Prologue: Set Sail For, Uh, Thataway!
"Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me," An off-pitch song warbled through the ocean breezes. "Yo ho, yo ho, I want something to see! Seriously! I'm sick of all this water!"
A girl flopped back onto the rowing bench of her small boat. "I want land. Dirt, soil, trees, sand. Is that too much to ask for?"
The boat wasn't large. It was, in essence, an oversized rowboat with a fore mast shoddily rigged to the front by a variety of knots and some nails. It had been done poorly, too. The sail was made out of pine leaves stitched together with thread and cut into a mostly triangular shape.
The girl herself, was lanky and thin, dressed in a wooden jerkin with a leather overcoat over it, leather pants and sandals, and a three-brimmed dark brown hat mounted atop her long orange hair, which went down to her shoulder blades in all sides. A cutlass hung from her belt. She took a swig from her water bladder, and once again fruitlessly searched the horizon for signs of land. When there was none to be found, she cursed. "I am so sick of all this goddamn water!"
A shrill, screeching roar answered her. Her face went pale in fear. "Nevermind, water's good, water's great! I love water!" The pirate fumed to herself. "Goddamn sea gods,"
But her expression changed again as she saw a distant shadow in the fog. "Please tell me that's land," she begged, turning the boat towards the shadow and squinting through the most surrounding her.
The girl was rewarded by a jagged, rocky outcropping. "Land! Hip-hip-hoo-rah!" She jumped for joy, before reaching for her makeshift sail rig and guiding the boat around the outcropping, searching for a beach that she could land the boat on as the outcropping extended into a full island.
Her efforts bore no fruit as she continued to circle around the island, until she happened upon a rocky rise jutting out of the ocean. It was hardly the beach she'd been hoping for, but it looked solid enough that she could land the boat without wrecking it. The girl hauled on the ropes, bringing the ship around, and letting the wind gently push it onto the slope.
As soon as the bottom of the hull grated against rock, she leapt onto dry land with a rope made from a vine, quickly tying the boat down and securing it's position, half in the water and half on the rock. Having done that, she rapidly inspected the bottom of the hull for damage. Satisfied that there was none to be had, the pirate lay back, enjoying the rock on her back. "I missed land,"
A circle of jade inscribed with several odd-looking etches, rimmed in carefully cut oak and attached to a string around her neck, slipped out of her shirt and hit the rocky floor.