(([S] Still sick, but this story came to me and demanded to be told (or begun at least)! I've always wanted to do a story about someone lost at sea. I'm sure I could have made it far longer but curse my patience! I don't want to wait for a resolution! Sad isn't it? I may pick this up another day and rewrite it. I like the idea of the societies of New Hartlin and the Sea Folk. And I like the concept of the minority of the world being the lighter skinned folk, just because I've always wondered what it would be like to have the shoe on the other foot. As well as the inner strife amongst the folk themselves. Who knows?

Okay, so summary: A world of the Four Corners, north, east, west, and south. Noble-born Quatre Winner, upon returning to his homelands with his New Hartlin wife, is tragically shipwrecked and found many days later by a ship of his own people. There, he is thought to be a slave sold to New Hartlin and thus the story is begun. Heero x Duo, Quatre x Trowa, and Wufei is.. well, wonderful. I want to take him home. But as he has dark eyes, I can't let him be with Quat like I initially wanted to.

Oh, and there's a chicken in there too. Somewhere. But she's not paired up with anyone because that would be, well.. sick.

Digressions: I don't own the boiz, wish I did. And this story contains yaoi, or male/male relations. Please be aware of this while reading and do not read it if you are insulted by the thought and find it offensive, or if you are afraid your mother will find you've been reading it and be offended. We don't want to upset her, okay?

Hope you enjoy! It was supposedly a one-shot, but I think it may prove to be longer (I can already feel a 1x2 coming from this some time later!), and it was fun to write. ))

]::[ denotes flash back. Hee!
[] [] denotes scene change, break in time, etc.
(fic is done in first person - POV Quatre)

:: The Sea-Folk ::

[Prologue]

There really is nothing worse than being alone, you know. Not by one's self in the midst of a crowd, or in a room just off of the main. Not like one sitting on a patio over the streets of New Hartlin, staring down at the heads, parasols, loads of market foods, battered hats, and swept up wigs and wishing one had the means to ask someone to come up and share your tea with you. No. Really alone. Truly alone. Not another person in sight, type of alone.

But then, I suppose I'm not completely alone. I do have.. as odd as it may sound, a chicken.

She's a red bird. I can keep it that simple. A Red Harrington, to be precise. I wouldn't have known that, but for the fact that my mother had once taken me to the market for the express purpose of finding a Red Harrington rooster so that we could have the incandescent green tail feathers off of its tail for her new hat. I think we ended up having roasted chicken along with the duck that evening as well and maybe I felt somewhat badly for the thing. He'd been magnificent, with spurs cut off at the middle, the merchant afraid of what damage he could do to a fine lady's hands. And there, he'd already had weapons cut off of him and in the end, his panache was torn from him. It seems a matter of pride and I wonder if they killed him first, but I'm fairly certain that they didn't. My mother would not have wanted blood on the green. All the walking that afternoon just for three green feathers. There had been five total on the bird, but my mother had only wanted the longest ones. The other two simply sat alongside their longer cousins, holding up the longest and supporting them.

She's not as dark in her feathers as he was. And she's dropped a bunch of them, the pinions almost white, dove grey at the very center with longitudinal lines along them. I shouldn't be thinking longitudinal anything. I'm not sure what lines I'm taking right now, or maybe I'm going in circles. I refuse to think that I'm just sitting, going nowhere. I know enough of the ocean's currents to know that I'm going somewhere, even if it's around and around, from south to north. Not that I'll know by the time we are done going one direction. For the moment though, the sun rises in one place and sets in the other and I think I'm going northwest for the most part.

So back to the chicken. Hen, I must call her. She is not exactly the best of companions, but then, she is a break in the monotony of wave upon wave. Even clouds when they come are a welcome relief. For the most part, the sky is the same as it was the day I woke.

For a moment, the rocking had me thinking I was in my mother's arms again. Or maybe in Therese's arms. Someone soft, with the scent of lilac and rhododendron.

]::[Why would anyone wear rhododendron? I chuckle and am answered by another chuckle. Not quite a chuckle. Maybe more like a cackle, but a small sort of cackle, close to a chuckle. Someone is laughing.

And my head hurts to high heavens.

