Ports of Call
PROLOGUE
raise anchor.
They leave and don't look back.
That sounds more dramatic than it ends up being.
The truth is, they can't look back. Literally, physically. They can look back metaphorically all they like; as ominous as it sounds, being "tied to the past," all it really does is slow productivity for an hour or so while her crew wallows in their own nostalgia (which mostly involves telling old stories they all know the endings to, while Niko makes paper cutouts and Link watches with big, sad eyes). Tetra is fairly sure she can man her own ship for an hour or so.
(She never tells stories.
Or comments on Niko's cutouts, even to criticize them.
Someone needs to wear the big boy pants around here, and it might as well be her.)
It's a half-new, half-old revelation. A rudimentary version of it had been hot on the heels of her first plan to leave (the one she came up with more out of desperation than practicality, when her world was literally collapsing around her in waves). When the plan crystallized into something a little more realistic, she realized that for at least the first hour – from the moment the wind plumed the sails to the second Outset got swallowed by the horizon – she couldn't look back. None of them could. They were each allowed one final goodbye glance, but once their gazes hit the open sea, that was it.
Chapter closed.
Because they made a choice that day. One she doesn't intend to back out on, no matter how weepy-eyed and sentimental her crew gets.
But the farther they get, the more she realizes that they can't look back, ever. Because once Outset vanishes it's Windfall on the horizon, and then Dragon Roost, and if they let themselves slack even for a second, then there's just a whole slew of problems she doesn't have the time or patience to deal with.
Once, when she was a girl and her mother was still alive, they'd spent a week longer on Greatfish than they'd intended. (Gonzo was the swabbie then, and he'd either been overwhelmed or distracted, no one had ever been able to figure out which. The ropes had nearly sent him overboard.) There had never been much to see on Greatfish, even before it was wrecked by Ganondorf – just a small community of artisans strewn along the disjointed pieces of the island. But back then there had been an... operation on the cliffs to the north. Anybody could sell anything to anyone, and nobody asked any questions.
For a normal person lost enough to stumble on it, it was shady at best and malicious at worst.
But for the daughter of a renowned pirate captain, spending an extra week on Greatfish was the equivalent of being handed an all-access pass to a carnival.
She spent the entire week darting around the pieces of the island, alternating between dragging her bare feet through the shallow canals of saltwater and playing a game where she'd die if she got even a drop of water on her pant leg. She hid in the shadows of rocky overhangs and tried to startle novice pirates who were stupid enough to set up actual stalls to hawk their wares. She saw all kinds of treasure from all over the world; she spent an entire day trying to haggle for a sapphire ring, and her mother had to drag her away before she remembered she had a perfectly valuable chunk of gold hanging around her neck.
The point is, Tetra loved being on Greatfish.
And then she had to leave.
Her mother warned her not to look back. She told her to keep her eyes focused on the horizon, on the next island waiting for them, on the future. But Tetra had convinced herself that if she could just get one last look at the island, then maybe leaving wouldn't be so awful. So she hung on the back railing and watched Greatfish recede until it was a little black speck in the ocean, waiting to feel better until she realized she wasn't going to.
That's why they don't look back. Why they can't look back.
They've gotten far enough now that what they used to call the "Great Sea" has become it's own speck in an even greater sea. The horizon is, literally, endless all around. And as long as they stay focused and look forward, it stays a horizon of possibilities, of a land they might be able to truly call theirs.
But the second they look back, it's over.
Done.
The ocean might as well just swallow them whole, because they've gone too far for old stories and sentimentality to wash them back home.
So they don't.
And it ends up being not so bad.