[Flashback] Yes, we have no land out here. [Minerva]

[Pash'nar]

Timestamp: 79 Summer 508 Pash'nar woke long before the dawn, sore and stiff. Parts of him hurt that didn't hurt yesterday. His bruises ached, his head swam, and his pride stung a bit once he stumbled from his berth and saw that the girl was still sleeping on the floor of his cabin. He sighed, watching her sleep for a moment. He should have been nice last night and cleared off his spare bed, but he really hadn't felt like it. Some part of him hoped she would disappear in the night while he slept fitfully, but she hadn't. With a groan, he stumbled about his cabin without bothering to be quiet, fumbling for his charts to Mura in the dark, shoving them in a belt to keep his hands free, careful enough not to step on Tock in the process. It was still dark out, and he paused for a few moments on his deck in the gloaming, his opalescent skin reflecting lamplight. He slowly meandered about his ship, checking things, reviving the lantern that went out in the night, and glancing at the stars that still remained before Syna's light dimmed them with her own. Sunberth still loomed on the horizon, darkened but surely never sleeping. Leaning against his mast, he tugged his star chart from his belt and held it up, comparing the sky to his notes. Determining the start of their course after a few moments of study and comparison, he readied his sails and raised his anchor. With a sigh, he happily turned his casinor away from the petching city and toward the general direction of Mura, taking note of the steady breeze and clear stars to set a course. He fished his compass from his pouch and made sure their bearings were more officially correct, though he didn't necessarily doubt his judgement based on the last of the morning stars, taking his usual comfortable seat at the stern, bare feet curled on the tiller in the silence before the dawn. The quiet was nice. The statuesque shard of moonlight felt the old casinor slowly pick up speed as they pulled away from the shelter of the harbor, a stronger breeze making the waves become choppier and rippling the sails with the comfortingly familiar sound of Zulrav's motions. He watched the sky lighten slowly as Syna approached the horizon to the east, spreading her warmth in her own patient time across the sky. Sunberth was nowhere to be seen on the rounded, undulating horizon by the time morning had officially washed away Pash'nar's opalescent flesh, leaving a shorter, dark-haired, tanned, and tattooed Svefra in place of the pale fallen celestial under Leth's sway. He remained where he was, contemplating breakfast, watching sea birds search for their own first fish of the day in the wake of his antique. Once he was comfortable with their speed and direction, he secured the mainsail to the starboard winch and set the tiller. The dark-haired navigator puttered about his deck for a while, putting out his lantern and tidying up a bit, wanting to avoid going back down belowdecks right away. He eventually gave in to find some sustenance, hardly bothering to be quiet as he rummaged through his tiny kitchen for something resembling breakfast. He didn't feel like cooking, for he needed to be on deck keeping watch and he didn't want to wake the sleeping Tock. Apparently, she needed the rest more than he did. He groaned and clanked his way into putting together some semblance of a meal, propping open the cabin windows before heading back up to his deck to eat and keep watch until the human decided it was finally time to wake up again, preparing himself for another bombardment of questions he may or may not have the answer to once she opened her eyes to see just how far from home she really was already.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock slept for a long time. Back home, she could never sleep too late. She had to be up before Da, to make sure she got breakfast ready. Days she slept in were days she got a beating. But tonight, cradled on the gentle waves of the sea, with the peace of knowing her old life was behind her, she slept as she never had before. Even Pash'nar's tromping around the cabin making noise wasn't enough to wake her. She didn't wake on her own until nearly noon. She woke in a sweat, the late summer sun beating down on the boat having made the cabin quite warm. She sat up, rubbing at her sore muscles, and looking around in confusion. It took her a moment to remember where she was. She touched the bandage over her eye, and the memory of the entire day before came rushing back. She was gone. Away. Free. She got up and glanced outside to see the sailor man sitting by the steering... thing. Tiller, she thought he'd called it. She decided to spend a little time cleaning up before she went out to see him. She changed the bandages, finding she could still only barely open her one eye. She covered her eye with a fresh bandage again, wondering how long it would take to heal. Then she helped herself to some of the sailor's food, figuring it was okay since it wasn't as if she could get breakfast anyplace else. Since it was so hot out she stripped off her boots and socks, and rolled up her pant legs to above her knees. She took off her shirt, leaving on just the light undershirt. Then she headed out to the deck to look around. She gave a shy smile to the sailor. "Uhh... Hi," she said, looking him over with her one good eye. She looked him over a bit more closely now that she could see better. For some reason, she thought he had been glowing last night. But that didn't make any sense. Then she looked around, trying to find where Mura was. She looked around behind the boat, and saw only water. Then she turned the other way. Water. She stepped forward so she could look past the sail. More water. Water. Water everywhere. She grinned. "Oy!" she cried out. "'Ow far out is we? I didn't know the sea were 'is big!" She laughed, looking around again. She jumped up and down on the deck a few times, giddy. She was so far from home she couldn't even see the shores of Sunberth! And she would never have to see them again.

