[Danny]

sorry i haven't been able to connect for a couple of days.

ah, replies... *savours them* thank'ee for the support and encouragement. have a couple of chapters...

CHAPTER 24

It’s odd really: I’d lived in Cyrcit – a Port City – for almost all my life, and yet I’d never seen the Ocean up close. I’d never been down to the beach or the harbour; I’d never been out in a boat. I’d seen pictures, and I’d seen it on television, but I’d never seen the Ocean in person, as it were. Yes, that’s a good term for it. In Person. Because it is like a person, in a way. It has a personality. It has moods: it can be bad-tempered or calm. The Ocean is very beautiful, in many ways.

One of the beautiful things about it is that it is never totally calm: if you look closely enough, you will see that it is rough all the time. After all, you never see your reflection in the sea…

This roughness is comforting, in a way. It’s partly because of the sense of reassurance that we always feel when confronted with something that will never change; the constancy eases us. We feel that, whatever may go wrong with our lives, the Ocean will always be the same. Or maybe that’s just me, because as I have already said: I’m Weird. There is a practical advantage to the roughness, though: it is so much easier to float in rough water than in calm water.

Yan woke me as the boat began to break up. I don’t know why they didn’t wake me beforehand, but I guess they were unable to think straight in the storm. He was screaming something at me, but I couldn’t make him out over the wind. We were all apparently still in the boat, but the boat was rapidly becoming driftwood around us. The rest of us were all awake; many were screaming, like Yan. We all had lifebelts secured beneath our arms, but that didn’t stop the panic from setting in.

Almost instinctively, I crawled over to Quiss, who was curled up, shivering. I put an arm around his shoulders, and sat him up. I couldn’t see clearly in the rain, but my feet were submerged, and I could see a large section of the side of the boat missing.

The boat broke up. I was left drifting on a wide plank, with Quiss and Rixx. I didn’t see what happened to the others, but the waves threw us off our plank in no time, and we found ourselves struggling in the choppy water. I kept hold of Quiss, but could do little more than merely keep us afloat.

We trod water for a long time; it seemed like forever. The sky darkened, and the rain eased. The wind grew no less cold, however, and the waves no less towering.

I was half-dead with cold when something hit me on the head, and I began to lose consciousness.

CHAPTER 25

The first thing that hit me when I awoke was the noise. I wasn’t sure where I was, but I could hear the hum of engines, and the roar of the storm. The floor was bucking under me, so I guessed that I was on a ship. When I opened my eyes, the light was blinding after the darkness of the last few hours, so I closed them again.

“Phew! This one’s alive, at least! I thought he was a goner when you hit him with the pole!” The voice didn’t sound familiar, but sounded like a mudokon.

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t see clearly in the dark.” This second voice sounded vaguely slig-like. “I was hoping it’d fall next to him so he’d climb up it.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter, he’s okay now, but be more careful next time.”

The slig voice made what sounded like a sigh. “Who’s idea was this anyway?”

“The Boss’s, so keep the criticism low, yeah?”

The slig lowered his voice. “What’s this all about?”

There was a pause, before the mudokon answered. “Between you and me, the Boss’s profits have fallen. He can’t afford new slaves any more, but he needs to replace the guys who died in the hurricane last week.”

“So he comes out here to steal other people’s?”

“No.” The mudokon sounded exasperated. “He says that everyone else’ll assume they’ve died in the storm, so he’ll get away with it, no problem.”

There was a pause. “Who’s do you think these were?”

I felt the mudokon bending over me. “Not sure. There wasn’t much in the boat aside from this lot. The Glukk might be their Boss, but I don’t know. He wasn’t very well dressed if he was.”

I heard the slig’s metallic footsteps approach me. “Could they have been drifters?”

“In a boat? No, I expect we’ll hear about it on MOM tonight.”

I heard a heavy metal door swing open, and a deep voice shout into the room.

“Hey! You two! Stop messing around and get up here! We’re going back, there ain’t gonna be any more out here tonight.”

“Yes Boss!” The two mismatched voices called back in reply. I heard heavy footfalls echoing in a corridor, as they retreated. The mudokon and the slig began to walk away from me.

“Prick.” The slig kept his voice low.

“Well, insulting him won’t do us any good.”

“Makes me feel better, though…”

I heard a door slam, and footsteps recede into the distance. Slowly, and cautiously, I opened my eyes, worried about what I would see. After what I’d just heard, I realised that I was now a slave, so I couldn’t expect to be treated very well.

I was in a small well-lit room. I wasn’t tied up, which was a good sign, and the room didn’t look too forbidding. Not welcoming, but at least there were no mudokon skeletons manacled to the walls [I think Flakit had always considered that to be one of his better ideas], and the smell wasn’t unpleasant. Looking around, I could see Quiss tossing and turning in his sleep close to me, and Yan leaning against a wall, his eyes closed. There was a small window on one wall. Frosted Glass. No bars. I stood up to take a closer look. It opened a little, just enough to see the waves, not enough to squeeze out of. By the darkness outside, it seemed to be about midnight.

I moved to wake Quiss up, but decided against it.

“So we’re slaves now, are we?”

I turned at the sound of Yan’s voice. I hadn’t even realised he was awake. “Maybe. Looks like it.” His eyes were still closed.

“Suppose you’re used to it.” His voice was neutral, almost resigned.

I sighed. I never liked talking about my past. “Yeah. Been a slave all my life.”

Pause. “What’s it like?”

What to say? It really depended on what your master was like. Some masters, like Zell, weren’t really that bad. Others, like Flakit, would treat you like scum. “Not as bad as you hear.”

I thought I saw a smile playing on Yan’s lips. “Don’t spare me the gory details.”

I sat down. “It depends on the master.”

“You heard his voice too, right?”

I nodded. When he didn’t respond, I realised he still had his eyes closed. “Yeah.”

“Sound good or bad.”

I didn’t respond for a long time. “We should get some sleep.”

“Have you seen Vint, Ulp, and the others?”

I hadn’t thought of that. “I’m sure they’re okay.”

He laughed, humourlessly. “Better than us, if they drowned.”

“Don’t say that. He might not be that bad.”

Yan said nothing. After a while, I heard his soft snores, and settled down myself.