Minoa
By Syrinx
Summary: It is nine hours by ship from Piraeus to Chania. For Ashleigh it's significantly longer.
Disclaimer: All rights to the Thoroughbred series belong to Joanna Campbell and Harper Collins.
A/N: Brad/Ashleigh, post-Pride's Last Race.
July 24, 2007
8:23pm
F/B Lato
Piraeus, Greece
96 F
It was a habit Ashleigh had fallen into. On the top of each entry she would write the date, time and place. For this particular entry she included the temperature only because it was so damn hot.
Normally she didn't keep a diary; in fact, she'd stopped the process when she was eleven. She didn't have the patience to take stock of her life each day, and the act of writing everything down only made her life seem boring when she knew that couldn't possibly be the case. She'd helped train a Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes winner, after all. She'd won the Breeders' Cup Classic at fifteen. She was hardly a boring person. Writing it all down made it seem that way. So she'd stopped.
After a minute of staring at the blank page, Ashleigh wrote beneath the temperature:
"Piraeus smells like dead fish and body odor."
The thing of it was it really did. Slapping the journal closed, Ashleigh capped her pen and tossed both of them back in the bag by her feet. Reclining in the plastic deck chair, Ashleigh propped her feet up and looked out at the horizon. The sun was sinking into the water, exploding in a rusty red that brightened up the few slivers of clouds that hung in the sky. The water was darkening, turning all purple and navy blue. It would have been gorgeous if not for the harbor, with its dilapidated buildings, rows of ocean liners, lines of idling cars, beleaguered crowds, and piles of trash that looked like a permanent display of filth. Off in the distance, a single minaret stood out from the less than desirable surroundings. Ashleigh decided to focus on that as the sun went down.
Suddenly the F/B Lato trumpeted, her bellowing call promising eminent departure. Ashleigh couldn't have been more grateful. The last of the stragglers were boarding, crawling up through the ship and finding their rooms or claiming spots to camp out. For an ocean liner the F/B Lato was being used as a glorified ferry. Granted, this ferry trip would take nine hours between Piraeus and Chania, so the bigger the better. Ashleigh had never been on anything remotely like it, but then that had been part of the point to the whole trip.
She remembered distinctly back to March, when her mother sat her down at dinner and told her the plan for Ashleigh's graduation present. She had been less than enthused.
"We just want to make sure you get out and experience some things before you settle into this," her mother had said.
"This is a very difficult lifestyle, Ashleigh," her father had added. "You may have grown up with it, you may love it, but it will control everything in your life. You will have no time for anything else, and we want to make sure you're happy with that decision."
"I am happy," Ashleigh had argued. "I've made my decision."
Her parents had stood firm. In April her mother presented to Ashleigh an itinerary, in which Ashleigh would fly out of Lexington the day after the University of Kentucky's commencement. She would fly to London, and then she would crisscross Europe in a fashion that seemed suspiciously similar to the project itinerary she'd gotten an excellent mark on in the eighth grade.
On graduation day her parents gave her a travel journal and upgraded her cellular phone plan to international in case of an emergency, although Ashleigh had been getting calls from her mother every other day just to "check in". She said goodbye to Wonder, Goddess and Pride, cried into Mike's shirt for a good thirty minutes, and was packed onto a plane destined for Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Since then she'd written thirty-two postcards. She didn't know how much she'd spent on stamps.
A second trumpet blasted through the air, and Ashleigh craned her neck around to look at the emptying space behind the ship. The giant ramp to the hold was folding up, closing and locking as crew members scurried around the dock in preparation. A third horn and Ashleigh could hear the engines roar to life. The F/B Lato began to slowly churn away from land, heading out to cross the Mediterranean. A breeze picked up as the ship exited the harbor, increasing speed and rocking over the waves. The last bit of sun slanted over the slowly receding mountains and washed over the deck, making Ashleigh squint her eyes in order to see. Eventually she gave up and closed them completely, enjoying the last bit of light before their night journey.
Then the last thing she could have expected happened.
"Fucking hell."