Heave Ho, Thieves and Beggars

[Captain Ciera Ancora]

?Open your eyes. Take a look.?

She hesitated, then obliged. The sight took her breath away.

Blade?s expression was impossible to read in the autumn twilight. ?She?s all yours? Captain.?

?All mine.? The words sounded no less strange in her own voice.

She extended a paw, cautiously. Silly as it seemed, she was afraid of breaking something. But oh, that first contact. Nothing had ever felt more right, more meant to be.

?Hello, you,? she said, unable to contain a sheepish grin. ?I guess? I guess you?re mine, huh??

So much responsibility. So many duties to be taken care of, such a complicated role to fill. She only hoped she?d be able to keep from messing everything up.

?Aye.? said Blade.

?All mine,? Ciera repeated. All hers. Her very own Silver Maiden?

~~~~~~~~

Ciera spun, amidst a cloud of sawdust, splinters, and smoke. Wind screamed past her face. Her paws scrabbled wildly at thin air, finding nothing solid to cling to as she tumbled end over end. 

She hit the wave tops laterally, her body gouging an ungainly channel through the swell. A split second later the surface tore open to admit her, and water filled her eyes and ears and mouth. A long plume of bubbles tracked the ferret?s descent into the night-dark sea. Eventually she slowed, and hung suspended in the water. Bubbles squeezed from her nostrils, and sped away towards the distant surface.

Ciera had never learnt to swim well, so she thrashed her paws about and swam badly. An agonizing few minutes later, she hit the surface, and sucked in a greedy lungful of air. She looked around, searching for the Maiden. She spotted it a ways off, listing heavily to one side, and riding low in the water. It looked ready to drop into the depths at any moment.

?No, no, nooo!? she wailed plaintively.

She flung herself headlong towards the listing Maiden, buoyed less by the motion of her errant strokes than by the raging madness in her soul. Brackish seawater gushed into her mouth. She choked and spat it out, then continued on. Harsh salt burnt her eyes, and stung a hundred previously-unnoticed wounds.  Her paws frenetically scythed into the water as though she was trying to shove the entire ocean out of her way.

Eventually, one flailing paw caught a large chunk of debris. She righted herself, and clung to the floating object, coughing some seawater out of her burning lungs. Upon further inspection, she identified the debris as a chunk of wall. It had spent several seasons delineating cabins in the Maiden?s lower decks, but evidently had taken the opportunity to explore new career options. After one or two false starts, she managed to haul herself onto the makeshift raft. In the distance ahead of her, the Maiden was nearing the waterline.

She reached a paw out, willing her touch to be felt across the impossible distance. ?Hello, you,? she managed to cough out, her throat raspy with brine.

An unexpected swell tipped her into the sea. She paddled frantically, desperate to regain contact. Her claws raked the wood, then caught. She pulled herself up, gritting her teeth. Most of the wall?s joists had been knocked loose by the initial blast, and the raft was on the verge of drifting apart. She found the two most stable boards, and wormed the claws of one paw deeply into the fissure between them. Satisfied that she?d found some kind of stability, she turned her gaze back to the dying pirate ship.

?My poor beautiful girl?? Ciera murmured. ?What have they done to you??

Another wave lapped at the raft. The current was pulling her farther away from the Maiden. Ciera clung grimly to the crack and scooted herself round to lower her back legs into the water. She began to kick towards her ship.

?It?s okay, baby,? she gasped. ?I?m coming. I?m coming to get you, and everything?s going to be fine. I?m not going anywhere.? She kept her voice calm, reassuring.

The ship tilted a bit, and even across the waves Ciera could hear the timbers groan in complaint.

?I know it hurts,? she murmured soothingly. ?I know. But it?s going to be okay. I promise.?

Tears hit the raft planks. ?It?s going to be okay. I?ll stay right here with you.? The words came out too fast, betraying how desperately she wanted to believe them. She kicked harder, trying to close the distance between her and the ship. ?I?m not going to leave you. I?ll never leave you again.?

She?d tried so hard. Every day, she?d tried. From that bright summer morning Blade had given her the ship, told her it was hers to command, she?d done everything she could to treat the Silver Maiden well. To attend to its needs, make sure it was well looked-after. She had trained up her crew, sanded off their rough edges and transformed them into a cohesive unit. And under her command, the Maiden had become one of the most trustworthy ships in Blade?s empire.

In the end, it hadn?t been enough.

The strong and brave, the smart and the skilled, none of them stood a chance against Atlas Stormstripe. Not even Blade. And now, not even her.

The raft hadn?t moved an inch closer to The Maiden. She?d never make it, not at this pace. She was too tired to swim, and too weak to paddle the raft. She was once again going to miss the Maiden?s final moments. She hadn?t been there for Blade?s death, either.

Death seemed to take a perverse pleasure in denying her the chance to say goodbye. It wasn?t fair.

A faint blur of movement caught her eye. She turned.

There was a rowboat. She couldn?t make out the identities of the blobby beasts within it, but by the look of things, they weren?t making much progress. If she turned now, perhaps she could catch up to them. Climb aboard, or possibly attempt a show of force, depending on the occupants.

And then what? Where were those beasts going? What were they doing? What did she possibly hope to accomplish? She?d messed everything up. She had none of the things that made her a Captain. No ship, no crew. She didn?t even have her longcoat. All she had was the honorific. 

There weren?t many pirate captains left. With every passing day, more of them turned up on the list of the dead. Captains who were fiercer fighters than her. Captains who were smarter than her. Captains with faster ships and tougher crews. The rumors said Captain Barnacle and the entire crew of the Sprayqueen had been cut down when they made port for supplies; they said the Bladekeel had been hit with a fusillade of flaming arrows and burned to its timbers; they said Lady Ariana and her fearsome Veiled Sistren had been ambushed and slaughtered while raiding a coastal village; they said Maddog Hershey went down with the Darkrayne after being rammed by a Waverunner vessel; they even said that Atlas Stormstripe had torn out Wild Ulyssa Poisson?s spine out with his bare paws.

And, if she didn?t start paddling nowishly, they?d be saying that Captain Ciera Ancora and her beloved Silver Maiden had been blown straight to Hellgates by a ghost ship, and were never seen again. Furthermore, they?d say that Atlas had finally won. She?d be blowed if they were going to get to say that. Some things were worse than death.

Captain Ciera Ancora didn?t have a ship, but she had a raft. She didn?t have a crew, but she had a few distant blobs. It wasn?t much, but it would have to be enough.

She turned round, and began kicking. Buoyed by the favorable current, the raft picked up speed, and began gaining on the lifeboat.

~~~~~~~~

?Hermione, can you say ?Silver Maiden???

The ferretbabe looked up at her, then scrunched her face into a gravely serious expression. ?e?rr ai?en.? Hermione?s tiny tongue garbled it, so that it came out as Rrrin.

Ciera smiled. ?Close enough, I suppose.?

?Rin,? the child repeated.

?Rin.? Ciera smiled. ?I like the sound of that. I guess you?re my very own little Rin.?