Hello everybody! I was previously Isadora the Whovian, and I am back, because I finally got a new laptop and inspiration to write again! Its been a long time since I last updated A Fight For Life, and I do apologize, but I wont be continuing it. It wasn't going in the direction I wanted it to go and so I've elected to rewrite it. Which is pretty much what this story is. But it is also very very different! The basic storyline is the same, but nothing else is. Its set when Jenna and Septimus are around 17-18, so therefore after Fyre and before Pathfinder. Marcia is still the Extraordinary Wizard in this story, and not married to Milo. I've slowed down the pace a lot so forgive me if its a little slow going! If something doesn't make sense or if I made any typos or grammatical errors please let me know so I can fix it! Its currently very late, my time, so I've probably accidentally skipped over something. Enjoy!
Milo stepped wearily off of his ship. Never, ever again would he spend three days on a ship with two teenagers. Well, he would one more time, because there was the return trip, but after that it was never happening again. No one, not even Marcia, could make him suffer through that a third time.
He really needed to learn how to say no to her, he realized with a frown. It was her fault that he had even agreed to ferry around the Queen and the Extraordinary Apprentice in the first place. Three days of the two of them teaming up against him, combined with teenage angst and sibling drama—it wasn't (and never had been) on his bucket list. Ah, well. He had all day to be without them. That made it a little bearable, at least. Jenna and Septimus were currently sitting with the young prince who ruled over this kingdom for some kind of diplomatic meeting. Milo, for obvious reasons, wasn't allowed to attend. He figured it was for some kind of trade agreement, and hoped that he was right. If he was, his merchant life would be made a little easier. The kingdom was closer and from the looks of it, sold items that he knew would sell at high prices in the Castle.
Hmm. Now there was something he could do. He could explore the trade markets and local bazaars, get a better look at what the people here sold instead of just a passing glance. Maybe he'd find something he could buy for Jenna, and Marcia too.
Before Milo set on his way, he turned back to his ship. "I'll be back in a little while!" he shouted up to his men. A chorus of affirmative replies echoed down to him.
Septimus, unfortunately, did not get to explore the kingdom like he knew Milo to be doing. He was instead stuck in a very boring meeting with his very bossy sister and a very annoying eleven-year-old prince named Harry. He wasn't even supposed to come with Jenna. The prince had requested the Queen and the Extraordinary Wizard meet with him. Not the Extraordinary Apprentice. He was supposed to be in the Forest camping with Beetle right now, not sitting at a table with his sister and an eleven-year-old. But Jenna did not want to be stuck on a ship with both Marcia and Milo, and Marcia did not want to be stuck with Jenna and an eleven-year-old in what was, in her words, a meeting not worth her time. The obvious compromise was that he go in her place.
It was so unfair. Marcia was probably reading a book right now or buying a new pair of shoes and Beetle was probably camping with someone else. That someone else was probably Foxy, too. Foxy just had to take everything from him, didn't he? He took his girlfriend and most likely his camping trip with his best friend.
Septimus was content to sit there and sulk while completely ignoring the details of the meeting, but Jenna elbowed him discreetly. "Stop sulking," she whispered while Prince Harry's advisor was explaining something to him.
"I'm not sulking," he whispered back in a way that confirmed he was sulking.
Jenna was sympathetic, for she too wasn't really enjoying the meeting. She did, however, find Prince Harry to be adorable so it wasn't too bad. "It's almost over," she told him reassuringly. "We just have to agree on terms and sign a paper. Easy."
"I'm not supposed to sign the paper," he complained. "Marcia's supposed to sign it."
She rolled her eyes. "You're standing in for her," she reminded him. "It's perfectly okay for you to sign it." Then, seeing that Prince Harry was waiting on her, she said, "You agree to our terms, then?"
He nodded, smiling cutely. "The Kingdom of Chiel agrees to the terms set out by the Kingdom of—" he hesitated and turned to his advisor. "How do you pronounce it again?"
The advisor bent down to whisper the correct pronunciation into his ear and Jenna looked over to Septimus. "Isn't he cute?" she mouthed.
It was his turn to roll his eyes. He didn't understand how anyone could find eleven-year-old boys—especially eleven-year-old royal boys—cute. He decided to fully tune out the rest of the meeting, and it wasn't until he had signed the paper agreeing to whatever it was Jenna and the prince had agreed on and they were leaving the palace that he even spoke.
"Marcia owes me," he grumbled as they stepped outside on to very green grass. He felt like taking off his shoes and running through it. It would improve his day considerably.
Jenna ignored him and pulled on his arm, making him keep walking. "Now we just have to go back to the ship and go home," she told him.
He kicked at a rock since he couldn't do anything he wanted to do. "Milo's probably on the other side of the kingdom," he muttered under his breath.
Jenna ignored that too.
Surprisingly, Milo was not on the other side of the kingdom. He had found a bazaar quite close to the Quay and was browsing through it. He'd been there for hours already, but he assumed that Septimus and Jenna would find him when they were ready to leave, for he wasn't in a hurry just yet. The bazaar was, actually, very entertaining and interesting. He tried local delicacies that reminded him of the country he grew up in and turned down local delicacies that reminded him a little too much of his time in the hold of a pirate ship. He even found a book stall, and though he wasn't much of a reader, he figured that Marcia would enjoy the book he'd picked out for her. After all, the vendor had assured him it was from the Before Time and she loved books from the Before Time. This particular book even had the name Sherlock Holmes in the title. She'd gone on very excited rants about a Sherlock Holmes character in the past, so there was no way she wouldn't like it, right? He hoped that at the very least she'd appreciate that he'd thought of her.
Walking down the streets of the Bazaar, however, had its disadvantages. Vendors liked to call out to people, and Milo didn't really know how to turn them down. It was how he had found himself in his current situation. An elderly woman had called out to him in a language he hadn't heard or really spoken in years and he had answered her without a second thought. She immediately had grabbed his arm and pulled him over to her stall, forcing him to sit in an uncomfortable chair. Now he watched her as she gathered a few items and set them down on the table in front of him, feeling more than a little apprehensive. She was a fortune teller type, and he didn't believe in that sort of thing at all. The problem was he didn't know how to politely tell her he wasn't interested.
The elderly woman sat down across from him and held out her hands. Hesitantly, he placed his hands in hers. "Uh, Ma'am— "
She shushed him and stared intently at his hands. After a few very awkward and uncomfortable moments, she spoke in the lyrical language he remembered so well. "Your wife is dying," she told him bluntly.
His good mood that he'd had ever since Septimus and Jenna had stepped off of his ship that morning immediately soured. "My wife is already dead," he replied, his tone void of any emotion. He removed his hands from hers, finding that it was easier to do so when he had no room in his head for any thoughts of kindness. Fortune Tellers, in his opinion, tried too hard to guess the future and when they only restated and reminded him of his past, his disdain for them only grew. He hated being reminded of Cerys's death, and how he had inadvertently abandoned his daughter for eleven years.
He was ready to leave the bazaar now, he decided. The sooner he could distract himself from imagining Cerys's death (made easier by seeing her ghost and hearing Marcia's detailed description of the events of that night) the better.
The elderly woman stood when he did. "I'm not finished!" she protested.
He didn't bother to respond and instead stormed away.
He tried to push the thoughts out of his head by thinking of Marcia. He only thought of her witnessing two murders and leaving his daughter in the snow. He tried thinking of his ship and the ocean. That didn't work either. His ship was named after Cerys and the ocean served as a reminder that he had left instead of checking with someone, anyone, to confirm the events of that night.
He needed a drink, he decided next. Maybe two.