I move my head slightly and wince, my cheek catching at something for a moment. A needle like pain entering my flesh at various point. The wince comes again because the first wince had made the other side of my face hurt as if it had been shot through with fire. It travels along my neck, down over an ear and onto my shoulders. Or one of my shoulders. The sound of waves, could that be the sound of waves?

Ah, that's right. They had been -

I open my eyes and stare at the sky. It's so clear that even the blue has been bled out of it, white grey, violet almost.. silver.

Therese had been silver too, the first time I saw her. I had wanted to touch her at times, trace her hair. But her eyes always stopped me, as if we both knew that if I ever made contact, she'd not be able to make it any different from the pain that touch had given her before.

But I'm digressing. This hasn't anything to do with Therese. It has nothing to do with me. This has something to do with the fact that the ship - ]::[

The hen's cackling had woken me. I wonder what I might have done that day. My body so close to the edge of the boat, hand trailing in the water. And I'd jerked back because she'd made a miniature cry of alarm. The boat was still, nothing, I stared at her, amazed to find a chicken in the middle of nowhere. It was literally nowhere. There was nothing living anywhere. I hadn't even thought of the waves yet and the immense distance beneath them, the worlds beneath them. Maybe I might have drowned myself right then and there if I'd thought of that and maybe that was where my mind was going.

I think of her as a hand of the Lady now. I feel that the aloneness would have gotten to me a lot sooner had it not been for watching her. And I'm glad she's female. Had she been a rooster, I might have fed her to the - well, I can't even think of those things yet. But she'd have been gone. I couldn't do it though, because she's a gift and the Lady does not return favors when we throw Her gifts in Her face. I've come to be thankful. I'm not always thankful, but sometimes when I stare at her, her eyes turning white as she closes them, the inner lid shuttering across the black beads of her lenses, before the harder, scaled lids drop, I realize that I'd have been dead had it not been for her at first. That I might have leapt into the waters and then I'd not be here.

Of course, I may still be dead and maybe she's not a gift at all. Maybe she's a curse.

Only time will tell.

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[Chapter One]

I think that we forget things after a time, when they are too much like the next. I made marks in the side of the raft each day that I woke and the sun was on the horizon. But I wasn't always certain if the sun was rising or setting so I can't be entirely sure on how many days I was on the raft. I had a tarp and a chicken as well as a few barrels I had fished from the waters. Of the three barrels, only two were of any good to me, for the third was full of salted pork and I wasn't not certain that the salt would do me any good so I kept from it, sticking to the few fishes I was able to pull from the depths below by way of a constantly breaking thread from my waistcoat and a small nail from the third barrel which held in its belly more than enough carpentry tools to build myself something had there been a goodly forest nearby. Of course, being none, I was forced to make use of the contents in other ways. Such as nailing the tarp to the three so that I could give myself some manner of shade, though low, and keeping my raft together as well as repairing it when the storm came and the few times the beasts of the darkness under pushed up against the raft and threatened to break it apart with their curiosity and (I hesitate to think) hunger.

To be truthful, it wasn't so much a raft as it was a side of the ship that had somehow remained apart from the rest of the wreckage. We had been in deep water then and it's not until now that I've come to allow my memories to assail me as to how we (the hen and myself) came to be stranded on the surface of the ocean.

It was the idea of Therese, that we were even on the voyage. Her adventurous spirit could not be denied and I, well, I was a foreigner. Despite my wealth, I was considered by many to be nothing more than a savage due to the color of my skin and the shape of my eyes. We had found a small and carefully selected salon wherein many of the minds were more interested in my words than in my accent. Yet even there, poison had seeped in through the woodwork and I was hatefully treated in the sweetest and most subtle of ways. And many of them I haven't any idea on how best to describe them. I liked to believe then, that it was simply my imaginings. For hadn't all before hated me? So why should it be that I would not see the respect and caring shown me even there with the hint of the hatred that I had known ever since I had entered this country? And perhaps at first, it was only imaginings, yet I must think that it could not have been. For when the first time passed in which I entered with the arm of my sweet Therese curled so trustingly in my own, I saw a sudden change come over those faces I had thought I knew and loved.

