In comparison to any other tavern in any other port on any other night, the Social Guppy was, not to put too fine a point on it, wretchedly standard. It had no hallmarks of ingenuity in its conception or execution. Its ale was common, its whisky watered, its menu bland, its staff curt, and its ambiance far too ambient to be noticed. A fellow might wander in accidentally, look about, and wonder why such a place would host so much business before spinning heel and wandering right out again, looking for more pleasing fare. Of course, such a fellow would find himself cursing the otherwise thrice damned port of Begant and find his way back, as there were no other depositories of spirits in the little port town.

  It was here that Dristig, muttering under his breath at having to enter twice, found himself a half-unwilling captive in a hog pen of people for want of the comforts of shore. Dristig was captain of his own ship, the Storm Crow, and he believed he looked the part admirably. He wore a long coat, which emphasized his long body, had bushy eyebrows and a beard, which were beginning to mutiny and show gray, and he could make a scowl with his eye that would drive sailors to jump ship, and landlubbers to feel a sudden, inexplicable need to bathe.

  Amidst the roaring, rocking, groping group he tried, coin in hand, to flag the attention of a buxom beer dispenser, though it was with dawning annoyance that he realized the hem and haw around him was from others in similar pursuit. Two schools of thought on procedure crossed his mind for how to deal with this, and he chose neither, deciding instead to turn his attention to the sailors frequenting the Social Guppy.

  He first noticed that they were by vast majority not, in fact, men of the sea. Though kinds are all that take to the wind and water, these boisterous folks had no “salt in the eyes,” as the saying went. They had never stared into the blue when board and buoyancy were the only things keeping them from it, or had never prayed for the good wind when the sails sagged and stopped and stranded them. They were born of the land, lived of the land, and would die of the land, too scared to put bit and being into their own hands to see what other taverns there might be in ports afar. They needed salt in the eyes to rub out the fear that was held there.

  One by one he eyed them down, occasionally meeting gaze and making one feel he ought to jump in the nearest tub of water. Dristig had noted a ship or two in harbor, though he concluded their crews must know better than to frequent such a hole of local color. Now he did, too. While he might’ve enjoyed an ale that didn’t rock in sympathy with the waves, now he just needed a bottle of whatever liquor the port felt proudest of. Some tourists collect baubles and novelties or even people as they muck about the parts of the world, but Dristig collected spirits—local flavors that showcased, or often idealized, the hard work of the populace. His cabinet in his quarters was a map of the world. This served two purposes: One, as a reminder of the places he’d been, and two, the better liquors went faster, which required him to revisit places to resupply, forever keeping him on the sea (the idea of not drinking his souvenirs never occurred to him, or so he emphatically told people).

  A small chord—broken, dissonant—groaned out of a busy corner of the common room. Dristig shunted an eye over to see an upright piano, perhaps more tilted than upright, being manned by a blunt fingered virtuoso. The wooden frame sat jagged, with splits between the seems of planks and a black and yellowing keyboard grinning unevenly on the keybed like a man-child too slow in the head to think his presence is anything but welcome. The virtuoso played an octave, found the notes to be eleven tenths of an octave, shrugged and hammered away at a few more of the keys. It was with growing apprehension that Dristig could tell that the seemingly random notes, played in an unintentionally jazzy rhythm and mired by the unexpected double flat the aged strings inflicted, were coalescing into a gelatinous pattern some philistines might refer to as a song. Others in the tavern lifted their heads in drunken haze, turning to the piano and toasting the music. The din of conversation died to allow the birth of singing.

  The Mentia seas are cold, they say

  The man who dips a toe

  Will freeze his body, bone and soul

  But from the frosty foam.

  The sun, for all his blessed glare

  Upon the safest moors,

  He cannot warm the winding waves

  That claw upon the shores.

  The Mentia seas are deep, they say

  The fathoms ne’er to cull

  From sky to land not half as far

  As from the floor to hull.

  And if the drowned begin their dive

  Forever bind their fate

  Are sinking still to darkness where

  Not even souls escape.

  The Mentia seas are vast, they say

  The currents pull away

  For years afar from safer shores

  Where darker paths await.

  For when the stars will dim and fall

  And skies that end beyond,

  In Godless reaches never seen

  The blue, it surges on.

  Dristig was halfway out the door when it finished. Horrid song! It bred unhealthy distaste for the sea. If any a smart mouthed sailor sang it on his ship, he’d douse them in blood and throw them off the aft—the sea didn’t need any encouragement to be treacherous, and it was for that reason no sea-shanty ever mentions the blue. God forbid to excite the capricious child. The piece was likely written by some soft-souled scallywag wanting to seem tougher than his deck-swabbing job allowed.

