Spring 3 520AV
464 words
Kristoff tried not to panic in the grasp of the Suvan, even though it had been gentle with him so far. Dreams of storms and of being swallowed beneath the waves had plagued him for the last few nights even before boarding the Veronica. A man of the land, Kristoff struggled to shake off the nervousness that he'd join the many unmarked graves in the depths below. "Is there a trick to making the rocking of the ship soothing instead of unsettling? Or does that just come with years of being at the mercy of the swaying?" Kristoff asked Captain James Chaliva. "I used to think ships were a strange kind of magic, they look so majestic on their way out of the docks, but this voyage is really teaching me how tenuous that the alliance between ships and the sea truly is."
Syka waited somewhere beyond the horizon, a place where Kristoff could forge a new future for himself, far from the slowly sinking ship that would have been his life in Riverfall. Kristoff was still unsure of whether his parents would have been upset with him for abandoning the remnants of his family, or proud of him for blazing his own fresh path. He at least had the solace of knowing his siblings understood why he wanted to leave, especially since Kristoff's portion of the inheritance left much to be desired.
Peering over the edge into the waves below, Kristoff could see the shifting shadows of fish. He had been trying very hard to find things to focus on to avoid asking the maddening question always at the tip of his tongue, 'How long until landfall?' Pushing that thought away, he wondered if a better fisherman might be able to catch some while the ship traveled. Their darting figures reminded Kristoff of the night before, seeing an apparition of a young girl. It had given him a startle, Kristoff thought his younger sister had smuggled herself aboard, but when he called out to her, the figure vanished. Once he had recollected himself, he reasoned that he'd only imagined it.
"Captain James, you said I should be safe on the beach and to avoid the jungles unless I was with someone who knew their way about, just how many poor souls have ventured out never to return?" Kristoff could recall more than a few others he trained with who would suffer such a fate for their pride. Sometimes that pride was useful, but for a fair number of his peers he saw that it lead to an early grave. "Is there anything on the beach I should try to watch out for and avoid?" It was still hard for Kristoff to wrap his mind around what the denizens of Syka might be like.
464 words
Kristoff tried not to panic in the grasp of the Suvan, even though it had been gentle with him so far. Dreams of storms and of being swallowed beneath the waves had plagued him for the last few nights even before boarding the Veronica. A man of the land, Kristoff struggled to shake off the nervousness that he'd join the many unmarked graves in the depths below. "Is there a trick to making the rocking of the ship soothing instead of unsettling? Or does that just come with years of being at the mercy of the swaying?" Kristoff asked Captain James Chaliva. "I used to think ships were a strange kind of magic, they look so majestic on their way out of the docks, but this voyage is really teaching me how tenuous that the alliance between ships and the sea truly is."
Syka waited somewhere beyond the horizon, a place where Kristoff could forge a new future for himself, far from the slowly sinking ship that would have been his life in Riverfall. Kristoff was still unsure of whether his parents would have been upset with him for abandoning the remnants of his family, or proud of him for blazing his own fresh path. He at least had the solace of knowing his siblings understood why he wanted to leave, especially since Kristoff's portion of the inheritance left much to be desired.
Peering over the edge into the waves below, Kristoff could see the shifting shadows of fish. He had been trying very hard to find things to focus on to avoid asking the maddening question always at the tip of his tongue, 'How long until landfall?' Pushing that thought away, he wondered if a better fisherman might be able to catch some while the ship traveled. Their darting figures reminded Kristoff of the night before, seeing an apparition of a young girl. It had given him a startle, Kristoff thought his younger sister had smuggled herself aboard, but when he called out to her, the figure vanished. Once he had recollected himself, he reasoned that he'd only imagined it.
"Captain James, you said I should be safe on the beach and to avoid the jungles unless I was with someone who knew their way about, just how many poor souls have ventured out never to return?" Kristoff could recall more than a few others he trained with who would suffer such a fate for their pride. Sometimes that pride was useful, but for a fair number of his peers he saw that it lead to an early grave. "Is there anything on the beach I should try to watch out for and avoid?" It was still hard for Kristoff to wrap his mind around what the denizens of Syka might be like.