How can I even think it? But I must. That there was something to that hatred which disliked me for my light sea skin and my clear hair, for the shining blue sun-roundness of my eye, which led to the destruction of our voyage? We were in deep water, carrying no powders or dangerous substances. What was it that might have exploded in such a way to have destroyed our entire ship, thrown me and many others clear, and taken from me the one human being I felt an affinity and respect for that transcended the care I had for all other human kind?

Ah, but such speculations bring me to naught. What evidence I may have had, has sunk to the depths of her grave.

I tried as I could to take from me the manners of my people. I wore my hair short instead of tied back as was the custom. Nor did I braid it as our higher ranking men may choose to do. I cut it short to show that I was like them, even as my father cried it was fit but for slaves to wear hair so closely cropped to one's skull. Why, there was nothing to draw back to the nape of my neck to show my own that I had always been free borne. I also forsook the clothing of my people, leaving behind the wind swept robes and loosely fit pants, billowing sleeves, and easy sashes for the suits and waist coats and lace up shoes they so enjoyed, even though I felt stifled in them and my feet could not sense the ground through the hard, unforgiving soles and my body sweat in linen and itched in wool.

I could have, of course, done something for my hair, dyeing it with root dyes and done the same to my skin by swallowing the Calla bark my mother used to keep her fair skin from burning in the sun. Still, there was nothing I could do for the color of my eyes and using this as excuse, I chose in my pride, to remain as I was. I wonder now, had I done even so little, leaving only my eyes as the tale tellers for my true race, would I have been forgiven for taking the heart of she whom all of New Hartlin desired after? Or would it have been the same? I plague myself even now with doubts like this and never do they bring respite.

For no matter my actions of then, I had done the reprehensible. I left her, mid evening, laying in our bed, to breathe the air on the deck. There, walking with the sea winds in my hair, I stopped a moment to converse with a Hartlin captain, his dark eyes and even darker skin mingling with the evening skies until he was but a blurring to attempt to focus eyesight upon. He had known many of the sea-folk and he laughed long and hard at me the times we spoke, finding my childish attempts to mingle with his people a subject of great humor. But then, he'd called his own people a "stupid and sluggish folk" with a penchant for grasping honor where there was none. Had he known then, what a dangerous endeavor he was taking on, in granting me passage to my islands with my newly wedded wife?

I have the image locked to my mind's eye. For there, the last of the sun broke from the clouds as it descended, and a flash of red cut a swathe across the tops of the ocean waves. I shivered then, for fear of what this portend could mean. The captain, perhaps sensing along with me, the workings of forces we could not control, for the sea is a mistress both changeable in her lovers and harsh in ousting those she loves no longer from the warmth of her bed, turned his head to gaze at me. There, just for that moment, with the red of the light touching his cheeks and the beautiful plane of his brow, disregarding the loose clothing of my own people upon his person even though they were light colored and should have drawn the color more than the night flush of his skin, he had the aura of a man of destiny. Though I feared a destiny which would never be fulfilled in this world.

It was then, with the light there beyond him, blinding my eyes to everything but some light lancing through his pupils to dance golden upon the other side of his lens, that the explosion came from aft deck. The ship tore apart underneath me and the blast threw he and I from the poop deck toward the now black waters, bereft of the touch of sunken sun.

I know that I must have hit the water far too hard, for I could not breathe and I lost my way, having been too long gone from the sea to know my way any longer in her embrace. She was an unknown bed to me and I let her take me, thinking that I would be with my Therese soon. Her Lady and my Weaver were at odds and I gave Him up to follow her Mistress, so that I might be more with her soul at the parting of our ways from the earth's domain. And did not the Lady promise that in her arms we would find rest? We would discover new lands, deeper and further from our own, closer to her heart.

Oh cruel fate! To have taken from me such faith! For there is no longer the clarity to my thinking and I do not believe any longer that Therese waits for me. She must know I could not forever abandon my Weaver. Not when faced with such adversity as it was to live on without her.

