Emma wasn't a violent person really. She was a four-foot-nine woman, and had not yet been beaten to death, so fucking of course she wasn't a violent person. Something about the past few weeks had changed that about her, though. Emma just came flying at Vari the moment she saw him, and didn't even notice herself screaming as she did.

Probably more from surprise than any actual effect of Emma's strength, Vari took a step back and raised his hands to try and ward her off. Panicked, ineffectual, she just slipped around his arms and kept smacking at him. Emma ended up hurting herself more than she probably did Vari, and then someone yanked her off him entirely.

"Bastard!" She snarled. "Bastard! Fuck you!"

It was Aexilica who'd pulled her back, and Aexilica now lifted Emma clean off the ground as she restrained her. Emma's struggling stopped only as her own arms and neck started to hurt with the strain of it. Aexilica, of course, betrayed no sort of pain at all, an animated statue as always.

"Calm down." She told Emma, while Emma was busy calming up. It took a while before she found herself able to listen again.

Somehow, she'd forgotten about her anger for a moment. Felt it slowly turn into depression and bitterness. Seeing Vari's face again brought all the rage snapping back, and hotter than ever.

"What is that little fuck doing here?" She demanded, glaring at the captain now. Storm-Eye grinned, the bastard, and seemed to find Emma's outrage more amusing than anything else in the world.

"The same as you!" He beamed. "Paying us for safe passage, and with quite a bit of silver, too!"

"With silver." Emma growled, glaring at Vari and feeling the sudden temptation to call on her magic. "With fucking. SILVER?!" Vari backed away, apparently sensing the murder drawing near.

"I didn't use any of yours." He hurriedly said. "My own, that's what I paid with."

"And where is mine?" Emma demanded.

"I left it in a pile, in a closet. I didn't steal any of it."

Emma took a moment to let that sink in.

"You have more silver on you?" She asked.

"Yes." Vari replied, hesitantly. Emma extended a hand.

"Give it here then, it's mine."

He stepped back, frowning now. Affronted.

"No! I told you I left your silver at Vichin." Emma lunged for him again.

It took another brief minute or two of murderous rage and impotent flailing before Emma had once more calmed herself enough to speak. She did so only with great effort, throat feeling tight as a vice and almost squeezing her voice into silence with each syllable she managed to force outwards.

"You left us without fucking anything, why?" It was actually getting harder to speak, Emma's lungs kept heaving the air out of her vocal chords. Trying to stop them, to take it back, left her ridiculously light-headed.

Vari hesitated at that, and his features seemed to crack all of a sudden.

"It was either that or die. I couldn't make room for both myself and the silver, and you weren't helping me. I didn't want to do what I did but…It was my life on the line! What would you have done!?"

Emma attacked him again.

Soon enough, they actually departed. Much to Emma's chagrin, Vari the Idiot was setting off with them. Other than that, though, the trip wasn't nearly as bad as she might have thought. Or rather, not nearly as bad as it could have been. There was still the horrible, abusive work to be considered.

Scrubbing decks, transporting gear, holding still rigging—the latter to an endless chorus of laughter from everyone else aboard as they realised just how well built Emma's body wasn't for such jobs as that. Everything she did was another torture. She grinned and borebeared it.

For now.

***

Aexilica had, in theory, been given the same amount of work as Emma, and one might have thought she'd be tied up for longer given her attempts to help the other woman with some of her more physically-demanding efforts. The truth was, it was all so easy for her and so hard for Emma that she had functionally several times the girl's free time.

So she used it.

No matter what Emma said, she still wasn't used to the ship's rocking after one day, and did not notice any particular difference after the second. The knowledge that their journey was to last weeks, as well, left Aexilica more than a little discontented. Periodically, her exploration would be interrupted by a quick vomit. It was inconvenient for one thing, deeply unpleasant for another, but at the end of the day it was nothing compared to some of the injuries she'd fought through. Aexilica ignored the displeasure as she explored.

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She studied the under-decks, and the mechanisms of the ship's motion. Asking questions of those few she knew, first the captain and Lalanika but soon others as well. The more time she spent aboard, the more she realised how strange the crew's features were.

They were like her.

Not in appearance, not exactly. Some were more different to Aexilica than she was to either the Sculds or true-born Aethiqi. But all of them had traits Aexilica knew to stem from several regions at once.

Haruki Draugrson had a name that left Aexilica wincing in anticipation for some towering, frothing Sculd warrior. Until she met him. There she discovered a short, lean man with kinky black hair, rather handsome features and eyes that seemed somewhat strange in their shape. The lids appeared to fold, somewhat, into the rest of them, and combined with his skin—which had an almost yellowish tint—it painted a picture of humanity she had yet to actually see. But not one she failed to recognise.

"Are you Arsoshi?" Aexilica asked him, perhaps more rudely than she had intended to. He laughed, thankfully, rather than growing offended, apparently well-used to such questions as that. Thinking about it, so was she.

