Got bored over a few weekends so I thought I'd upload something that's been floating around on my hard drive. ^_^
I'll add the other chapters when I can be bothered.
Context:
Aekist is a young explorer who loves to watch the ships sail in. He has a deeply creative imagination and quite often likes to dream of being one of the brave captains who are part of the Roxbury fleet.
Roxbury is the town at which Aekist grew up, it's a fairly boring place and Aekist wants to go out and explore.
Ash is the port master, who is fairly arrogant and feels that Aekist is way too young to be sailing out in the Humanil ocean.
Stephen is Aekist's mentor and the town's ship builder. He has over 60 years of experience on fixing ships and likes to listen to the sailors tales while he fixes their ships. Because of this, he is very knowledgable on the Humanil ocean and quite often knows more about the sea than the captains themselves.
Please note: I do not own any of the copyrights for the EU or Japanese Florensia, they are owned by Burda:ic GmbH and Netts Corp. respectively.
Prologue
The chilled blast of cold air hit Aekist's face, sending sharp spasms down his spine. It was usually cold in Roxbury at winter time, but this was the coldest it had been for many years.
Even as a young boy Aekist had enjoyed looking out at the open ocean, watching as the brave captains sailed there battered and broken ships back to Ash, the port master, who in turn handed them over to Stephen, who would use his 60 years of ship-making expertise to patch them up and make them seaworthy again. He often dreamed of how the captains managed to get their ships in the state that he saw them in. He dreamt of fierce pirates in enormous Ironsides, firing on all cannons, the metal spheres hurling towards the innocent ship at speeds only Gods could imagine, and how the gallant crew would somehow manage to escape the fury and sail all the way back – just to start all over again.
Once again the cold air hit his face, this time convincing him that standing on the end of the stone pier was not as great of an idea as he first thought it to be. He gathered his thoughts and – hesitatively – wandered back towards his home on the outskirts of the city, adjacent to the great waterfall that filled the great lake of LarksDowns. The distant sound of Stephen working on the latest wreckage caused him to pause for a second outside his workshop, before carrying on, observing his surroundings every step of the way.