"We gotta do somethin'. This handyman bull is killin' me."

It was no new thing for men before the mast to get together and complain about things, be it officers, command decisions, food (or the chronic lack thereof) and everything else. Complaining was therapeutic. Most of the time, though, the Al Na'ir's "permanent watch" had very little reason to complain. Up until about two months ago, they had been treated well and paid steadily even when they were stuck in drydock.

Then their officers vanished -- one without so much as a trace, and the other like a wraith that had faded out of sight.

The last time anyone saw Lowe was mid-March, and it looked like he had been heading to the Pride and Fury with a package. The last time anyone saw Kennedy had been not long after that, looking less like a man and more like a ghost. And then nothing.

At first, the men hadn't thought too much of it. The captain and first mate had left before to go try and get some redheaded broad to some place up north, and it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that they had some other obligation come up. Though, it was kinda odd that no one was told and no advance pay given.

But as time went on, it became clearer and clearer that something wasn't right.

Blackie looked up at his friend from where he and Jonson were trying to play a game of rummy on the deck of the brigantine. "What d'you think we can do? You can't go an' make 'em reappear, Grey."

"Anyone even been over to the Maritime yet?" Grey asked, pulling his work gloves off and looking around for someplace to put them before just dropping them on the deck. He was less than pleased with his side-job; nonetheless, all four men had still stuck with the brigantine and kept an eye on the other vessels.

"I went and knocked on the door two days ago. But no one answered," Jonson said slowly, peering intently at his cards and obviously trying to figure out what his next move should be.

Grey leaned over and pointed out a hand he could match off of Blackie's, then stood straight again. "I say we go over an' see what's goin' on."

"I dunno... ain't that kinda like breaking into someone's house?" Blackie asked, frowning at the cards on the deck. "An' hey, no helpin' Jonny!"

"Jonson," the AB replied, absently, as though he had to correct that so often that he did it automatically now.

"I got my ass kicked savin' you from a barroom brawl, so helpin' him with cards is only fair. Ain't like you got any bets goin'." Grey paced back and forth as he talked, then made a frustrated noise. "I'm goin' over there."

"I'll go," Blackie said, tossing down his cards. "You ruined the game."

-------------

"This ain't right. This ain't right at all."

The two men stood in the dark kitchen of the Maritime; the back door had been unlocked and always was, but even on the very rare occasions they had stopped by here before, it had felt sort of welcoming. Now...

Grey swallowed hard, but still tried to sound nonchalant as he replied, "It ain't the fuckin' Flyin' Dutchman."

"Piss off, Grey. This is damn creepy."

The kitchen and the main barroom (when they finally shook off their superstitions to creep in there) were both impeccably clean and neat. It was a sunny day, and the place was bright with the color of warm wood. But there was something fundamentally wrong, nonetheless; it was silent, like some Godforsaken place tended to by spirits.

"Why're we here again?" Blackie asked, too nervous to even think about "borrowing" one of the bottles under the bar.

"Tryin' to figure out what happened," Grey answered, finally overcoming his own nerves to start looking through the drawers inset along the back top edge of the Maritime's bar. It was funny, really; he had faced terrible storms at sea, cruel captains, widow-making headlands and even a couple of shipwrecks, but he still had the full suit of superstitions of sailors... and those superstitions warned against something this creepy.

After a few moments, Blackie joined him; they found the bar's old ledger with the inventory and book keeping, and other assorted odds and ends. Pens, pencils, an ashtray here or there... a few books of matches and a law dictionary.

"Grey? I think..."

Grey looked over at his friend, who had a bit of a puzzled, worried expression, then at the paper he was holding. "What?"

"Maybe you oughta take a look," Blackie said, in a surprisingly subdued manner, as he handed it over.

------------

"No fuckin' way!" Ducky pointed at the paper, shaking his head sharply. "Just because a man writes a will doesn't mean he's dead."

Jonson sat on the bulwark; he couldn't read it well enough to himself, so he'd had his shipmates read it to him. "The date, the captain, no one coming here. What else could it be?"

"A precaution?" Ducky sat down with Jonson, still eyeballing the paper Grey was holding. "Look, it's Rhy'Din. People go vanish into the Nexus and come back, or they go travellin'. And no one dies."

