Little Krahl

Salty air stung and tickled his face as he stood erect at the bow, reminding him with each twisting blow how strange and stupid he was acting.  He had been trained since youth to hold his head down as much as possible, to shield his visage behind a shoulder, a hood, a mask.  It was a matter of safety – wariness that warped his very body.  The earth was barren and the air full of razors, and that was just Nature; the mere sight of his green-stained flesh invited much greater rebuke from most mortals.  By grace or irony or both, at least one mortal had done otherwise and taught him to be safe in discretion.  He wondered what she would think of him now.

“Staring won’t make that horizon get here any faster,” said the captain, a man by the name of Amal, who bore a certain grace and strength despite sporting many signs of suffering.

“Don’t you have men whose job it is to stare at the horizon?” he countered, unable to hold back a sneer.

“Yeah, but I pay them.  You’re just doing it for free.  I find that odd.”

“I’ll bet you’ve had stranger passengers than me.”

“That I have.  Dragonborn.  They were much stranger than you.  But at least they had eyes on something better for them.  You, on the other hand…can’t imagine why you’d want to go where we’re going.”

He choked back another rebuttal before it fly out, thinking of how she had told him to hold his tongue around seafarers – they were not to be trusted.  It always amazed him how learned she was about the ways of the world.  One would think a human woman wandering around the Cliffs of Grumbar would have little in the ways of wisdom.  Yet she was there, and for what he never knew.  Not that it mattered: she had been there when she was needed.  When the clan had moved on and left their runt behind.  When his mother had finally faced enough shame.  In her he found a new mother: Ms. Krateky.  Warrior, sage, survivor.

Captain Amal lingered for a while at his side, expecting a response.  When none came, he busied himself with ship things, muttering bemusedly to himself.  The greenish passenger was unmoved.  He was finding practice in standing at the bow and facing the unknown – a rehearsal for resistance, for the reclamation of his right.  The pearl pendant felt particularly heavy against his chest.  Ms. Krateky had tried to rid him of it.  She denied knowing where it came from but she could not keep the truth from him.  It broke them apart, a wedge greater than age, race, gender, or temperament.  Her lie brought greater pain than any mere whisper or stare or strike could do.  So he left her, and went searching for more pearl.

The horizon remained flat a long time, promising nothing.  His fingers moved unnoticed to his chest and fiddled with the pendant.  Thoughts of his cohort grew of their own accord and threatened to drop anchor back on Stonebeach, pulling him back from the task at hand.  His attachment to them – or their attachment to him – was dangerously tight.  He had allowed himself only one attachment in life and that had only been a pantomime.  Pretending.  That’s all they were doing.  That’s all he was doing.  Pretending, in order to get by.

A smirk crossed his face.  What he was doing would serve them all.  It would serve everyone, or at least he hoped.  Pretending, it seemed, had propelled him toward doing what no other could do.  It had propelled him, so often on the outside, toward a new reality where his place inside would be beyond question.  There would be time enough for friends and lovers when his work was done and his rights reclaimed, half-blood or not.  Perhaps then they could matter more.

A faint point emerged on the horizon, upsetting its oppressive flatness.  His eyes narrowed in strain and he watched as began to take shape slowly, almost with anguish.  It was several minutes before the call came from the crow’s nest – so much for a paid lookout.  His heart pounded inside his chest in time to the rhythms of the crew.  In time he could hear royal drums in his head, thumping along to the admonishments of Ms. Krateky.  “Little Krahl,” she would say over and over again, each syllable a hammer blow to keep low and open to her.  

Pretending, just pretending, even if it did save his life.  They would never have the chance for something real.

“Little Krahl,” he muttered to himself.  “Little Krahl no more.”