[Pash'nar]

As the day wore on and the human didn't wake up, Pash'nar busied himself on the deck of his ship, cleaning here, fixing there. He'd hung his vest on the mainsail line like some mockery of a flag, letting it flap in the nice, strong wind while Syna deepened his false Svefra tan and made the intricate lines of his tattoos stand out darkly under her brightness. He was satisfied with the shine on his worn old deck by the time Tock decided to stumble from his cabin, greeting the sea surrounding them with curiosity and questions. The dark-haired navigator was back at the tiller, and he couldn't help but laugh at her expectation that Mura would be just around the next sloping curve of a wave. "Well, we're still less than a day from Sunberth, an' … oh, 'bout nine or ten days from Mura. So, you'd better get used to starin' at th'ocean. It ain't goin' nowhere for a long while." Pash grinned, sweeping a hand from starboard to port with a bit of humorous dramatic flair, "The Suvan's big, lass. On this side o'Mizahar, no one's sure how far it goes, either. Ain't anyone sailed east enough to find th'end." He let the mystery hang in his voice, though, personally, he had no interest in sailing until he found something else in the Suvan. As far as he was concerned, the world was big enough. There were other places he'd rather be far from here and finding a way back there was much more of an interest, regardless of his love for sailing. "Well, I know y'can't swim, so jus' be careful on the deck." The tattooed sailor winked, leaning back against the rail of his stern to rest inked elbows against worn wood, watching the human explore all forty or so feet of his old casinor. He added with a bit of teasing, though what he said was unfortunately true, "There's some hungry things down there in the deep."

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

"Oy, ya sure ain't nobody done sailed all the way out?" she asked, peering off into the distance. "O' maybe 'ey did, an' 'en 'ey jus' done fell off the edge, aye? 'Ow far a fall ya think 'at is?" She leaned over the edge and peered into the water, but she couldn't see the bottom. She quickly got bored with staring at the water. It fascinated her with its sheer vastness, but once she'd reconciled with how big it was, it was just... there. It was so endless that it got repetitive, and she quickly lost interest. The boat itself, on the other hand, was much more interesting. She started measuring it with her feet, laying one directly in front of the other as she walked from bow to stern, and port to starboard. "I bet I could build one o' 'ese," she declared. She wanted to get a look at the underside, but couldn't figure out a way to do that while it was moving. "Can I try steerin' 'er?" she asked, looking longingly at the tiller. She wanted to know how it worked, but she couldn't learn that by watching. Her Granddad had always taught her by putting a tool in her hands and setting her to work. It was the only way she knew.