"I don't think that's what happened here." Blackie leaned over and looked over the will again. He couldn't understand a lot of the legalese, but Lowe had written the provisions plainly. There was a frightening sense of finality to the words; not because it was a last will and testament, but because of how it was written. "Maybe that cold got him?"

"Maybe he got himself," Grey said quietly, handing the paper over so Blackie wouldn't be leaning over his shoulder. "He sure didn't look sick or dyin' that morning he told us about the second mate."

"Maia Cyrene d'Thalia," Blackie read, though he stumbled over the name a bit. "She's still around... think she knows what happened?"

"Doubt it. An' I don't think anyone told her about the will, either."

"Maybe we oughta do that."

--------------

The Daily Bread was almost too nice of a place for Grey to want to walk into; his whole life had been spent frequenting dark places with cracked walls and questionable characters. He liked dingy dives, dingy whorehouses and avoiding polite society -- not particularly because he was nasty in his heart, but because it was what he knew; what was familiar.

Still, with Jonson and Blackie waiting outside, he stepped into the bakery. It didn't take him long to come across a motherly looking woman; somewhere, he thought about some distant childhood memory.

He didn't think to question how Lowe had come up with Maia's name and address; he figured that the first mate had been given both for employment purposes, or barring that, had used his own resourcefulness. It was hard to imagine someone like that dead, especially when it seemed like it was a chosen death, but Grey would be the first to admit he didn't know the man outside of their professional ties.

Still, it was a damn shame.

The motherly woman was kind to him, though he automatically felt himself responding to the underlying keenness of her gaze. She relayed that Maia wasn't in right at that moment, but that he could leave a message.

Grey's ability to write left something to be desired, but the woman took a moment and wrote it for him:

To: Maia Cyrene d'Thalia

Ma'am;

Both of our officers are gone. The mate left a will, though, and the last provision says:

(i) To relinquish any claim on the Brigantine Al Na'ir. I would like her to sail, if not under the command of Captain Archie Kennedy, then perhaps under the command of Maia Cyrene d'Thalia.

Please contact us if you can.

Sincerely,
James Greystone and the Al Na'ir's dock-watch

Grey signed his name under that, just to make certain that it didn't look like a hoax. Then, with a few coins of his hard-earned handyman money, he bought some bearclaws for himself and the other three, cast a pensive look around, and walked back out.

In the end, he felt a little bit like they were a group abandoned, seeking help from another orphan.

After leaving the letter for Maia the previous afternoon, the men had forsaken outside work that evening to spend their time together, chewing over what they had found, what they had heard and anything else that they could in the hopes that they could piece enough of the story together to make sense of it.

It was difficult at best; Kennedy had been a good captain, though classical in his detachment from the men before the mast, and had never given them much insight into his personal life. Lowe had been a good first mate, for all the longer they worked under his command... they liked him just for the fact that he had started where they were and crawled through the hawsepipe inch by bloody inch, and had never forgotten where he started.

But he had played his cards very close to the breast as well.

So, though both men had earned the loyalty and even some measure of fondness from the Al Na'ir's crew, the personal lives of both were a mystery, and the death of one doubly so.

Nonetheless, they had decided that if Maia did contact them, then they should at least try to give her whatever information they did have and be willing to ferret out more if necessary. Hard enough for a second mate to come into a command structure that was set...

...but very hard for a potential captain to take over for ghosts, commanding the lost souls left behind.

Ducky had the best writing of them, so he was the one stuck taking notes. He complained, but Grey figured that they should at least write down the bulletpoints so that they wouldn't be forgotten if Maia came to see them.

-Boat overhauled in January.
-Crew dismissed until harbor thaw, late January. Dock watch kept.
-Possible contract with Whiskey Eyed Trading Company, mid-March.

It was there that Grey stopped him; the Whiskey Eyed Trading Company had been around for awhile now, and he had heard of it -- in fact, one of his old pals had even sailed with the privateers some time ago.

"Aullere Rheinhart's company? Anyone think she might still be willin' to toss us up some work?"

"That'd be better'n rottin' here in harbor," Blackie said, bluntly.

-Mate vanished, mid-March.

"That's it?" Blackie asked, when Ducky had written the words down.

"What're we supposed to fuckin' say? We think he went an' offed himself?" Ducky made a face; he still wasn't entirely convinced that was how events had happened. "We don't know what happened, y'know."

