Kai craned his neck over to make sure that Chip didn't slip out of his sight. Chip and the two boys were pretty little rascals, who broke rules and messed around. Last thing he needed was to lose yet another day's meal, just for its tally.

Glancing over her shoulder, Chip beamed a smile towards Kai, which was as captivating as any lighthouse. Kai chuckled, snapping fingers to his thumb indicating Zaren's big mouth and lip-synced shaking his head sideways, "Blah...blah."

Chip half snorted and half laughed, sniffing her runny nose. She got back to her work of cleaning a big crab's shell. Kai resumed back to his own work of sorting out fishes.

A high pitched muffled tone spoke from the other side of the work bay. But for Kai, the distinct sound went unnoticed under all the death wishes he kept hearing from the wiggling fishes on death bed.

"Incoming..!"
Yelled a worker on the other side. And the word of alert spread like a wildfire.

"Such an irresponsible little twat!"

Kai rolled his eyes as soon as he heard her high pitched bleat, now, unambiguous and as annoying as ever.

The buzzing gossips about Busty Gabby overshadowed, eclipsing the roar of crashing waves.

"How many times have I told him? God, I can't get a hold of this boy!"

Gabby was a loquacious woman, and for that matter, all the 'elite-slaves' of the RMZ ship were. Although her apron was flour coated and dirty, her skirt was as clean as a clock. She clattered away some of workers with her plump body as she made her way through.

"Tibby! Tibby!"

She hopscotched around the puddles of water, so that tidy hem of her skirt didn't touch the blood tinged smelly water on the floor. Once when she finally reached to the corner where Chip and boys were kneeling in a giant puddle of filth, she gasped holding her stubby fingers on to her chest. "Oh my! I have to wash you all over again."

Tibby boy stiffened, a squeamish look was plastered on his face instead of his regular grumpy one.

"Tibbie...I have told you thousand times, not to play with these----!" She stopped, looking down on Chip and Bo. She pinched Tibby's ear and pulled him along with her, still hopscotching over the puddles on her path. The boy whined and dragged his feet, "mom! That hurts. Ow..".

"It's not like you'll catch some kind of plague from us, Gabby. They are kids. So let them be..." A familiar wise and croaky voice spoke to her.

Kai turned around leaving the fishnet aside, to join the crowd that had formed around the Chatty Gabby and the wise old man. Nobody ever missed a chance to giggle and gossip about a show that happened every once in a while, as rare as an oasis in a desert-land. He pried his head above tall men to take a note of Chip's safety, and she was safe indeed.

"Oh stop it, Uncle Jay. You know nothing..." Gabby raged, but her black eyes didn't dare to meet Jay's old and grey ones. Perhaps, he was right after all.

"I know everything. I have been on this ship long before you came in. This 'drift', this 'big divide' - you have created between us and you, it's only gonna end up in a disaster, Gabby." The wise one said.

"Whatever old man. And don't you dare call me by my name, I prefer being called 'matron'!" She retorted and stormed away hauling Tibby along with her.

Workers' remarks tattled across the bay and then there was a honking siren which made it worse. Everyone rushed to the other side of the deck jostling and pushing each other. The Siren meant food and none preferred sleeping with a wet rag tied around their empty belly, especially when it was served on first come first basis.

Kai took Chip's​ arm and she took Bo's arm, as they ran towards the booth. Gabby was serving her tasteless gruel to the queue, her nose wrinkling at every other person in the line. And when the time came for the wise old man's, she didn't hesitate to serve half a ladle instead of a regular full one. Uncle Jay gave her a small but strong nod. Well, Gabby never stopped being Gabby. So she did what she always did- mangling her face in disgust.

When Kai and chip settled to a corner slurping their tasteless gruel, Kai couldn't help but notice Sheila, as she helped her aunt Gabby. He choked on his food when his gaze met with Sheila's, for only a split second. Then he shied away, looking into the ocean's vastness, but what was in there? Eternal darkness of the night sky?

"Daddy!"

Kai's mind snapped wide awake at Chip's squeal. Kai took in all of the man's appearance. Raven black hair, with streaks of silver sparsely scattered all over his scalp. Piercing green speckled eyes, mirroring his own. The man swayed to and fro, not because of the Ship's rocking movement, but because of his drunkenness.

"Hi my little Chippy!" He wailed, criss-crossing and swaying his walk towards them. Brimful of gruel in his bowl spilled, as he plonked himself on to the floor.

"Hi dad." Chip flashed a toothy smile.

He nodded to Kai blatantly, not a single good word spoken. Kai seemed least bothered, as he continued munching the mush as if none was around.

"So...how was your day?" He asked, darting his look between Chip and Kai.

"I cleaned hermit crabs today, dad. And they were so tiny!"

"That's... that's interesting." He said, just because he had to. "So, you guys got paid, huh?" He particularly suggested his eyes towards Kai, all the while Kai was busy in avoiding him.

"Yes!" Chip replied, flaunting a rusted coin with a hole inside.

"Oh wow. Look at you. You are so tiny and you're already​ earning!" He squeezed her cheeks, deceitfully taking her hard earned coin away. Kai ground his disgust in between his teeth as he noticed it and let the moment pass by. The next minute Kai was as calm as a saint.

"Kai. I need some money." He pleaded hesitantly, rubbing his hands into each other.

"For what? To buy another pint of your liquor?" Kai's pent up anger bursted out as lava from a dead volcano.

"Kai. You don't understand. You are too young to understand. If I won't,
I will die....I swear."

