Akthskina's Story

Aki stared at the boat with undisguised horror.
“And what,” she said indignantly, “makes you think I’m going to get on that?”
“It’s just a short trip,” Borrel soothed. “Just a few days.”
“A few days?” Aki squeaked out. A few days on that rickety contraption – that rickety contraption made of highly flammable wood - with no land in sight, surrounded by miles and miles of dreadful water… No. No, this would not do at all.
She began to sidle furtively away from the leader of their motley gang, smiling nervously.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I think I’d best sit this one out, Borrel. Send me a letter from Kalandor, huh? I’ll just sit tight, right here, and… you know, keep an eye on things. Man the fort, and all that,” the salamander said cheerfully. She eyed the boat as one might eye a large, rabid dog.
“C’mon, Aki, we need you on this. We’ve only got eight more days to pull this off, and Kalandor is twelve days away by road, at least. You don’t even have to go above deck! Just stay below, you never even have to see the ocean.” The burly man was practically wheedling. Amusingly incongruous as it was, Aki was not persuaded.
“I can see it quite well enough right now, thank you, and I’m not sure I want to let it out of my sight. Who knows what it could be up to?” She shifted her baleful glare now to the offending ocean. “Sitting all cooped up in a little cabin, with all that water… all around…” her eyes narrowed, “waiting.”
Borrel sighed, and shrugged apologetically. Aki tensed, sensing something amiss -- but not fast enough. Something hard and heavy hit the back of her head with a spectacular thud, and she staggered. Ears ringing, vision darkening around the edges, she tried to make a break for it, but was to the ground by Kita and Sharlou, the small gang’s team of muscle. Before her head had time to clear, she found herself bound hand and foot with sturdy metal chains, with a similarly metal gag stuffed in her mouth. Because metal doesn’t burn, she thought in frustration. Great.
Then, just as efficiently, the pair heaved their stunned cargo into the back of a wagon full of… quarried slate. No escape that way either. Better and better.
“Sorry, Aki,” Borrel said, sounding honestly regretful. “But… we really do need you. The plan depends on you; we can’t have you just running out on this one.”
“Gnglmmmgrn,” the gagged salamander replied reproachfully.



They untied her as soon as the dreadful little dinghy tottered out of sight of land. Borrel was full of awkward, mostly sincere apologies, while Kita and Sharlou seemed to have suddenly become intensely fascinated by cloud patterns.
“You’d better double my cut this time, Borrel.” She crossed her scaly arms, petulant, and tried to glower at her boss and the whole expanse of ocean at the same time. “And if you get to shore with nothing left but my cold, soggy corpse, you can go take that cut to Kalandor’s market, buy a chimney brush, and bugger yourself with it.”
Sharlou sniggered, then diplomatically tried to disguise the lapse as a cough.
Borrel, nearly cross-eyed with indignation but trying to make amends for Aki’s forcible enlistment, managed to keep his mouth shut.



Aki spent the first day of the voyage being violently seasick. But she recovered quickly, and, despite the appalling quantity of water surrounding them at all times, by the second morning had bounced back to her usual exuberant self. Halfway through the third day she knew every boisterous sea shanty and dirty ditty in the crew’s repertoire, and was buddying up with the crewmen like they’d all been best friends their whole lives. The captain and first mate still watched her with barely-concealed loathing, but that was only to be expected. No captain in all of Terrathiea would tolerate a fire-creature like a salamander on their ship without some extremely convincing incentives. Occasionally Aki would wonder idly what staggering sum Borrel had paid for her passage, and how he planned to recoup it. Whatever the prize was at the end of this job, it must be remarkable. She never wondered very hard, though. Thinking about details and logistics was Borell’s department, and Aki had better things to. Like getting the sailors to teacher her how to tie all those fiendishly complex knots.

Aki was cheating outrageously at cards when a loud splash! shattered the tranquility of the morning. The card-playing sailors looked up from their cards while some of their on-duty shipmates hurried over to the rail to see what had caused the disturbance. Aki used their distraction to pinch a few choice cards, then lay her hand down and scampered across the deck to investigate.

The hubbub had increased substantially by the time she reached the rail, and as soon as she peered over the side, she saw why.
“Throw a rope!” Someone shouted, and someone else obliged. The lifeline dropped into the water beside the funny-looking girl who was currently thrashing about in the water and hollering. She stopped thrashing about and hollering long enough to grab the rope, and Aki watched in fascination as the crewmen hauled their strange catch aboard. The girl flopped onto the deck, wet, bedraggled, and still funny-looking, and the concerned but baffled sailors gathered around her uncertainly.
“Where’d she come from?” one muttered.
“Ain’t no other boats out here,” another added.
“…Is’t a mermaid…?”
“Naw, stupid, mermaids can swim”
“I swear I saw ‘er fall from th’ sky!”
“Shaddup, pudding-brain. That’s r’dic’lous.”
Aki, impatient, ducked and shoved her way through the legs of the gawking circle, and crouched down beside the girl.
“Hi!” the salamander said brightly, grinning. “Nice hair!”