Jonson shook his head. "The date of the will, the captain acting the way he was acting, the words on the dock."

"I don't see how it's any of our business," Ducky said, flatly, dropping his pen on the paper he was taking notes on.

"Be our business if he shows back up an' wants to know why we went and gave his boat to someone else," Grey replied. "Fine, Ducky, say he ain't dead an' shows up. Least if we talk straight about what we think went on, then he can't say we were tryin' a coop or somethin'."

"Coup," Ducky corrected, though he still didn't look happy.

"He left a will. We make it clear that we think he's dead an' gone, an' I'm pretty sure he is, then we ain't in the wrong for carryin' it out."

"What about the Captain, smartass? Think he's dead too?"

That was a harder question to answer.

-Captain vanished a few weeks later. Last seen on docks.

"Kennedy ain't dead. This ain't the first time he pulled a vanishing act," Grey said.

"He was a ghost, but Grey is right. I do not believe he is dead, only the mate," Jonson added.

Ducky made a frustrated noise. "So, we're gonna just tell the lady that she can have his job?"

"We'll tell her we don't know where he is, or what he was plannin', or if he's comin' back. But if he ain't gonna sail as captain, then Lowe said she should be given the chance." Grey nodded, crossing his arms.

Grey was only an OS. Before more recent times, he was content to be a bit of a rabble-rouser. In these times now, though, he found himself making more and more command decisions of his own; stepping into a leadership role amongst the fo'c'sle crowd when they needed someone to keep them together.

In its own way, it was a testament to the ideal of hope that he had never heard spoken -- that men before the mast should be given the chance to go beyond that, should be encouraged to climb the ranks, instead of held down mercilessly. Though he had never heard that ideal spoken between his former officers or his newest, he still responded to it.

"So... that's it?" Blackie asked, when the list had been read over. "Don't seem like much."

"It's not," Grey said with a sigh, as he shook his head. After a long moment where the four men lost themselves in their own thoughts, he voiced his concern, "Anyone think she'll show?"

It was Jonson who answered, plainly but with a startling amount of faith. "I know she will."

-----------------

Grey and Jonson stood together, drinking their coffee and not doing any real talking in the early afternoon light. Blackie and Ducky had gone to do some indeterminate work, just to keep them from all becoming destitute while they figured out their future, leaving the other two to carry on the obligation that they did now out of devotion to the brigantine and not for pay.

It was Jonson who first saw Maia out on the dockside, and he elbowed Grey. "I said she would."

Grey just smiled, patted the massive AB on the back, and the two men walked together to the gate to greet her.

Neither of them admitted to the sense of relief she brought with her.

Maia pulled her hat from her head, smoothed the wild hair down with a hand out of habit, and held the wide brimmed thing against her. Turned to the sound of someone on the gangplank, and the woman watched quietly as the others joined them.

It had been years, but she was certain she still knew how to command. A woman doesn't forget some things, and at least in this situation, she was in her natural environment. "White? Dickerson...Ducky and Blackie, now I recall." A cordial smile to both of them, and then she pulled her hat back on to her head. Straight to business.

"Thought it best to speak to the top remaining fellows, see if we cannot cobble together a plan to get you all back out to sea."

The two men nodded back to her in equal politeness, though Ducky still didn't look entirely convinced this was the best move. Still, when he spoke up, he didn't allow that innate concern equal to any disrespect.

"Ma'am."

Grey gave Blackie a quick grin; the reminder that Kennedy and Lowe had been friends still in his mind as he was glad to have his own sort-of-confidant present now. Then he turned back to Maia.

"Well, ma'am, tell us what ya wanna know, need to have or whatever else. We ain't exactly master planners, but we're pretty handy when we gotta be."

There was a long beat. She had learned, the hard way, to choose her words with care, and silence had stopped making her uncomfortable. "I shall be on the level with you all; you've been given the runaround for quite long enough. I do not know your Captain. I was barely acquainted with Mr. Lowe. I do know that he wanted nothing more than for this ship to be on the water, and I am compelled to make that happen. I am not, however, willing to take command if my command is unwanted by the crew that's left. Haven't the patience for insubordination. We'll work a little today, feel it out, and if you don't take a shine to me, or vice versa, I'll leave you with what I can and we will part ways."