[Pash'nar]

The tattooed sailor chuckled at her observation. Fallen off? Off of what? There was an edge somewhere? He wasn't quite sure he believed that, but then again, there was a bit too much he struggled to believe in most of the time. "Build one, eh? What, with all those petchin' heavy things y'tried to drown yourself with yesterday?" Pash'nar taunted, cerulean eyes watching Tock explore and attempt to measure his antique casinor, "You gotta whole shipyard'n your pack?" He shifted from his spot, barefoot on the warm old wood of his deck, "I've got us set in the wind," he pointed at the angle of the sails, the line to the mainsail tied to a winch on the starboard side, holding it in place, "So it's really jus' keepin' the rudder in the right spot. Ain't hard. I'll show you." He let her take his spot, raising the tiller from it's lower position so she could use her hands instead of her feet. That was his own lazy modification to steer his ship and keep his hands free, but it probably wasn't practical for teaching with. Also, in storms, he still needed to use his hands to hold it properly. The tiller was perhaps counter-intuitive if one didn't know any better—one had to steer right to go left, unlike a wheel—but the dark-haired navigator said nothing. For a moment, he stood next to her, positioning the young human with a few sweeps of his intricately inked arms before stepping away and letting her get a feel for the waves beneath them. "Most casinor's this size have a wheel. I'm old fashioned." He grinned, reaching to hold onto the boom of his mast just in case Tock took them for a more wild ride, "Give 'er a go, then."

OOCmaybe one day i'll get un-lazy and find a picture of his ship

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock replied, "Don't need a shipyard what fer ta just build one." She planted her fists on her hips and looked around the boat. "Jus' a good workshop an' plenty o' wood..." Her Granddad's shop had had enough equipment for it. They never built boats there, but she'd helped him build plenty of furniture. How much harder could a boat be? The design looked pretty simple. She then eagerly took the tiller, holding it firmly in both hands. She remembered what he'd said yesterday about right for left and left for right. She looked down at the tiller, and watched the way the water moved past it. It was like making the water move in a circle... The front of the boat and the tip of the tiller had to point in the same direction, so they were like making an arc. She was good at math, and thinking about it like that made sense to her. She pulled the tiller to the right, and watched the part in the water jut out to the left. She could picture the water they were moving through curving around the boat, following an arc from the tip of the tiller, around the boat, and up to the bow. That curve was the path the boat moved along. She grinned. Then she realized she'd just turned them too far to the left, away from Mura. "Shyte..." she muttered, pulling back to the left to turn the boat right. But she had no point of reference to know where she was aiming the boat. "'Ow's I gonna get us pointed the right way?" she asked. He'd said something about the stars last night, but there weren't any now. The only point of reference she had was the sun. "Oy, Mister Sailor Man, 'ow's I know which way ta go?" She didn't want to get lost and end up in the wrong place. Though seeking the edge of the world seemed like a fun idea, she'd really just rather keep heading to Mura... for this trip, anyway. Hopefully Pash knew enough about what he was doing to show her how to get them back on course. Though she stubbornly held onto the tiller, intending to do it herself. She'd let him tell her what to do, but she wanted to be the one who did it.

[Pash'nar]

Pash'nar chuckled and produced a compass from the pouch at his waist, "Well, 'sides a sextant an' the sun, there's also a compass. But, first, jus' relax. There's some wind an' a current. Get a hold'o'that in your heart a bit. Gettin' a feel for where you're at always helps you navigate best. Th'stars are used for specifics, in a way, when it comes to navigatin', but a compass tells you th'exact direction you're headed." He held it in a calloused palm and let her watch the metal needle swivel into position, pointing north, "That always points north, an' you jus' adjust yourself accordion' to the direction you're headin' based on that." Keeping the compass where she could see, he moved it a bit to show her how the needle always wobbled its way back to the same direction, regardless of how it was fuddled with. The compass was old and well-worn, and he demonstrated that the device had a secondary ring that one could turn and point in the intended direction relative to north. The ring made it easy to set your course and follow it as long as you kept the compass handy, "We're headed north by northeast to get to Mura." He explained as an inked finger traced the symbols on the compass and pointed out the cardinal directions and the various increments in-between. He turned the ring to the position mentioned and offered to let Tock hold the heavy instrument in her own hands, "So, you'll need to line 'er up with this." Turning, he pointed over the bow in a similar direction as the compass with practiced ease, the intricate designs inked into his tanned skin familiar references to the same kind of symbols on the navigational devices he was used to using to find his way. "Jus' don't drop that. They ain't cheap."