  The salted air eased into his lungs as he stepped leadenly under a star-gemmed sky. Slowly, the noise of the Social Guppy faded, and the gentle sound of waves on the docks soothed over his nerves. The wind was soft, easterly, playfully batting the ends of his coat into a carefree dance. He could understand their fear, at least. The sea isn’t safe for the unprepared—storms, pirates, monsters, leviathans, ghosts, he’d seen them all in his years. The Storm Crow actually chased the storms, as it was often in their wake the breaklands surfaced.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Before thought could change to thought, the nape of his neck prickled each of its hairs in erratic fashion, and he scanned upwards to see if the uncomfortably familiar feeling was what he feared. A shadow, still as a coffin, blotted out the stars unfitted to the natural line of roofs. Wrapped in feathered wings, a watcher-angel—a Morallis—loomed over the deserted street, surveying with probing indifference, ready to swoop at its whim. No one knew what motivated the Moralli, or who decided they should watch the world, and it was odd what things they felt compelled to interfere with, but they usually put a stop to heated violence, and as such their other little delights of obstruction were overlooked. Regardless, they made even honest men feel guilty, and no lifetime ever passed without one flapping its wings and insisting that what it was seeing was wrong. His best chance to proceed unmolested was to seem inordinately interested in the ground on which he walked.

  “You hasten towards doom, sailor.”

  Dristig planted boot, first believing that the Morallis was taking time to start up conversation—as no Morallis had ever conversed with its lesser earthbound brothers, it would explain the terrible attempt at small talk. More careful view of his surroundings, however, proved that the street was not as deserted as he’d believed.

  “Each step tolls the bell. Each breath sighs all the nearer.”

  A mound of rags lay on the cobblestone, propped up by a rail between the land and water. From out the pile two eyes shone, transfixed on Dristig, no slight twitch or shiver or movement towards a sidearm unnoted.

  “Strange words from a stranger. Truly, Begant has it all for those searching for the surreal. Farewell.” Dristig turned away.

  “You sail aboard the Storm Crow, yes?” asked the rags, shifting sartorially. “The one with the lad on deck, puffing a pipe, eyes staring at the land as though it’s beyond the horizon? My eyes don’t fail. You sail with him.”

  “And what of it?” Dristig removed his flintlock, which made the Morallis flap his wings in a huff. “What menace brings you to speak to me at all?”

  “Menace? Ah, yes. That lad is best called a menace, yes.”

  “Why say that? What did he do?”

  A hand, worn to the bone, stretched from the rags and balled to a fist. “Did he do? No, what he will do!”

  “Oh? Think you heard him speak of some sort of plot, did you?”

  “Bah! You misunderstand. He need not speak nor plot a thing—he exists, he sails, and that is the menace. Speak indeed. Why should he speak when the ghosts of all futures sing damnation before him? What plot could match when demons follow him, sick on the joy of impending catastrophe? Any ship that carries him would do the world better to burn and sink in harbor, with him on it for certain measure. He will bring us to the end times. Menace, menace and damnation.”

  Pausing only long enough to decide if shooting the loon was worth the hassle, Dristig walked away.

  “Each step tolls apocalypse,” the voice called out, not necessarily to Dristig. “We who fall from hope are helplessly embraced by despair. We who fall from despair are happily embraced by oblivion.” With that, the rags spoke no more.

  Dristig, being unnaturally alert for such things through concern and condition, heard what could only be the sullen sound of a man breaking the tension of water. He turned around to see the rags were gone, and only a faint light glancing upon the rippling water below evidenced that he was ever there. A whoosh of flighted air sent the Morallis to perch on the rail, standing over the water, waiting for a sign of the man surfacing. None came.

  Dristig continued walking, the only change being a doubly emphatic resolution to never come back to Begant. Steps later, rounding a dock and over the thinning planks of a pier, he came upon the Storm Crow. There was no other ship like her, though that saying has two sides to it. Her form stood on the water like the clawed grasp of a dragon, and her sails, unfurled at the moment, stretched ever towards the heavens (though it’s generally believed that if anything got close to heaven, the Moralli would cut it down). While she would be the runt of any chosen litter of ships, she was fast—faster than the devil’s hands, as Dristig liked to put it.

  The trade was necessary for the work they did. The Storm Crow raided the breaklands, which rise from the depths of the water in the wake of storms. Though logic and a large muster of trials claim otherwise, the islands presented themselves as though they had no knowledge of their time under the water—they were usually as dry as any other island hit by a storm, and they more often than not possessed rich forests and other plants that could only otherwise survive in open air. Because of the confinements of solid land, the breaklands provided many resources that would otherwise be hard to cultivate—lumber and minerals, mainly, though there were often more exotic and rare items to be found. In that was the niche the Storm Crow filled. While large, slow ships from larger, slower navies were sent by still larger, slower admirals for the mundane fare, Dristig could get his ship where it needed to go for first pick of a newly risen island. It also allowed him to leave before the islands dropped like stones back into the water, or before said large navies arrived. There was little law on the open waters, and the greatest treasures invoke the greatest sins in the covetous.