Her gaze moved evenly between each of them, and she was unafraid to look the men in the eye. Small and fierce, walking the walk and talking the talk, everytime that it was within her power to do so. "I want your honesty. I need your opinions. There is no other way this is going to work."

It took a moment; all four of them thought about it. While none of them had been given much of an opportunity to actually think about such things in the past, the plain truth of her words was evident: There would be no other way for this to work. This was not a situation where a captain could simply step in, hired by some rich owners on shore, and bully their way into obedience. And they had slowly evolved beyond the type of men who would fall easily back into the role of little more than warm, working bodies thought of as less than human, or as pirates in a realm where most 'pirate captains' didn't know port from starboard. So they thought.

She watched them think, she watched the way they listened to one another, took note of the way that they stood and the way that they looked at her. What lay between the words was often the most informative part of all, and Maia was always paying attention.

As he had become de facto leader (jokingly called bos'un once or twice, though he didn't have the skills yet), Grey was the one who answered, "Honestly speakin', you're the best hope we got, ma'am. At least from where I'm standin'. I've seen an' sailed under a lot o' people, an' frankly, ninety percent or more of 'em don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. The captain was a good captain, but he ain't here, an' the mate..."

A pause.

"...he was one of us once, an' never forgot it, an' didn't let us forget it. If he wanted you to take over, that's good enough for me to try it, an' try hard."


Jonson nodded, solemnly. Then he frowned and added (unaware of the humor of the statement), "And none of us knows how to navigate."

Blackie chuckled, throwing his hat in, "Hell, Jonny, some of us can barely read let alone do that math voodoo."

Ducky took a moment longer to join in, and still with some reserve, though it still wasn't disrespectful. "We can try. But if the captain and mate comes back..."

"I don't think they'll kill us," Grey concluded.

The navigation comment brought a laugh from her, bright and easy. That was a problem, to be certain. "I can mind the maps and the books every bit as well as I can get up into the yards, fasten a bowline, wind a sheave."

Thinking of the probably deceased Harold Lowe and the vanished Archie Kennedy was a different matter. "As to your officers... I've no desire to steal something that belongs to someone else. If Kennedy turns up fit, he'll find himself with a ship ready for command, with jobs, to boot. That is a promise." Those words would hopefully find Ducky, those pale blues were fixed on him.

"She's a beaut, but she isn't mine, and neither are any of you." Maia didn't say a word about Lowe, which may have stated, pretty clearly, her opinion about what had occurred. "Isn't right for this ship to sit in port."

If nothing else, the idea that their newest possible officer was another who crawled through the hawsepipe was more than enough to put even Ducky at a little more ease. He didn't respond outloud, though there was a barely notable easing of tension across his shoulders. And the promise, of course, did quite a bit for all of them. It was Jonson who spoke next, though, in his usual slow but deliberate way, "I do not think she really belongs to anyone. Just to the wind." Despite himself, Grey just grinned.

Poetry for a sailor. It brought a rare thing to her lips, a smile both warm and genuine. "So we put her back where she belongs... ?

The official log of the Al Na'ir told a clinically detached story. Written in a woman's hand, it noted significant weather events and cataloged forty-three different islands visited, all in search of one shipwrecked man, going from August of 2005 to February 2006. On the third to last entry, it read in part:

Lowe last alive as of October-November, and was on his way home. Blythe calling off search.

The second to last was a simple note on passing the wreckage of some pirate ship.

The final note said nothing more than: Crew contracts settled, all hands dismissed.

The restoration log of the Al Na'ir was likewise a dry read, written in Harry's fairly plain hand. There wasn't much to be found there aside from notes on what was found in need of repair, and when those repairs took place.

In the margins, though, there was a little more of a flair. For instance, under the plain notation about several questionable spots above the waterline that could do with repair, there was a coffee mug stain. Then, in a somewhat artistic move, the coffee ring was doodled over to become a Christmas wreath on the 22nd of December, 2006.

The next page was just as dry to read, but aside a spot or two of coffee (again), there was also a quick, rough sketch of a seagull sitting on a dockpost in the margin.

Every page had some little thing that spoke of meandering thoughts. If it wasn't a drawing of an object, it was something abstract -- crosshatched lines, shapes shaded. None of them were brilliantly rendered; he lacked refinement, though he had a good eye for contrast and captured the effects of light.

