FINISHED! Again…


Something In The Water

-Chapter One: Sunshine In A Bag

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I woke up slowly, cautiously.

Hearing was the first sense I regained; as I floated, bodiless, in the black mist halfway in, halfway out of my own mind, sounds – voices – filtered through to me. There was the babble of background speakers, overlaid by the wailing of a young baby and a donkey's strident bray. I heard a woman murmuring, loud or close enough that I could pick out individual words:

"…looks fine… just… appeared out of nowhere. I… Fruit, maybe?"

A young voice answered her, loud and chirpy. "She looks weird. Not from anywhere around here!"

Feeling returned to my body in a rush. I couldn't help groaning, automatically trying to shift my limbs to a more comfortable position. My entire body felt like it had been tenderised; one arm was trapped beneath my back, the wrist bent at a painful angle. My mouth was full of sand and grit, my eyelids were gummed together with the stuff. Sun and wicked heat beat down with the force of a hammer. Despite the fresh wind that steadily blew over me, it was enough to make me gasp and choke on the dust drifting in the air.

Extracting my arm from underneath myself, I scrubbed at my eyes, cracking them open just enough to stare out at the world. It was bright, almost too bright – I had to squint through watery eyes to see anything at all, and even then the best I could see was a few vague blobs. I could smell though, even through the dust in the air. Blood, offal and charcoal have unique odours of their own, and in this place, they were all around me.

"Hello? Excuse me?" One of the amorphous blobs made a vague waving motion towards me. "Can you understand me?"

I blinked furiously, shading my eyes and peering at it. The words sounded distant, and they took a while to sink through the muzz of distance between my ears and my brain. I stared blankly for a moment, and managed a strangled reply. "Yes?"

My voice sounded absolutely horrible – raspy, painful and weak. My throat felt worse; my breath kept catching in it, sending me into fits of manic coughing.

The blob with the woman's voice paused, and then a cool, dainty hand touched my cheek.

"Damini, go fetch a pitcher of water."

The voices were getting clearer. Another of the blobs rose amid a rustle of fabric, disappearing from my field of vision in a few steps. Still coughing, I tried to push myself up on my elbows to get a better look at my surroundings, but a pair of firm hands on my shoulders stopped me.

"No, don't do that yet. Stay down, and rest – you look like you need it."

"Who are you?" I croaked, obediently settling back on the ground. It felt like cobblestones under my back, pitted with age and worn down to an almost completely smooth surface. There was dust and gravel too, and more of the dry warmth that pervaded everything about this place… wherever it was.

"Where am I?" I asked, scrubbing my still watering eyes with the back of my hand.

The woman gave a quiet, good-natured chuckle. "I am Lorna daughter of Tulsa, a lawyer of the Republic of Carolinge. Rest assured I have no intention to harm you, and neither do my companions here."

Good to hear, I thought dreamily, though the words didn't really sink in. There must have been a part of my mind that was processing these things, and reacting to each new piece of information, but it was far back, hidden beneath layers of an apathetic calm.

"This is Tusanto, the capital city of the Carolingen nation," the woman – ah yes, Lorna – continued. "More accurately, we are sitting in Butcher's Lane, part of the old weaver's city within Tusanto. Now, if you don't mind me asking a question of my own… ah, who are you? Where exactly did you come from?"

I automatically opened my mouth, only to find I had nothing to say. Perplexed, I looked down at myself. My vision still hadn't cleared; my body was just a few blobs of colour arranged in a vaguely recognisable shape. I closed my eyes, staring into the glowing redness behind my eyelids. The sunlight was even invading my head, chasing away the remnants of the darkness in my sleep.

The darkness… now that I missed. The light revealed nothing to me.

"I…" I paused, and opened my eyes again. Past the calmness which enveloped me, something was trembling. I shrugged, helplessly. "I don't know."

Lorna made a small, sympathetic noise. "It certainly wouldn't be the strangest thing that's happened today. Do you remember anything else about you? Sometimes talking helps to bring the memories back after a shock."