  He put one foot on the ramp to board his ship, more relieved than joyful to never stand on Begant again. Looking up he saw a young man, Ensom, sitting comfortably on the rigging. There was such an ease and belongingness about the boy that one could be forgiven for thinking he was merely another part of the ship, a knot in the rigging or some such, if he was even noticed at all. Dristig could understand the suicidal lunatic being unnerved by Ensom, as there was an otherworldliness about the boy that, upon noticing it, would be hard to come to confident knowledge of what exactly was peculiar about him. First glance showed him to be a boy, halfway between ten and twenty, of brown hair and reserved disposition. Second glance showed him slowly puffing away at his pipe, in the manner of an old man that’s set in his ways, the light of small embers reddening his face and mirroring a glaze across his eyes. Third glance showed him exhaling a cloud of uncaring, unrestrained smoke, that rose about his face, seeming to obscure the mutual eye contact between, until the wind whispered in and gifted the smoke to the night, which showed the boy’s eyes had never wavered in the interim.

  “Sick of shore already, Captain?” asked Ensom.

  “Just came back to make sure my ship didn’t burn down with you in it!” grumbled Dristig.

  Ensom nodded. “I see you met the local color, then.”

  “You saw him in the rags, did you? What did he do? You didn’t let him onto the ship, I trust.”

  “Trust well placed, Captain, though he never came close. Knew a bad fight when he saw one, I guess.”

  His biggest fight was with himself, thought Dristig.

  Ensom continued. “He’d walk to a few fathoms from the bow, stop, gawk and flail his arms about. Say a few things. Then he’d wander off and wander back, stop, gawk like he’d never seen it before, and so on. Happened about four times throughout the night. Told the others on watch—they’re playing cards just inside, now—told them to keep aware of any shenanigans around the rest of the boat each time he came back. They didn’t see none, so he was just a lone loon.”

  “A loon is right,” said Dristig. “Wasn’t alone, though—he had you. Had a few things to say about you, too, he did. Seems you unnerved the poor man.”

  “Did I?” smirked Ensom.

  “Must have seen it on you, boy; a babe that kills his mother. I ever tell you that story?”

  Ensom twitched. “Yes, you’ve told me the story. A hundred times, you’ve told me the story.”

  “Have I now?” said Dristig. “And did I mention the storm we were in?”

  “Worst one in your experience, it was.”

  “It was. How I came down to see your mother dead?”

  “You mentioned.”

  “Dead from stress of birth?”

  “Indeed.”

  “How I found you just above the bilge, clawed up on the back of what was your twin?”

  “Yes.”

  “How I—“

  Ensom rose, flailing from the rigging. “ ‘How I cut ye free from the maternal line an’ baptized ye rrright in the bloody bilge!’ ” His impression was spot on, albeit a bit manic and hyperbolic.

  With a stamp, Dristig grinned. “There you are, Ensom lad! I’ll make a boy out of you yet! Look at you, rolling your eyes, annoyed and exasperated at your elders. If that man were still with us, he’d not think twice that you were just another snot nosed rapscallion; never minded the sight of you!”

  Ensom reverted to his particulars, already repacking his pipe to replenish the bits he’d lost in his performance, which were sizzling into the cold water below.

  Turning his nose, Dristig smelled the air. “How long will we have this easterly, boy?”

  Ensom relit. “Until morning, then it’ll be out of the northwest. Change like that, should be a big storm.”

  “I know, boy. Why are you parroting my own wisdom back at me? Ah, I suppose it’s for the best you are who you are. No other can predict the wind.”

  “As you say, Captain.”

  “Make sure you leave the boat once in a while, Ensom. You’re reaching an age where the sea and sailors can’t satisfy all.”

  “I only make port for tobacco, Captain.”

  “Ah, you say that now, but I daresay the next comely lass you see will be the death of your career on the blue.”

  “We can only hope, Captain.”

  “It’s waring, talking to you, boy.”

  “Good night, Captain. Oh, one thing—?”

  Dristig stopped just on deck and made a noise.

  “You said ‘if the man was still with us.’ What happened?”

  Dristig took in a deep breath. “Ah, that. He jumped into the water and never came back up.” That being that, he walked to his cabin, leaving the boy to his watch.

  Ensom nodded with a thoughtful frown. “Guess he was sick of shore, as well.”