A spyglass in the bottom of one page; a kind of furry looking pine tree in the upper corner of the next with a star on top of it. Several quick sketches of vessels scattered about the page margins; schooners, brigs, barques, ships. Sometimes they were being buffeted by waves, sometimes they were running with the wind on the quarter.

An iceberg, a dolphin.

Sometimes they were more land-based. A window, a chair, a pair of boots. Naturally, a coffee mug.

The words told of the restoration in very plain, rather uninspired words. The whole hull was sound, from stem to stern. Every even slightly worn piece of rigging, standing and running, was replaced. There were parts of the decking that had been overhauled. He detailed the rudimentary electricity and heat, making sure to note that they were by no means reliable and more occasional luxury than anything else.

There was an inventory of the chain and rope lockers; the brigantine, when he finished the restoration log on the 19th of January 2007, was as shipshape as she ever could be.

The words told of the restoration and the drawings of something else.

Both books were given to Maia, almost like the changing of the guard.

The nausea that had set in never lasted very long, but she did dislike the short-lived feeling that her stomach was going to turn itself inside out. Nexus travel. Not her very favorite thing in the world, but something with which she had a good bit of familiarity. It was an unpleasant necessity with all that she needed to get done. With the rapid emergence of the Al Na'ir in her life, Maia was essentially living two lives for the price of one. Working on the ship, for the ship, brought her a little bit of guarded hope, something that she sorely needed those days.

Northport. In her youth, she had caused just about every different flavor of trouble there. Five years ago had been her last extended trip through, and that for the thankless work that she did after sundown. She had never forgotten the names or the faces of the people that had greatly benefited from her assistance, and she thought it was a pretty fair bet that they remembered her, as well. There are things a person simply does not forget.

Maia made sure she looked fully composed before moving down the street, towards the East end and the docks there. Many a warehouse resided in many a tidy row; a place for many businessmen to engage in many kinds of business. Today was a day for dealing, and Maia looked the part. Crisp shirt, pressed trousers, hair pulled into a chignon... she looked professional and clean, though authoritative as ever.

About thirty minutes after a rather unceremonious landing in the bustling city, she arrived at her destination. The place was a small brick building, and after a long look at the door, Maia pulled it open. A soft pair of grey eyes rose to meet the line of that diminutive figure stepping through the front door of the modest offices of the Morningstar Trading Company of Northport.

"Hallo Russ, Dinn." She wore a smile- something that almost looked like a grin- as she stood before Dinnay and Russell. As she looked between them, she noted the differences in their faces- the new lines or scars, the grey that had begun to wash thoroughly through Russell's hair, the tooth Dinn had lost in there somewhere along the line.

"Shite, Maia...never thought we would ever lay eyes on you again." Cheerful disbelief was the tone in Dinnay's gravelly voice. He adjusted his spectacles to see her better, but it was the same woman, to be certain. Dinn had sometimes suggested to Russell (only half-jokingly) that the wee thing in black, fearsome as a lioness and stubborn as a mule, had been a figment in the night, perhaps a spirit on the wind. But...there she was, in broad daylight, proving herself to be flesh and blood, nothing but human.

"You two don't look too much worse for the wear. How's the world treating you?"

"Well enough, I've got no room for complaint." Dinny's (slightly less) toothy grin was cheerful, and he stood up to pull a chair over for her. Maia allowed it, and settled there once he did. Ears were on Russell as he then replied.

"Lost Kari, my wife, a few years back. She was ill, though it didn't linger." Russ spoke with the mixture of melancholy and relief such a situation often warranted. His words drew a grim smile from the face of the woman before him, and it pleased him she didn't look at him with pity. Maia never wasted her time on such a cruel, impotent emotion as pity.

Rather, she replied plainly, "Sorry to hear it. She was a fine woman."

"Aye. That she was. Never really sat right with the missus, that we never got to thank you for what you did for us. Trina's really doing well, all things considered and..."

"Course she is. She was a strong one." Maia didn't let him fall into the details, for all their sakes, really. From what little she knew, Russ's crew had suffered more than their share, and sad stories just made her squirm in place. Instead, the woman squared her chin and prepared to do something she was not known to do.

"Reason I came today, boys, is I need to call in a favor."