I frowned, and cast about for something else. My mind was as fuzzy as my sight, swimming in the ocean after a storm had churned up the seabed. Things flickered past in the murk, like fish shoaling, shimmering and twisting out of reach of my questing thoughts.

Wait… fish.

"I remember fish," I said, and the instant I said the word, and image popped into my mind- brilliant silver fish, each as long as my forearm, flopping about in a net as they were hauled aboard a boat of some kind. I counted seventeen of them, and a greenish, duller fish, fatter and longer than the others.

"Seventeen trevally an' a kahawai. Fish."

"A good thing to remember," one of the women said, chuckling. I glanced at her, and then decided she meant no insult. Was it even an insult?

"Auntie Aya, now is not the time," Lorna said, scowling over her shoulder at the woman, "not in public, at least."

"Then when is?" The woman called Aya grinned, crow's feet around her eyes deepening with mirth. "By the looks of her, fish-girl here could probably do with a good laugh. You lot, on the other hand, really should be used to me by now!"

Do I want to know? I thought, bracing my weight on my elbows and pushing myself upright. This time, no-one stopped me. My head whirled a bit, but settled quickly; the world swam in front of me, fuzzy but slowly becoming clearer. I blinked, and the shape of the woman who had been speaking to me gradually sharpened.

No wonder I hadn't been able to see her clearly before. What little of her skin I could see was dark, so dark it was closer to black than brown. She wore a dark green wrap around her head and shoulders, fringed with silver tassels, over a midnight-blue robe which flowed like water, liquid over the rest of her body. I could hear jewelry clink as she shifted her position, but couldn't see any of it through the blur remaining in my sight. Against the sheer strength of the sunlight, she seemed to be made up entirely of shades of black.

There were more women like her; five, six of them sitting arranged around me as though they were audience to an unusually interesting bit of street theatre. Some were dressed in equally dark outfits, where others wore bright yellow, green, red, and gold – colours that glowed worse than the sun.

"Well, whatever you say, it's a good place to start," Lorna rolled her eyes, and turned back to me, putting on an encouraging smile. "There is one thing we can tell you. You're definitely not from around here. Your skin is whiter than the sand underneath the harbour."

I looked down at my hands. She was right- they were much paler than any of the women around me.

"And your eyes!" A girl sitting on my other side spoke up, her eyes shining with excitement. "They're blue! I've never seen anyone with blue eyes before!"

"That's because you never go down to the port," another girl sighed. "Plenty of the sailors have blue eyes. Hey… Maybe she's a sailor, and that's why she knows about fish."

"Most sailors are more bothered about their boats than the fish underneath them. Particularly the sort of sailors we get here." That was the oldest of the women, I guessed, going by the numerous grey and white streaks sweeping through her loose black hair. She was industriously combing it with her fingers, teasing out knots with the patience born of having done the same task innumerable times. The very ends of it trailed on the grounds, collecting dust.

"True. Pirates aren't the type to do a good day's work at the nets, are they, hm?" This woman was swathed head to toe in bright blue silk, her garments embroidered with hundreds upon hundreds of delicate patterns. She hummed a jaunty tune, glancing up at the sky, before she smiled at me and added, "Though there are, of course, exceptions to the rule."

Whatever reaction I had to that was interrupted by the patter of sandaled feet. A new girl skidded to a halt beside Lorna, her arms wrapped tightly around a large white gourd, a smaller, glass jar, full of white gloop, hanging from a short string wrapped around her wrist. She was as dark as the others, probably teenaged, wearing a set of bright scarlet and orange robes which contrasted impressively with the colour of her skin.

"I'm sorry it took so long, Lorna!" she apologised breathlessly, handing both gourd and jar to the woman. "I couldn't find the pitchers, someone must have shifted them."

"It is no great matter," Lorna smiled reassuringly, tugging a cork out of the gourd and offering it to me. "Drink, fish-girl, before you dehydrate completely."

I took the gourd, hesitantly eyeing the darkness inside. Then, over the dust and animal musk in the air, I suddenly caught a hint of a clear, sharp tang.

Water.