I think I must have cursed the hand of the captain who drug me from the inky depths, forcing my face to the air. How he found my hair and knew to draw up, knowing as he must, that a drowning man may very well have drowned him as well, I cannot tell, nor can he. For in the day and a half of floating, his strength gave out. He had come to the waters with a wound to his leg that we tied off to keep blood from spilling the secret of our being there to the rest of the ocean. But he lost the feeling of his leg soon after and neither of us dared unbind it, knowing it was better to lose a leg than to lose a life. His life he lost despite it all. No matter his floating, he could not keep his lungs full as our children are taught from birth and onward, and his aged body succumbed to the waves during the second evening. He was breathing once and the next pass of cloud over the moon, he ceased and I could not find him. I prayed to the Lady that he would find her roads and be led to peace.

That afternoon I found the first of the three barrels. I do not doubt my fortune was destined. Though I know not what the destiny could have been. Yet a few hours later, a piece of the ship came to my view on the top of a swell and upon it rode the hen, where next to it, keeping to it's side as flotsam will, the second and third barrels, one very low in the water.

This third I had hoped would carry fresh water, and was saddened but not downtrodden to find it had instead, carpentry tools, iron nails, tarp, rope, and other such things that could be needful on a ship which was often times it's sole manufacturer of fixes in the midst of the ocean's vastness. Should a mast break, there could be no new timbers to cut, so timbers were loaded upon it. And if not that? then lashings and iron braces might do in a pinch. Other such needs gave rise to this barrel being precious. Yet what good did it do to her, with her sunk to the bottom of the ocean?

I considered eating the bird. But she reminded me of a rooster I think I partook of as a child and had felt particularly sorrowful over. Therefore I left her be and allowed her to eat the biscuits and at times, some pork if she showed signs of great hunger. I did not touch the meat, fearing raving might come upon me.

I do not know, again, how long we drifted. I think it might have been five days with only dew caught on the tarp early in the morning to slack our thirst (for I gave a small portion to the hen - mindful as the days passed that with her death I would be truly alone). On the fourth day clouds gathered yet the air remained muggy. I feared then, knowing the sign of a storm to come and using the rope, lashed the planks of our raft together as well as the barrels to the top. Closing up the barrels, I folded up the tarp and kept it atop the pork, closing this as well, leaving on the hammer, tied securely to the outside as well as a rope upon my own person as well as a tie upon that of the hen's leg. It was two days yet for the storm to break, but I spent much of that double checking the knots I had made with all the skill I was born to.

The storm lasted for I am not sure how long. I could not thank the Lady for saving me, for we know she is tied to the sea. I cursed her then, hating her and her stealing my chances to be with Therese upon her eternal road. I had been ignorant then. For she was not giving and loving as our Weaver was. He who would take any soul to His heart, even those so long past forgiveness, no matter their skin, their upbringing, their deeds. No, the Lady demanded only her own, for she was selective and thus, she kept me from being with the woman I loved more than my own blood's flow in these solemn veins of mine. But there, the waves buffeted myself and the bird about. I clung to her and to the ropes that held us, trying to keep from drowning in the crashing over us. I had kept the ropes long of a purpose, in case the raft were capsized. Yet our small, unworthy craft, by direct will of the Weaver, remained upright, though was much affected when the wildest of winds died down.

It was then, while it remained in rain, that I had to uncramp my muscles and do what I had planned. I feared for a time, that I would not have the ability to undo my own knots, nor get the barrel open before the rain ceased. Yet this I managed by some grace of mercy and spread out our tarp, connecting it at the corners through the ropes looped to the edges of the barrels and the one half plank I had rigged up to make a fourth corner and had as well, weathered the storm, though broken in half it was. Then I found the can in which I had discovered some maple bars, now kept in waxed paper with the biscuits. This I had kept our dew in, that which I collected over night, and placing this in the middle of the raft, held the small hole at the center of the tarp I had made many days before, over the can and watched in glee as it filled itself.

The rain lasted through two eventides and in that time, I found every empty container I thought might hold water and filled it. I may have managed four gallons by the end, though I do not know and do not wish to ask my captors to see the vessels I kept my water in. I am sure that they have all been thrown away by now, finding nothing on my raft of any worth but for myself and the hen (and I did not seem to have much worth by that time, for the hen was the only thing they were certain of keeping). The rest I am certain were left to remain on the surface of the sea, behind in their wake.

It was the only rain we had, the two of us. But due to it and the biscuits, I had an egg each morning, but for the one day a wave knocked it off of our raft and into the water. I did not begrudge her the pork then. For the eggs kept me in health for far longer than I should have been.

