Chapter 255: AHOOOY!!!

We followed the sound and found nothing.

Or— not nothing. We found people. Dozens of them, the whole village seemingly having migrated to the same edge of the vine island, standing in a loose crowd at the outer platform with their backs to us and their faces toward the water.

We worked our way through to where the Chief stood at the front of it all, and he glanced back when he heard us coming and nodded once like we were arriving at something scheduled.

Beyond the platform edge: rain. Grey water. Fog pressing in from every direction, swallowing the horizon, turning the far distance into a soft wall of nothing. Whatever everyone was staring at was not visible. I looked at the water, then at the people, then back at the water.

"Don't be surprised, kid," the Chief said.

"I'm already surprised," I said.

He looked at the water. "Give it time."

I gave it time.

Beside me, Jisoo had migrated from holding my hand to fully occupying my right arm— both of hers wrapped around it, her cheek almost at my shoulder, her grip in tension of someone who had decided she was not going to be separated from this limb under any circumstances.

She was looking at the water with me, her eyes doing the scanning thing that never fully switched off.

Then I noticed the rain.

Or— the absence of it. Not everywhere, just in patches, out in the fog where the visibility had gone grey and soft.

The rain was still falling. I could see it hitting the water surface in the near distance, the usual pattern of it, rings and ripples. But further out, in a specific area that the fog was blurring at the edges, the rain was hitting something else.

Not the grey water.

An invisible surface, elevated, the droplets striking it and scattering the way they scattered off a roof rather than the sea— thousands of tiny impacts per second revealing a shape in the fog through the negative space of where they weren't falling.

Something large.

I watched the shape take form in the rainfall.

The bow first— a blunt angle pushing through the water, parting it in a slow V that spread outward and reached us as a gentle wave against the vine island's edge.

Then the hull, the sides of it becoming visible as the rain mapped its body, a massive wall of material that I couldn't resolve the surface of yet through the fog.

Then the mast, rising above the deck level with rigging trailing from it. Then the upper structure, the enclosed sections, the shape of something built to function rather than to look like anything in particular.

And then the fog thinned slightly, or the ship moved close enough, and I could see it properly.

Massive. Naval ship proportions, the kind built for open water, the hull sitting low and heavy in the water with the weight of whatever it was carrying and whatever it was made of.

Rust on every surface that had been metal long enough to earn it, but beneath the rust— scales. Large ones, black, overlapping across significant portions of the hull in uneven patches, each one large enough that I could see the individual edges from here.

They didn't look bolted on. They looked grown, seated into the hull material the way scales seated into skin, and when the ship shifted in the water the scales moved with it, flexing slightly, adjusted, like they were part of something that was still alive.

"What the fuck," I said.

"Looks cool," Jisoo said.

I looked at her. She was not looking at the ship. She was looking at me, specifically at my face, with an expression that could be described as amused but was doing something else underneath the amusement.

"ಠ_ಠ. Why are you staring at me."

"Because you look handsome and I want to look at your face." She said, without any FILTERS ON— just directly, as a statement of fact, entirely unbothered by the sentence she had just produced.

Oh, good lord, she just— she didn't even… yea, Jisoo Jisoo is going to hear about this somehow and I'm going to have a very abusive problem tonight.

Sighing, I looked back at the ship.

Something moved on the deck. A crew member, leaning over the railing, looking down at Vinehaven. Then another beside them. A third, further back.

The one at the railing cupped their hands around their mouth.

"AHOOOOOY! EVERYONE! WE'RE BACK AGAIN!" The voice carried across the water with the enthusiasm of someone who had been waiting to say this. "GUESS WHOOOO—"

Someone behind them smacked them on the back of the head.

"Ouch?"

"Every time," said someone else on deck, quieter but still audible. "Every single time."

The Chief made a sound that was mostly a laugh. "What is it this time? Still recruiting?" he called up. "I told you. Nobody's going. This is the fifth visit."

A pause from the ship.

Then a scraping sound, mechanical, and a broad boarding plank came down from the deck to the edge of the vine platform.

Three people descended it.

The one in front moved like she had somewhere to be and was mildly annoyed that this stop was in the way. Blue hair, worn leather jacket over a white crop top— the jacket had seen enough to have opinions about it, creased and faded in a specific way of something used rather than worn for effect. Utility belt at the hip, buckled practical..

She hit the platform and looked around the gathered crowd with an expression of someone taking stock.

Behind her, the redhead who had been smacked was still rubbing the back of her head with one hand and waving at people with the other, rotating slowly, clearly trying to make eye contact with everyone simultaneously.

Bright orange vest over a light shirt, sleeves pushed past the elbows, she had the energy of someone who had been sitting on a ship for too long and was thrilled about solid ground.

She spotted a kid in the crowd and pointed at them and they pointed back and she looked delighted about this.

The third one came down last— blond, quiet, a high-collared jacket buttoned to the throat, his hands coming together in front of him the moment he reached the platform.

He stood slightly back from the other two and looked at things carefully rather than engaging them directly.

The blue-haired one found the Chief, walked to him, and then her eyes moved to us. Specifically to me, in the way eyes moved when they'd located something unexpected.

"Bossman." She tilted her head slightly. "Who are they."