The two merchants looked at one another, blinking their surprise before turning both pairs of eyes back to her.

"Well... aye, of course, though I can't hardly imagine what we would be able to do for you," Dinnay mashed the fingers of one hand against the palm of another. The nervous habit caused him to hunch his shoulders in on one another a little, and he watched her, blankly, what could a woman like that ever need from a couple of blokes like them?

"As it happens, I have recently taken some large degree of responsibility for a ship..."

?I don?t believe it.?

?Good man. Eyes don?t always tell the whole story.?

?Well, when you put it that way??

His laugh was boisterous and gleeful as he stood up from his hunch at the barstool and swept the little woman into his arms, before she could utter so much as a whimper of protest. For a fleeting moment, there was something that felt as familiar as any family she had ever known, and rightly so. Diego had sailed under the command of the fierce little thing for the better part of seven years, before the grave circumstances of her life had pulled Maia from her ship and her crew.

They settled across from one another, opposite sides of the counter in the tavern. All eyes and smiles. It had been nearly nine years since they had laid eyes on one another, and that sharp gaze of hers noted that the man looked just the same as he had when they parted: dark skin and darker eyes, hair shaved completely off, revealing a head that had seen its fair share of hard knocks. Diego was still a rather imposing figure, tall, broad shouldered, thickly limbed. He was a man built for physical labor. He had also been a very capable and devoted bos?un. It was the latter trait which prompted Maia to track him down.

?I thought for sure you?d still be out on the blue, love.?

?Hell, I tried it for a few years, but?well, after Nathan?? He made the sign of the cross, then continued, ?and then you left, well?nothing seemed to fit right. Didn?t take long for most of us to resign, find other ships, other lives.?

?And you tend bar, now??

He shrugged. ?From time to time. Keeps food on the table. Just can?t find a ship that I want to stay on, you know?? Maia nodded, oh how she knew.

?Anyone make an honest man out of you yet??

Diego threw his head back and cackled. That was a pretty succinct response. Diego had always been the kind of man who loved far too many women to ever settle on just one. It pulled a laugh and a shrug from her as well.

?Aye, Diego, I know. I hadn?t figured you?d ever settle down.?

?Just not my way. How the hell did you find me, Cap?n??

?Have my ways, you know.?

?Still??

She raised that scarred brow at him, the same side of her lips to quirk north in that roguish grin, an answer to his question. His lilt found her ears again in reply.

?Aye, Cap?n, I know. I hadn?t figured you?d ever settle down.?

Maia socked him once, a playful thing. They had always maintained a very professional rapport on deck, but anytime they hit port for a few days, she and Diego would often tear their way through one or two or five establishments of ill repute. They played a bit of catch up, though as always, Maia was sparing with the details and Diego?well, was not. He did love the sound of his voice from time to time.

An hour passed, maybe two, and Maia was just as confident that he was the same man that he had been. With that dangerous gleam in her eye, she spoke to him of the strange situation she found herself in. The captainless brigantine and its orphaned crew, waiting to break from its moorings. The possibility of honest work, out on the water where they both belonged. The promise of days where bartending would not be a necessary occupation between less than ideal jobs. And with that, Maia got to the point:

?The crew, thus far, seems like a decent lot, but I?m no fool. Don?t want to leave port without someone watching my back...want to to be someone, love??

Just like that, the Al Na?ir was up one more crew member.

Things were coming together as well as anything could; the Al Na'ir had been refloated out of drydock and was now sitting half-provisioned with non-perishable stores, awaiting her first cargo run in too many years.

Between Maia's two former crew members, the Al Na'ir's original four, plus two of Marial's, the true core of the crew was established. There had been no immediate conflicts so far -- the ex-pirates of the crew immediately struck up a good rapport with Diego; Jonson's easy good-nature also allowed him to get along with nearly anyone. Ducky still was a little wary of things, but had come around nicely.

Chambers was unassuming; not inspired, or quirky, just a sort of dull young man without much outward personality, though his work ethic was top notch. Hayes, on the other hand, could almost be accused of having too much personality -- she didn't mesh as easily as the others and still was having trouble settling in. At least, though, when she was kept busy, she kept her mouth shut.

