unconcerned air.
Kasai shook his head. "No, not at all. He actually helped me one night." Sonus frowned at him and Kasai explained, looking away. "I had...a nightmare about Cloud Village. I woke up to him nudging my hand and putting a paw on my bed. It was only a few days ago."
Sonus was silent for a moment, but when he spoke, he didn't look at Kasai but at the photoglass. "I can understand what it's like to go through something that haunts you." He picked up the photoglass and showed it to Kasai. "I knew your mother for a long time. After I met her, something horrible happened...and neither of us handled it well. Brinar was the only one who helped us through it."
Kasai was surprised at the change of topic, but looked at the photoglass.
It was of the three of them like Kasai thought, but now that he saw it closer, he saw that Sonus and Kira, most likely the same age, couldn't have been much older than he was now. Brinar looked mostly unchanged, just thinner, and his hair may have been darker. In the background, he could see a small house with the same flowers that had grown around his house.
"How did you know her?" The question that had been nagging him for weeks now finally leaked out.
Sonus regarded him carefully, then put the photoglass back. "Her family moved to my hometown when we were nearly teenagers. Being the same age as me, and with an older sister who was…strange, we got along very well despite her being Seaborne. She just approached me one day in the market, hit me with a stone and yelled something about stepping on her flowers, and we were friends after that."
Kasai watched him closely. The older man's emotions were well-hidden, leaving Kasai unsure about what he was thinking. "She never mentioned you. Or her sister. Or anything, I guess."
He had never heard of her being Seaborne either, but he wondered if that's why Areca had left him after meeting his mom. Maybe she could tell somehow.
Sonus gave a small sigh. "I'm not surprised." He said this so quietly that Kasai wasn't sure he heard him. "Her sister disappeared after the incident. No one knows what happened after that. I heard she went pyrate, like I did, but she doesn't hesitate to destroy and kill. My crew is ordered never to kill anyone."
Kasai had been wondering about that, but felt relieved to hear it.
Sonus looked up from the photoglass. "Be glad you never knew your aunt. She's someone that no one should ever have to deal with."
Kasai recognized his tone as a clear dismissal and understood he couldn't ask further.
***
"His name is Oyx." Brinar had written notes in front of him, all from his talk with the stranger. "My hunch was correct. He's from what's known to my people as Wolf Island."
Ox, but with a slight inflection. Kasai had never heard such a strange name.
Sonus glanced at North, while Ghor shook his head. Even though North hadn't been there when Kasai met Oyx, if they were going to take him home, they needed the crew navigator to answer if they could make the trip there and how many stops they could take.
"Wolf Island?" Kasai thought about the one navigation and world book he had read in Cloud Villages library.
The world was mostly water, with many islands dotted on each of the four seas. While the majority were named, there were some blank that were titled Uninhabited. Most islands are grouped together, requiring a month of travel between them, while travel between groups can take anywhere from one to six months or even longer.
Brinar nodded and looked down at his notes, his brow furrowing. "It's not known to many people, unless you're from there, was there and escaped, or have seen one of the few maps that contain the name of every island. Most books don't name every island, and even fewer have every unhabituated or special island named."
"North, how long do you think it would take us to get there?" Sonus looked at the map and shifted it for him to see.
Everyone waited quietly while he studied the map, and he suddenly gave a great sigh and closed his eyes. "Whoever captured him as a wolf has a lot of explaining to do. It's a two-week journey, as long as we have favorable winds, from here to Veridey's Island. From there, it's around two months to Surval if we have good favorable winds again. But the Expanse needs to be crossed to get to the Cer'ki Archipelago, and that may take six months if we're lucky. If we can get across the Expanse, we can stop at Cernu and, from there, it would be another two months at most."
"The Expanse? What is that?" Kasai glanced at the map, thinking hard. He had heard the name in an old navigation book, but there weren't many details about it.
Sonus was frowning. "The largest section of ocean in the world. Technically, we could head east, make the journey shorter by island hopping, but the Storm Band prevents that." Kasai opened his mouth, but Sonus held a hand up. "It's a three-hundred-mile-wide belt of storms reaching from the Northern Waters to the Southern Ice. Only one person has a chance of crossing those waters."
Kasai's eyes widened at the thought of crossing anything like that. He thought of the storm on his first night away from Cloud Village and shuddered.
Sonus tapped the map along a few larger islands in the south. "If we make the journey longer by traveling along the southern islands, we could do that, but we wouldn't be as hard pressed to save supplies. Less chance of us running out before we must restock."
Brinar nodded, but Ghor shook his head. "That's Razora's territory. We can't go there."
Sonus and Brinar exchanged a look, then said together, "we'll head north."
Kasai blinked in confusion. "Is she another pyrate?"