I was brown as a nut tree and thinner than a sapling when the boat scraped violently up against the side of the raft. I could dimly hear shouts and then a distant wishhh of rope, ending in a smack against the planks. The hen made no sound and I wonder if she has made a sound since our voyage. I hope that her being a hen has kept her from their table. For her eggs were something of which to take joy in on a long voyage. Even if it were but one. She was the first they captured and I know I felt her wing flapping against my face as one of them swept her up and into the crook of his arm. Then with much shouting, she and the man were pulled back on board. My silent companion, her voice lost to the waves as my life seemed to be. I could not move when a toe nudged my side and I could not smell, but knew the foul scent of unbathed skin to be everywhere as a shadow covered me and a hand checked at my neck and breast for the pulse of living waters in my body.

"Still alive, Cap'n. But barely, ser."

"Well, what think you, mate? Is the creature of worth? Does it have reason to come aboard?"

To wonder now, as one who is not of the sea might, why they would treat me so callously is something I can now understand. I have been to New Hartlin and I know the thoughts that govern men in those lands. But this was not the foggy green hills and mountains of the lands to the west. This was the searing blue of my world and in it, to give up supplies, water and food, to save a dying man, is a worthless venture and best left to those with kinder hearts. If a body has not value of either hard work or later coinage from sale as a slave, then there is little reason to take it along with one to anywhere, even if this means to save a life. For one life saved may mean two of your men dead due to lack of water from hitting a calm too far out to sea and too far from a renewal source.

I do not know if I made noise. The heavy hand had the heat which I think tore at where my skin was blistering off of my shoulders for it was only pain upon pain and I do not know that I was aware of anything but pain by then. It had been years since I had been in amongst my own, and even longer still since I had been under the glare of the ocean's sun, for I was of a higher station and did not need to go out upon the waves to make my living. Yet despite my lack of response, hands lifted me and what words were spoken about my being and what cause I would keep to be allowed to live, were lost to my unconsciousness.

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When I woke, the dimness told me I was under cover, as well as the pattering of rain on the hull and deck above me. I knew these sounds as I knew the very sea under my bones and I think I might have sighed as I tried to roll over. The pain of moving, however, broke any sound and turned it into a painful gasp. At the sound, a figure stood from the edge of the room, still very much in shadow, and left through the door. I know no more of my watcher, but that his shoulders filled the door frame and he was a slave for his hair was shortly cropped to the base of his skull, longer than mine had even been.

I lay there a while, listening to the breathing in my lungs and wondering at how I found myself to be alive, when the door opened once more and a man far more broad though slimmer in the hips, stalked within. His violet eyes aflame, a braid as long as his thighs snaking behind him like a whip. I feared him at once, for in his eyes was the passion of the most renowned of the sea. He lived for his mistress and she fed him his daily oats. It showed in the fierce proud walk so alike to those horses my father kept for his pleasure at seeing them strut across his white graveled courtyard. I heard from afar, the whimper of terror in my throat and saw in great horror that this only brought to his face a smile both lecherous and vicious. He would have no mercy on me.

Surprised then, when he traced my bangs from my face and looked searchingly into my eyes before laughing, I stared at him in loss. "So, they have filled your mind with nonsense about us, have they? Your own people. Or perhaps you were sold so young and had a harsh trainer before?" he was questioning me and I could not answer, too afraid what he might do to me. I had never lied prior to now. How could I tell him I was no slave? To be a slave in appearance and to demand the rights of the high born, would only push me into the ocean once again. A slave with such affectations is of no use to anyone, too proud to do their work, and too dull to know their place.

"Ah, but I see you have a tongue and I've heard you make sound with that pretty throat of yours. So I know you have ability to speak, young ser. You will, perhaps be more able after some drink and food and after your skin has been tended more completely to. I will see you when you are well again." And taking the scent of salt spray with him, leaving behind an elusive scent of lavender and lemon behind him, he was gone just as quickly as he had come.