On top of the eight members of the core crew (the rank structure still in some flux), three more greenhands had signed aboard; former dock workers looking to try their hand at sea. Two were men; one a younger fellow, and one damn near the age of retirement, though his muscles were still strong. The last was an older woman, somewhere in her mid-forties; she had been a mother, then a widow, then a dockworker. When her children finally left home, she decided to go to sea.

Grey was happy with how things were going -- the sea was getting ever closer, and all of the problems that had cropped up thus far were overcome quickly and easily. He certainly knew enough to know better than to count on perfectly smooth sailing, but he was confident enough in the crew and the captain thus far to believe that they had a real shot at making a go of this.

He had not, however, failed to notice a shaggy and quiet Archie Kennedy roaming around. Nor had he failed to notice the tall elf that had taken over the northern half of the Salvage Yard. The elf he knew only the name of: Cinder Shirastan, caretaker of the yard. That was confirmed when a flood of workers began over-running the place, starting on the northern end. But since they hadn't been kicked out, Grey took it as tacit permission to stay at the dock until they departed.

He didn't know if he should tell Maia about Kennedy's reappearance. It didn't seem like the former captain had any interest in the brigantine; he hadn't even stopped at the Yard to check on them. But he kept Maia's words in mind: That the man was grieving the loss of a friend and not to be hard on him for it.

Still, Grey was honest enough, and he had genuinely come to truly admire and like his current captain. So, as soon as he had a moment in the loading of the brigantine, he dashed off a messy but readable note and left it in her cabin of the Al Na'ir.

Captain,

Kennedy is back in town. Hasn't said anything or came here. Just letting you know. Don't think it should make a difference.

Grey

It's late in the afternoon when the post arrives, and there's a letter clearly marked for Maia. The penmanship is very schooled and flowing, but there's only her name and no return address.

Acting Captain Maia Cyrene d'Thalia
The Brigantine Al Na'ir

I am pleased to hear that the Al Na'ir and her crew are being well taken care of. It is not often that a person successfully, and without much thought of self, finds it within them to step forward and organize a ship and crew so quickly. For that much, I am very thankful.

I could not, in good faith, dream to take away from you what you have worked so hard to achieve; it would be neither fair or advantageous for you or the crew.

Should there come a time that I feel I am able to carry out the role of Captain, I will contact you well before my intentions are to come to fruition. Until then, I trust in your ability as Captain (and would much prefer you adjust your title accordingly.) These men, as well as yourself, deserve to have concrete titles. If not for the culmination of your hard work, then at the very least for the sake of propriety and smoother integration into the trade.

Please keep me abreast of the situation as you deem fit, and I will do my best to stay informed outside of any contact we may have. Until then, know that I wish you and your crew both fair weather and much safety on the often unforgiving seas.

Respectfully,
Archibald Allistaire Kennedy

It had taken a little while for her to get her affairs in order, but the moment she did, Maia trailed those signal flags north. Grey had sent Diego, Ducky, and Blackie in a boat to get their captain, and they found her in short order. A full satchel slung over her shoulder, her beloved hat back in place where it belonged, Maia sat in silence as Diego and Blackie rowed them back to the ship.

?Captain on Deck!?

It was less an order, and more a rallying cry that came from Diego when they arrived back on the Al Na?ir. The sun was setting on what had been a pretty interesting day down at the docks. Though it was a less then auspicious beginning to their journey (driven from port by the sheer volume of fish-not so dignified), it was a beginning, nonetheless.

?How do you fare, Mister Grey??

?Right as rain Cap?n.?

?Things looks ready.?

?Because they are.?

That earned him a lopsided grin before Maia put her game face on again. That strange little voice cut over and above all the sounds, demanding attention. The captain was given her due, and she made it quick.
?First thing tomorrow, we take to sea, but we have a little time tonight. Use it, rest up, sleep as hard as you can. Trip to Northport will be a breeze, but Lirinesta?s a tricky route, even for a seasoned crew. You?ll need a good start, so get to it.?

Maia watched as the crew got things ready, tied up, tied down, anchored for the night, and then she turned for her quarters, to take a heaping helping of her own advice. Between the call of the shadows and what work she had been able to do for the ship, sleep had been a rare commodity. Once she had unpacked what she needed from that overstuff satchel, she tucked in to get a few hours of shuteye.

One more sunrise- and she would be right back where she had begun, and indeed, right back where she belonged.