Something took over me then, something desperate and animalistic. I grabbed the gourd with both hands, put my mouth to the opening, and upended it, greedily gulping down as much water as I possibly could at once. The cool, fresh liquid overflowed, cascading down my chin and over my chest, but it felt so good, so refreshing, I didn't want to stop. Choking on the overload, I reluctantly stopped drinking long enough to catch some of the water in my palm and splash it over my head.

"I have never seen anyone drink like that," the girl in scarlet commented, her black eyes wide and plainly impressed.

I paused, staring at her, my hand idly playing with the ponytail I'd just discovered at the back of my head. "Obviously you've never been desperate then."

Interesting- my speech sounded somehow different from the other women, though we were speaking the same language. Their speech was crisp and educated, each word enunciated perfectly. My words seemed to be missing consonants in places, the vowels dragged out longer. It sounded almost vulgar next to the ladies' perfect speech.

The girl grinned, her teeth shockingly white in the middle of her midnight face. "I see your point."

Shrugging, I took another long draught from the gourd – much less frenzied this time. The water was wonderful; it filled a hole inside me that I hadn't known was there.

Shading my eyes again, I stared up past the women, past the jettied roofs on the houses lining the street, to an unbelievably blue afternoon sky. As soon as I thought of one thing, it was gone forever, replaced by… something else, something nameless. There was too much there; it was giving me a headache.

The street beyond my little corner of the world was a welcome distraction. Well, to be honest, I barely recognised it as a street – more like a narrow lane, lined on one side with stalls packed tight, and on the other with tents and uncovered pens, stucco and mud brick houses rising to two or three stories high behind them. The stall shelves were packed with goods; I could smell spices, meat- both raw and cooked – and the tang of metal goods, jewelry, pots, knives, and more. Masses of brightly-dressed people wandered along the lane, dogs and children weaving around their legs as they chased after each other, yelling with delight. There was a grey lump a few houses away which might have been the back end of the donkey I'd heard earlier – and as I watched, the braying started up again, clearly audible even over the ruckus of the humanity in the lane.

I was lying in a small alcove off the main street, which explained why no-one had stepped on me yet, at least.

While I'd been focused elsewhere, the women had held a quiet conference. As I shook my head, returning my attention to them, it began to break up, several of the figures on the edge of the group drifting away into the lane.

Lorna the designated spokeswoman turned back to me, her eyebrows cocked in innocent curiosity. "Do you remember having a place to go back to?"

I shook my head, realising as I did so that in order to meet my eyes, Lorna had to tilt her head upwards just slightly. "Why?"

"Because it's getting late, and the port curfew will be active soon," she patiently explained. "After four in the afternoon no-one bar certain city officials may enter or leave the port district. The time is currently three-fifteen – so, forty-five minutes left."

"I see." I nodded slowly, idly tapping my fingers against my forearm. "I don't think so. I don't remember."

"Then you must stay with me." Lorna smiled, clasping her hands. "There are plenty of spare rooms in the old house; you would be spoilt for choice and space. What is more, I have a few friends in low places, who might well see their way towards helping out a girl in need."

"Your clients?" the girl in scarlet interrupted, leaning forward with an interested smile on her lips. "Oh, of course, the fishermen!"

"Sailors, travellers, other vagrants. It's as good a place to start as any." Lorna pushed herself to her feet, bracing her hands against her lower back and pulling a face. Her sleek robes draped over a very pregnant belly. "Come with me, fish girl – we can't keep calling you that, can we? Let's see if my little house is to your liking."

Lorna's house was a three-storeyed mud-brick monster, rising up behind the row of tents which lined the lane on the sunny side. The entrance was set deep into the wall, between a fortune teller and a spice vendor. Lorna pushed her way between the tents, watched by the beady-eyed spice vendor and followed by myself, Auntie Aya and the girl in the scarlet robes.

Inside, it was strangely light. I looked up, and realised that entrance hall stretched all the way up to the roof. A set of stairs climbed the wall to a pair of landings, one for each of the upper floors. There were no solid doors, just delicately embroidered curtains stretching across the arched doorways. A pleasant breeze circled through the entire house, stirring the leaves on the plants that adorned every spare flat surface.