If I had had questions, I had no time to think on them, for soon after another came to me. This one, a slave as well, smaller than the captain in both breadth and height, his dark skin one that is natural and his eye shape one of the far southern reaches where dragons and the like are purported to live still. Yet not all southerner, nor free born it seemed. For his hair was short as well and he wore the bracelets of being the first slave in a conclave. Nor was he fully southern, he had not the dark eyes of they. Instead, his gaze was an electric blue, so deep that the ocean herself could not compare. And the gaze he affected toward me was colder than the icy lands even deeper south than those from which he'd come. Still, what had he to fear? He tended my wounds, those which had pustules on my face from razing my face upon the planking, the blistered burns upon my back and shoulders, and the great split down the side of my leg that I did not remember but brought about some thought of great pain, and was still brought to blood when he pressed on it, unmindful of my choking screams. And as he tended me, I saw many a time when his motions left open his vest, upon his defined chest, the brand of an owner. Not many brand their slaves. Yet it could be done. It was something higher, in the world of the Sea-folk. This branding did not mean ownership, per se. Not as it does to the eyes of those to the west. No, this was a binding arrangement between owner and slave, wherein the slave has subjected him or herself solely to the one owner and agreed to take on the mark. It is an eternity oath. Some take it on as soldiers to their lord. As a pledge of loyalty. Some take it as a desire to never leave the house of one, so that they may be with their family. There have been entire families pledged thus to their owners, children all the way to grandparents. Though it is rare to see it on any child under the age of sixteen full season turnings. And the last, though most rare, is that of one slave to one owner. And many a time, in such cases, the owner turns from all of his own rank, and keeps to that one slave as consort for the rest of both of their lives. This mark has an additional diagonal slash across the bottom left hand corner, leading to the center of the breast to show that it is only in effect so long as their owner is living. At which time, freedom is granted. It is a dangerous mark to give any slave whom one does not trust implicitly with one's life, for obvious reasons. And it was this mark which the slave tending me had upon his person. I did not wonder but knew in my heart, that the mark belonged to the captain who had come in looking at me with such a hot gaze.

So perhaps then, there was cause for his coldness. It pained me though, to see his plight. To be bound to such a man, who might make his way through the ranks of slaves, taking his pleasure as he wished, yet to never be able to find love one's self.

Still, despite the hatred he must have felt for me he cared for me. For even then, wounded as I was, I knew that I was a beauty, as I had always been, slender as a boy, yet long in limb and with an aged look to my more clearly blue eyes. I had hair which was loved on the islands. A gold of the afternoon sun during autumn harvest. It was called Yoedian Arl, or the Golden Harvest, and was considered good luck. For though many of my people had brown or golden brown hair, few had hair of such a color to be decreed good fortune. Had I been born a slave, I would have been asked at a young age to take the brand upon my breast. So that none other could have me. It must have seemed a miraculous find then, that I had no mark upon my body. Not even a house tattoo upon my heel as so many do, easily made, easily rubbed out and replaced. No matter the wonder of it, though. I came to them in New Hartlin clothing. And the westerners did not like so much to have marks upon their chattel. It had the added bonus of giving the captain no place upon which he could (or had to, considering the laws of keeping and selling mankind) return me to. I was homeless and valuable to no end. I suppose then, that was why he had kept me.

We spoke little during the five days he tended me. Or rather, he answered me little, though I tried many a time to entice him into conversation. Everything from the weather to the placement of the stars to where was our next port. I never asked of the captain however, nor why I was kept in a private cabin. Nor did I ask of the figure which I would find in my room late at night at times, watching over me as I slept, broad of shoulder and tall, and whom would always leave when sensing I was awake. Leaving nothing behind, no scent, no trace of his self. Nothing but the clean incoming rush of sea air before the door was closed behind him.

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[Chapter Two] : Forthcoming (sorry!!!! Sick thing is kicking my hiney good)

- Meeting the first mate as well as what does Capt. Maxwell have in mind for his new Yoedian Arl? And how will Heero react? (And how will Quatre survive Heero's reaction? Hee hee) And who the heck is watching over him at night? Grrrrrr.

(PS: heh heh ; Forgive any tense errors or grammatical errors. I've not gotten the patience thing down, nor the time to sit and consider it, to go to the beta reader system yet. I may never get around to it (or a round tuit, either for that matter) so if grammar just kills you, then feel free to burst out in comments. I can only learn more fully from what you all say. )