"I am, and I am Sculd too." He replied. The man spoke…interestingly. His tones weren't clipped exactly, but every clause of every sentence seemed to be delivered with a great weight. It was as if, Aexilica thought, he intended for each one to register separately and intently by itself. It almost distracted her from the holistic meat of what he said.

"Oh, you're…" Of course he was, Aexilica ought to have kicked herself for missing it. Sculd name likely meant Sculd parent. She'd had a Sculd name, once. It was, in fact, the only thing she'd ever gotten from the rat bastard who'd sired her. Say one thing for the Sculds, say their blood got around. Be it spilled by iron or squirted by lust.

"As are you, yes?" The man named Aroshi pressed, eying her with some interest now. Aexilica paused, felt the familiar wariness overcome her. Such inquiries as she was facing down now had never ended well for her before. She knew, intellectually, that she had safe passage upon this vessel, and that its crew were not anything like her own people. But that didn't mean the old fears weren't back through instinct alone.

For that matter, it didn't mean they couldn't think less of her mixed blood than her own homeland had.

"Sorry if I was rude." Aexilica said hastily, eager to get a head start on mollifying this stranger if things began to turn sour. He just smiled again.

"You are used to being the odd one out in your own land, aren't you?" He asked her gently. Aexilica froze.

There were a lot of ways she could have played that, and the smart, sensible choices were clear. Don't commit, disengage, find a way to avoid answering his questions directly and refrain from being rude about it. Such inquiries were so often testing blows in conversation with those who had pre-made views on a woman of Aexilica's heritage.

But something about this stranger left her wanting to answer him, and…She did have safe passage bought already. Slowly, Aexilica nodded.

"My father was Sculd, my mother Aethiqi."

He didn't actually wince, but she could see the sympathy in his features.

"I know a little about the latter group." He noted. "And a fair sum about the former. My own mother was Sculd. I learned about the people from her, and have been to Scurlga a dozen or so times in my life. Being in Scurlga also taught me something of Aethiq, though I decided not to take any of what I heard there at face value."

He smiled, and Aexilica found herself smiling too. Smiling, and somehow grateful. But a new question was gnawing at her then.

"Is everyone on this ship from…You know."

"Multiple people groups?" Haruki suggested. She nodded. "No." He replied. "But a great deal many more than you might expect are. You have met Lanakila, who also shares some of your Aethiqi heritage as well as blood from Kobani. The captain, like you, is of both Sculd and Aethiqi heritage. Many of us are more mixed than even them. Such as myself."

Aexilica departed from him, at that, with a few grateful words, and considered what he'd told her. It took her some time to realise why, exactly, it felt so strange. By the time she had, noon was already past.

She was the standard here. In the world, she was not. Not by any means. But here, aboard this vessel, on these waves and baked by this sun, she was within the group of typical examples. She had something more precious than tolerance, decency or even acceptance. Normality. Aexilica felt a wave of emotion too complex for even her to identify, and quickly found something new to distract her from it.

Sade Lanakila was at the helm, barking out orders to everyone within ordering range. Aexilica expected the woman to be far too busy for idle conversation, but at her approach she quickly peeled away from the affair—with a few last growled commands to keep everyone else busy—and hurried to receive her.

"I was hoping the two of us could speak." She declared, before Aexilica could even begin the conversation. "Tell me, what do you make of this ship?"

Her accent, too, was strange. Stranger than Haruki's by far, stranger, even, than any Aexilica had ever heard, save perhaps Emma's. Every vowel was deep and folded inwards, every consonant hard and cutting. It seemed at first rather a harsh dialect, but the more Aexilica was exposed to it the more she found it to be instead potent.

How much of it came from her role as first mate to the captain, and how much was native speech, she could not say.

"It's good." Aexilica said, vapidly. "Uh, as far as ships go, I mean. Very…You know, fast."

"You don't know anything about sailing do you?" The first-matde asked. Aexilica winced.

"No."

"That's fine." Lanakila grinned. "I wasn't asking for your opinion on the actual vessel, what do you think of the crew?"

Oh.

"Oh, uh, I…" Again, Aexilica found herself fully aware of what the sensible answer was. Cards close to her chest, fist tight, unreadable, inoffensive, safe. And again, she found herself unable to muster it. "You're all…Like me. You know."

"I do." Lanakila confirmed with a nod. "Everyone on this ship is a Storm-Eye pirate first, and whatever else second. Doesn't matter where they're from, they're welcome. I was wondering what you'd make of that."

"It's the only place I've ever seen like it." Aexilica replied, honestly again. She was being honest everywhere, of late. Honest with Emma, honest, in a way, with the Sculds she killed, and now honest with complete strangers she had a single thing in common with. Not good, honesty got you killed.

"And what do you think of it, so far?" The first-mate pressed. Aexilica hesitated, thought things through. Her response was clear now, both sensible and genuine at once.

"It's incredible." She said at last, finding a smile infecting her features. Lanakila smiled right back at her.

"I agree."

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