There was a flicker in the back of my mind, one of my silver fish dodging in and out of my consciousness. I blinked, and abruptly registered that Lorna was talking again.

"…my children will be back soon, so I think it's best if we have you settled by then. You don't know how boisterous they can be, really. You have the pick of the top floor rooms. Now, I have to cook, so Damini, will you show her around?"

The girl nodded enthusiastically. As soon as Lorna turned away, she grabbed my arm with a strength I would never have guessed her to be capable of, and towed me towards the staircase, Auntie Aya chuckling wickedly in the background.

"Come on, the bedrooms are up here. Now, while we're at it, the kitchen is that way-" she indicated the doorway through which Lorna had just vanished, and Aya was halfway through- "and that's where we all eat. Lorna does our cooking, so it isn't fantastic, but edible. Sort of. Bathroom is that way-" she pointed towards the back of the house-" out the door and up the other end of the yard, because it's not a flush toilet, if you were expecting one. We've got piped water, but no sewage lines yet, alas."

"I don't really know what I was expecting," I answered, "but this seems pretty good to me."

She smiled back at me, scrambling up the last couple of steps to the first landing. She had an odd way of moving; much less graceful than the older women, her skinny arms and legs flailing randomly as she alternately halted, spun, and lurched forward again.

"I'm Damini daughter of Alala," she told me, patiently waiting for me to catch up. "I board with Lorna too. She's an old friend of my mother's, so I don't have to pay rent." As I made it up to the landing, she waved an arm along the balcony, gesturing at the row of doorways.

"Now, the curtains on the doors are colour-coded for easy recollection. Our storeroom has the green, then the children's bedroom has purple, then mine on the end with the red curtain. There's nothing upstairs though, so you get one of those rooms for now."

I stared past her, up the stairs to the first room. The curtain on the door was a lovely sea-blue, with some sort of design stitched in white onto it.

"It's yours if you want it," Damini said. She waited for me to make the first move. I did, more out of curiosity than anything else.

It was a blank, spartan room. One set of drawers, one narrow bed, and an open window giving a view out across the city, down to an almost perfectly circular bay in which dozens of dark shapes – ships, I realised – sat heavily on the shining blue sea. I shook my head, marvelling at the sheer amount of sails, and leaned on the windowsill, studying the shape of the city.

From Lorna's house, Tusanto sloped downwards quite heavily, spreading across a hillside and down across a small area of flat land before it reached the shore of the bay. There was a massive old wall surrounding part of the city that occupied the flat land, and within that section stood a massive white tower, gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight.

What drew my attention more was the horizon, where blue sky met blue sea far off in the distance, and curved around as far in either direction as I could see.

It sang to me. I felt it almost as a physical pull – one that I hadto obey, not through any outside threat, but because my own consciousness bade me go to it.

Feeling slightly sick, I turned away from the window, and gazed dumbly down at the bed. It was narrow, and the mattress was lumpy, covered only in a couple of thin cotton sheets, but all of a sudden I'd never seen such an appealing sight. I sat down on it, then lay down, stretching out until I was wholly comfortable.

"I take it you like it?" Damini stepped in past the door-curtain, smiling expectantly. I nodded wordlessly, pushing myself upright again. The movement took a lot more effort than I had expected.

"You look tired," Damini commented, continuing across the room to the windowsill. "Your eyes have some of the deepest dark circles underneath them that I've ever seen, and considering I regularly interact with philosophers with more drive to learn than common sense, that's saying something. You look as if you haven't slept for a week."

"I feel like it," I replied, scrubbing the back of my hand over my eyes. "And it hasn't even been half an hour since I woke up."

"Oh, you can't treat unconsciousness as a true sleep," Damini refuted, shaking her head. She leaned out of the window, fiddling with something on the outside wall. "I'm not sure what the difference is, being as I haven't ever studied medicine, but I do know that being knocked unconscious doesn't restore your body's natural energy like true sleep does." She straightened, closing a wooden shutter over half the window opening. "If you want to sleep, I can close these, but the air in here tends to get quite hot so I wouldn't recommend it."