North winced. "Yea...and a particularly bad one. She's insane. Not even the Seaborne can handle her properly." He glanced at Sonus. "Sonus had a run-in with her some time ago...let's just say I'm shocked anyone survived her temper."
Brinar suddenly grabbed the maps and tucked them into a folder. "Alright. If we're going to take him home, or at least help him get somewhere that is better able to cross the Expanse, we need to get started first thing tomorrow." Everyone looked at him. "Tonight, I'll talk to him and explain our plans of taking him home or finding a safe route across the Expanse. I'll also ask him if he remembers the route he took when he was caught. For now, everyone get some rest. Kasai, wait a moment, please."
Sonus hesitated, and Kasai thought he would say something, but he abruptly turned and left. Brinar tapped Kasai's shoulder and beckoned for him to sit.
"Is something wrong?" Kasai felt a little overloaded and tired after everything that had happened in what was turning out to be a long day, despite it being two days now.
Brinar shook his head and sat down at his desk. "Not particularly. I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright. Oyx slept in your room, and he explained you had 'troubled sleep'."
Kasai shrugged. "It's just nightmares from Cloud Village." He tried to pass it off, but his voice caught.
Brinar watched him for a moment. "Would you like to hear how I met Sonus and Kira? It may help you. At least I hope it does."
Kasai stared at him for a moment. "Sonus said that you helped them."
"He's right." Brinar leaned back. "I'm from an island far to the north, but my island decided I would learn better by traveling. I had been at sea for maybe ten years when I heard about a pair of genetics on a small island with powers that no one had seen, and I wanted to meet them."
"Your island decided? Was it like the Seaborne?" Kasai asked.
Brinar shook his head. "No, nothing like them. My entire island is dedicated to studying the world and how it's changed since The Water Age began. We study for decades of our lives, about everything from genetics to psychology, all the flora and fauna, and the strange artifacts that sometimes pop up from time to time."
He pulled something from his pocket. Tt was round and smooth on one side, and the top opened up like a latch, but the face was strange. Two hands, one smaller than the other, pointed out from a center pin. Around the edge, there were twelve marks that Kasai couldn't read, though they sort of resembled numbers.
"What is this?" He touched the smooth face, which suddenly flickered.
Brinar frowned and narrowed his eyes briefly, then snapped the object shut and put it in his pocket. "It's called a timepiece, or at least that's what we call it. It's a relic from the old world; I bought it from a diver I met on Cer'ki Island."
Kasai recognized the word. He had seen one of these once, but it was in much worse condition.
"He had dived deep enough, with the help of some hoses and a pump, to gather items littered along the floor of Reef Harbor. There were many strange items in the market that day, but this was the most interesting to me. Some time I'll show you my ancient long glass or an old compass."
Kasai could see why he was interested in it; he felt an urge to take it apart and learn how it worked himself. "But did that help you meet my mother?"
"No. I met her because when I wanted to meet the genetics, I had no idea what to expect. I just knew there were genetics there, but not what they could do. Genetics are already somewhat uncommon, but on my island, they are extremely rare. I never met any of my people who were mutated, so I didn't want to pass up the chance to meet someone who was." Brinar shook his head.
"Mutated?" This was an unfamiliar word to Kasai.
"Yes. Humans have something called DNA. It decides everything, from our hair color to our taste in food to our inherent skills and abilities, which we build upon in life. But if the DNA is changed, say, by a dying world that is polluted or damaged, it can have disastrous effects." He paused for a moment. "I didn't know what to expect, seeing this phenomenon in person, but the end of a fight was not anything I could've even come close to imagining."
Kasai blinked. "A fight?"
Brinar nodded, somewhat sadly, Kasai thought. "I found two young people, not much older than you, fighting for their lives against...I can only describe their enemy as a monster. I didn't even properly see who they were fighting. I only arrived just as a storm hit and saw many people...dead." His voice caught slightly, but he recovered quickly.
Kasai already knew Brinar was the ship's doctor, but maybe that was because he was a doctor before that?
"Your mother and Sonus were the only two left. After forty years of studying medicine, you can't imagine the shock it was to not be able to help more people. But I saved both their lives, and I've been traveling with Sonus since." His voice was a tad hollow.
"What happened to them after that, though? I know my mother was only twenty when my brother was born." Kasai felt uneasy now.
"She was pregnant when we met." The words were like a stone, dropping heavily through the air.
Kasai was stunned.
"Don't ask about your father. I don't know him. As far as I know, he wasn't there." Brinar turned away, but Kasai was sure he was hiding something. "I suggest you get some rest; tomorrow is going to be the start of a long voyage."
Kasai nodded, the dismissal clear, and left the room. But inside he was burning to ask one question; what was Brinar hiding?