TRIGGER WARNING: THIS CHAPTER BRIEFLY MENTIONS S3XUAL A$$AULT AND A MANSL@UGHT3R. THE SAID PART OPENS AND ENDS WITH THE FOLLOWING MARKING- ^^^

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"Another one, Tommy!"

Why could sailors not drink in silence? It was a rhetorical question. Sierra knew that quite well even while sitting in the darkness of the brigs.

Sierra almost wished that the fools drowned in the salty waters but what would happen to her if they all really did? She would never reach a new coast. She might know how to keep the vessel afloat but she hardly knew any routes. She only ever travelled under disguise (of men, crates and sometimes drums.)

She heard a groan, it made her look to her side. A bruised and beaten man lay there.

Why's he awake now?

Quite irritated Sierra raised her arm, opened her hand and pointed at something in the warping darkness. It was like fishing but there was no medium or bait between the catcher and the catch. It was just an unseen spark that was struck when the willingness of one's thoughts and the ability to execute them aligned within the girl's form.

A wave of sensation coursed from Sierra's fingertips, down her arm, spine and finally the thought-filled mind. It was something big, she could tell because she failed to keep it afloat. Then instead of being dragged, it rolled towards the girl as she brought it past the opened grills of her prison.

It was opened by the man (who was steadily regaining consciousness) when he dragged the girl away from the feast and brought her where they currently were. So drunk, he barely had felt when the first iron bar struck him. But Sierra, her witch-work more precisely, had beaten up the man enough to make him slip out of the world of touch.

Evidently and inconveniently not for long enough; Sierra needed him to sleep through the night so she could sneak out of the brigs before becoming to everyone - the witch who seduced and killed a man. Lone women like her get stoned and burnt more often.

^^^

The sound of the rolling canon ball resembled the rumbling belly of a beast. Sierra thought to herself, would killing him be too big a consequence? Then again no one but his own will allowed him to touch her.

Her refusals, warnings and cries went to waste; unheard and disregarded. If she did not now, she would kill him a hundred times over in her mind later; on the nights sleep missed her abode, on days she lost her way, right before she would break the first bite of the bread, she would curse him, cause him pain and humiliation and kill him with countless weapons.

At present, with a little more strength than she could muster, Sierra got the iron dense ball to float again. Even in the dark she knew when it was right above his head.

Voices floated above her head as if this was not even happening at all.

"One for me, Tommy boy!"

"Good lad!"

Sierra thought the noise of the feast with the rumble of the ocean would ride over any other indistinct sound. She was wrong. She heard the ball drop, the bones break and the blood splatter. She even felt the liquid touch her through her rags, it made her move away, in disgust, from her corner to the one right across.

^^^

The audacity of men...

Even if she felt the life drain out of the corpse, Sierra felt unsatiated. It was a lacking feeling that the darkness only made louder. There was no sense of justice; maybe there was no such thing for a rogue. With such a burden, Sierra weighed herself down to slumber.

...

The morning never called Sierra up.

"Land ahoy!"

Sierra's eyes flew open to that sound. It rang in her ears like bells. Without sparing a glance at the moist corpse she got herself out of the brigs.

Now, she was on a mission.

First, the girl had to find rags which she could wrap around herself to cover the blood stains. That was easy on a ship; anyone that sets out on a journey on water for months was bound to be a hoarder.

A wash-cloth from the left, a hankerchief from the right. And was that gold around that man's neck? Well, it was around Sierra's now. Who says one you can't work from the shadows? Sierra spent her whole life in them.

Now for the master stroke : the final escape. She who did not board with the captain's knowledge, could not walk down the deck with his men. Then what was the girl to do? She could not fly off the ship, now could she? Couldn't she?

She couldn't. But jump into the water she could. Like a mongoose, once here then there, stealing her sight from everyone's sight the girl managed to reach the edge of the vessel. And she flung herself in the unending ocean.

Splash!

She held her breath under the water and swam away below the currents.

"Something fell!" shouted one of the men.

"What?" shouted back another.

A younger boy, at most a teen, looked over at the water, a crate afloat caught his eye, the bubbles surrounding it yet to die.

"It's an empty crate, sir!" he yelled.

"Come here, Tommy! Enough with sight-seeing! And where the fuck is Martin?"

"Rotting drunk somewhere!" replied one of them.

Before running back to do the errands he was ordered to do, Tommy spotted a shadow in the ocean, that drifted farther and farther away from their ship.

Is that a... he thought to himself, mermaid?

"TOMMY!"

"Yes, sir!" he ran back.