"Stop it!" Kai rose to his feet.

"Please Kai. Please. You don't understand!" He pleaded again, blocking and pinning Kai to the mast behind.

Gawking glares, mocking mouths and shameful sighs from surrounding people felt unsettling. Kai let his father be, so that the situation shouldn't worsen more.

"Thanks son."
His dad left, revealing something that was neither a smile nor a sigh on his lean face.

The food had become one with the dirt on the floor, long before Kai felt the hunger-cry inside his belly. He gave one last yearning look at the spillage, before he bent his torso down to clean up. By then a hilt of a sword prodded his back.

"Who's gonna clean all that mess now, Kai? Your stark mad dad?" Zaren taunted. Two of his friends - one lean, another toothless- joined him picking on Kai. They scorned and laughed at him. It was partly because of his dad's hopeless mien, and partly because of Kai's own demeanour.

"Shh..."
Zaren showed his palm to stop his friends from going over board.
"Come on. Clean up." He commanded, before he left the place. And whatever was left of Kai's confidence in front of Sheila, shattered into pieces, as she stood there leering at him from her booth.

Chippy's amusement wilted as if her face was a sunflower devoid of sunlight when she saw Kai's gloomy face. Kai was busy tying a grey cotton rag soaked in cold water around his stomach, growls of which were still audible to Chip's little ears.

"Kai." The gentle breeze of her hush tickled his ears. She walked towards him holding her hands behind her back.

"Oi chippy. Want a bed-time story?" He scrunched his brows upwards, while he made his bunker bed. A small cubicle was all the family had for themselves. A multipurpose dilapidated table and a trunk for all their precious clothes was placed at the corner.

"Noo.." she pulled on her answer, playfully shaking her head.

"Neverthelessss..." Kai strained, hissing the word, as he picked Chip up holding by her underarms, and plonked her on the shabby bed. "..It's time for bed." He added and booped her nose with his fingertips.

"I know. I know... But, can you stop mothering me, atleast once in a while?"

Kai chuckled at her all-time ready wits. But before he had said anything, she had outstretched her palms to offer him something. Kai's shoulders lowered as he sighed.
"Ow..Chippie you don't have to do that. You got to fill your tiny tummy, alright?" Saying that, he looked into the leftover gruel in her bowl.

"It's okay. I am full. Bontu gave some of his. Take it." She thrusted the bowl into his hands and slumped herself down on bed lazily. "I am soo...full."

"Bo?" Kai exclaimed, hesitantly bringing the bowl towards his mouth. The familiar bland smell of it somehow made his mouth watery.

"Hmm-hmm." She nodded.

Once when he was done stupefying the hungry beast inside him, he acquainted right beside Chippie, curling like a ball and drifted into a deep slumber.

"Kai-e-nan" A reiterating voice called his name, tickling and scratching his brain like an earworm.

"Kai." The playful voice echoed again, in an alleyway of utter darkness. It felt so familiar, yet so strange. So surreal, yet so daunting.

He tried to feel and locate the waves of her ethereal sound, so captivating, yet killing him from inside. His body felt heavier than ever, he felt his chest collapsing onto his heart, pressing and piercing it. He winced his face, beads of sweat coalesced into each other on his forehead, like beads of quicksilver. 'I..Can't breathe...Air. More air!'

His body fell limp, his writhing movements in pain faded into nothingness, darkness plaguing his consciousness. But, he saw a light, a flashing aurora of thousand colours, which didn't let him drift away, twinkling and lightning like a thunderbolt. His blurring eyes squeezed to imbibe the subtlety of it.

The very next moment, jolts of electricity flowed along his feet, to his legs, to his spine.
Once.
Twice.
When it was the third jolt, he was wide awake.

A stinging pain harrowed along his body, excruciating enough to make him shriek a yelp of agony. He tried to rub off the stingers sticking to his sore legs. But the scream, it went unheard, sucked into the void of endless darkness.

A giant lightning beast was floating infront of him. Its transparent yet sparkling tentacles and manes, flashing and dancing in the water.

'Water?' He undulated his hands in the dense surrounding.

'Am I drowning?'

"Of course...You are."

The enchanting voice was now inside his head. She was projecting her thoughts into his mind.

He rubbed his eyes, his vision became crystal clear as she revealed herself, changing her colour from evasive shades of blue and green to a waving facade of fiery red and gold, so smooth that it bewitched his clouded mind.

'A jelly fish? A giant jelly fish?'

He heard his own thoughts bouncing inside the vault of his skull. Another unheard shriek, faded into the vastness with gentle bubbles of his breath.

"Oh dear boy, you have heard me before, haven't you? Now wake up, now is the time to save your people."

'What do you mean?'

"You shall know soon."

'But...'

" 'What comes its way, never lives.
The one who masters it, never loses.'

See you soon, Kai"

With that riddle, she left him retreating into the darkness. Her unseen playful smile slowly took shape inside his mind, only to fade away like a cloud veiling the moonlight. It was not exactly a vision, but more like a feeling- A feeling of warmth, that care, he was always deprived of.

When he woke up choking on his breath, his hair and body was a sweaty mess. He was still lying on his bunker bed, his sister was sound asleep beside him.

His father was lying on the floor, his limbs wriggling in his own reeking vomitus. His head was heavily bent to his side, his mouth spoke and sung a stupid jargon.

When Kai's quickened breathing returned back and a wave of exhilaration receded, he knew exactly why the dream was so... unearthly.
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Word count- 2156

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