The System Seas

After another ten minutes of maneuvers, Riv stomped down the stairs from below deck, a notebook-wielding Elisa in tow. "She's stuffed to the gills, Captain. I've seen warships with less rations."

“Have you really?” Marco asked.

"Well, no, it's a figure of speech."

"They packed efficiently too. I see why Kelda wanted us to take note of it. It's art down there, once you look close." Elisa flashed her notebook at him, where column after column of inventory had been made. "Everything layered by type and weight. Salted meats, dried fruit, even some compressed grain blocks I’ve never seen before. And spices. A lot of spices.”

"Why spices?" Marco frowned.

"Because they’re valuable and small," Elisa said. "Either for trade or our own morale. People like to eat well, and spices make that possible. Kelda knew what she was doing.”

They spent the next hour pushing the ship through a series of increasingly demanding maneuvers. Sharp turns were good, but knowing exactly how sharp a turn he could make was better. Marco found he was able to make the ship dance on the water, and the ship seemed almost glad to answer his commands. He tried turning the rudder with subtle shifts of the wheel, and watched as they swung like a live fish in the water, caring much less about physics than he had thought would be possible.

Eventually, with the sun rising higher into the sky, they settled into a steady direction, chosen at random from the many directions Frisk hadn’t headed. The sea around them was vast and empty. After a busy morning of packing, climbing aboard a ship, and getting used to it, everything had now fallen quiet. For the first time since they'd left the island, nobody had anything urgent to say.

It was Elisa who broke the silence. “So. Where are we going?”

"Good question,” Marco said. He hadn’t been avoiding it, not exactly, but he hadn’t pinned it down either. "I don't think we want to get so far from the island, but I'd like to make a big loop around the territory if nothing stops us. Get an idea of what our local threats are before they come find us. We’ll likely be faster than them anyways.”

“Recon?” Aethe asked.

"Sort of. I mean, we'll fight if we find something to fight. But I'd also like to know what we are facing."

In terms of pirate hunting, the rest of the day was a bust.

Despite the wind and the motion of the waves, there was a moment in the early afternoon where it felt almost like they weren’t moving at all. Marco watched the horizon stretch in all directions, denying him the sweet perspective he would have needed to appreciate how fast they were probably going.

Riv leaned on the railing beside him, chewing on something meaty.

“So this is the mighty sea when nobody is trying to kill you or arrest you? It's peaceful.”

“Don't get too comfortable. It could be we see a ship any second. Though it's starting to get dark, so I think we'll have to take a break from even trying pretty soon.”

“Not a bad day to be out here, even if it's not for anything.”

Below deck, Elisa was relabeling their goods, trying to improve on a system that she had already admitted needed no improving. Every so often, she’d yell up at Riv to stop eating things that weren't labeled yet, which he seemed to take great pleasure in ignoring.

Aethe stood near the mast, polishing her bow in the last sunlight. She hadn’t said much since they picked their heading, but Marco had caught her smiling more than once as she strung her bow with the new tension string and made small adjustments to the knots, trying to get it just right as judged by a standard he didn't really comprehend.

Marco adjusted the sails, letting the wind catch slightly less. Propping the wheel, he let the ship continue onwards by itself, heading to the prow and looking out over the water, not doing much in particular at all. They were in a lull. A gap between moments. He knew it wouldn’t last, and he didn't really want it to.

"Alright," he called out, breaking the stillness. “Next ship we see, we're talking to it. We need information, and I bet we can get it faster if we trade observations.”

“What if it's a pirate?" Aethe asked, twanging her bowstring. "Still?”

"Only if the spyglass says its alright. Otherwise, we run. Keep an eye out as long as you can, today. If there's nothing by sundown, we'll just go to bed,” Marco stated.

“Why not later? Ships still move at night,” Riv asked.

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"Because there's no moon tonight, and it's getting overcast,” Elisa said. "We wouldn't see much anyway. We should still take watches, though. There are other dangerous things in the ocean besides ships.”

"Fine. Aethe, can you take the first one? Your eyes are better than the rest of ours."

The sun moved across the sky as they moved across the water. Eventually, something would show up on the horizon. It was Marco’s watch when it finally did.

It had been harder to stay awake during the calm of the night than he had thought it would be, but Marco had managed to find a combination of exposure to chill ocean air, moving around, and messing with the rigging that seemed to do the job. It was on one of his laps around the ship that he saw it, barely, off in the distance. Just a speck in the dark that was a little less dark than all the other specks, if you looked close enough.

He pulled out the spyglass. It didn't do much against dark, but it seemed that didn't matter much to how it actually functioned.