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

"'Ow's it know which way is north?" Tock asked, holding the compass carefully in her hands. She'd heard about compasses before, but had never actually seen one. It looked like it was just a metal needle inside a frame. It didn't make any sense to her. She adjusted the tiller to use her feet like she'd seen Pash'nar doing, so she could examine the compass with both hands. She spent a little time sorting out how to keep the boat pointed in the direction he'd indicated, which wasn't easy. She eventually settled into a sitting position, with both of her bare feet on the tiller to control it better, and her elbows propped on her knees so she could hold the compass forward with both hands. Once she felt like she had the boat more or less pointed in the right direction, sitting there and steering got pretty boring. There were no obstacles to avoid, so it was just a matter of keeping it steady. Staying pointed in one direction was easy, but tedious. So she became more focused on the compass itself. She lifted it to look at the bottom, trying to figure out how it worked. It didn't seem to have many parts aside from the twistable ring and the needle. So she started twisting and unscrewing the ring until she popped it off, and pulled the needle carefully off its little post, holding it up close to her eye to try and figure out what about it made it point north.

[Pash'nar]

"It ain't magic, if that's what you're askin'. It jus' does. It's a magnet an' somehow those things know which way north's at. I ain't sure'f much else, mostly 'cause I've never bothered to care." He grinned, turning away for a moment to adjust the mainsail to catch more wind, leaving Tock alone with his device and the tiller. The tattooed sailor allowed her some time to adjust herself and the casinor's direction, retying the lines that ran from both sails and checking some rigging while he watched their course change slightly, guessing by the sun that the girl had managed to point them in more or less a better, more correct course. Still being so far out from Mura meant it was still fine to be sailing more or less the right way, for it wasn't until the last few days that it was really vital to be exact. Being too far off at this point, of course, would probably add an extra day of travel time, but from the looks of things, the human had figured some things out already. He realized she'd grown quiet and wasn't asking any questions. This made the dark-haired navigator more than a little nervous, and he turned, ducking the boom and returning the stern of his ship into view. Cerulean eyes fell on his compass just as Tock was dismantling it, widening in abject horror as she lifted the needle from his precious tool. Practically leaping across his deck, he waved his inked arms in obvious frustration, "Petch! What'cha takin' the thing apart for! I told'ja don't. It's expensive! Ah … petch. It ain't a toy." Pash stood over the human in somewhat helpless anger, unwilling to snatch the thing from her hands for fear of breaking his compass but unhappy to see it in pieces under her scrutiny, "You'd better fix it. I ain't sure you wanna swim to Mura from here." He wasn't kidding.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Minerva frowned when Pash said he 'never bothered to care'. She couldn't understand that... She always wanted to learn everything she could about everything. If you didn't understand it, then how could you really use it? "I ain't done gonna break 'er," she replied with a frown when the sailor started yelling. "I's been buildin' stuff since I was old 'nough ta walk..." She hated it when people doubted her, or treated her like she didn't know what she was doing. Doubly so when they did it just because she was a girl. She didn't need to take that from anyone. "I betcha I can make 'er better," she said, hopping down from the tiller and heading into the cabin. She didn't stop to consider that doing so meant no one was steering the boat now, and the tiller suddenly shifted strongly to one side, shifting the boat with a heavy lurch. She stumbled into the cabin and plopped heavily onto the bench inside, feeling a bit dizzy with the sudden movement of the ship. But she didn't think about it; Pash could surely handle the steering while she fixed up his compass. She carefully laid the pieces out where she was sure they wouldn't get lost or damaged at all, then pulled over her pack of tools. The ring had felt a little tight to her, and she figured she could smooth it out a bit to make it turn more smoothly. Plus the needle had seemed too wobbly, and when she got a closer look at it, it seemed like the post it was mounted on wasn't a perfect fit. So, as a favor to Sailor Man for giving her a ride, she was going to improve it.