I shook my head, all but collapsing back onto the bed. Suddenly closing my eyes seemed like the best possible course of action, so I did so. "Then don't. The breeze is nice."

"Very well," Damini's voice began to sound distant. "We'll let you wake in your own time. It can't be nice, staying awake when you feel that bad."

It wasn't, so I didn't. I heard Damini's footsteps leave the room, and then, in between fitful sleeps filled with shapeless dreams, not a whole lot else.


I slept for almost an entire day, waking amid the pink glow of a late sunset.

I opened my eyes, and for the longest moment I couldn't remember how I'd ended up there. I stared up the plastered ceiling, shadows growing deeper as the sunlight faded, and it was as though I'd never seen it before.

That terrifying moment passed, however. Memory came flooding back – what little of it I had. I remembered Lorna, and Damini, the darkness before I'd opened my eyes, and the feeling of the cobblestones underneath my back as I'd lain in the street outside. Regarding how I'd come to be there, or what I'd been doing before then… there was nothing.

Today, there was a soft mattress and cool sheets underneath me. "Any improvement is a good thing, right?" I mumbled to myself, propping myself up on my elbows and looking around the room. It looked much the same as it had when I'd arrived, although there was a stack of clothes sitting on the low table beside my bed.

There was a note on top of the stack. I sat up, grabbing it and studying the neat handwriting.

I noticed your clothes have seen better days, so if you would prefer to, you may wear these. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything of better quality that would fit you, but I hope these will suffice for now.

-Lorna

I looked down at myself. Currently I was wearing a pair of torn, stained, dusty shorts, a loose blue jacket and a baggy pink t-shirt, also in a dire condition. I shrugged out of the jacket, and found a huge, charred hole torn through the back of it. Investigation revealed a similar, though smaller, hole through the back of my shirt, in about the same place. Idly wondering what had made it, I pulled the t-shirt off as well, and pulled the pile of clothes closer.

The first thing I picked up turned out to be a pair of shorts, slightly tighter than the ones I was wearing, and in much better shape. It was followed by a loose wraparound jacket, bright green and heavily embroidered, which almost reached my knees when I put it on. Both felt a lot lighter than the clothes I'd discarded.

Standing, I gathered my old clothes and put them on the table, suddenly feeling more awake and alert. The sunset had all but completely faded, so I crossed to the window, and looked out.

It was a cloudy evening, though the night sky and a few early stars could still be seen through the odd gap in the clouds. Down in the city, thousands of lights shone, and out on the harbour, the ships at anchor were lighting up as the crews lit their own lamps. Several smaller boats sailed steadily back to their berths from the harbour mouth – fishing boats, my brain supplied, from where I didn't know.

The western horizon was still glowing, pink and pale purple-grey. I watched the last flush of gold disappear, feeling a stab of urgency run through my veins. That was where I suddenly wanted to be; out there with the sunset, on the other side of the horizon.

There was a sudden noise behind me. I started nervously, pulling my head back inside the room and whirling to face the intruder.

It was just the girl, Damini, standing there and smiling a welcoming smile.

"I thought I heard noises, so I came up to check," she explained, giving a little embarrassed shrug. "It's good to see you're up. You must have been exhausted."

"I was," I said, relaxing somewhat. Damini nodded, walking over to the table and picking up my old clothes. A scrap of blue cloth fluttered to the floor, its last tenuous tie to the rest of my jacket broken.

"I'm thinking these are most likely beyond help," Damini said, straight-faced. She looked at me, earnestly meeting my gaze – and then burst into a fit of giggles. I grinned, and couldn't hold back a chuckle or two myself.

"I mean, Hala might be able to repair them, if that's what you want, but personally I doubt it," Damini continued as her giggles subsided, still grinning. "Do you want to keep them?"

I lazily shook my head. "Not particularly. These new clothes feel much better. Smell better too, come to think of it."

"Good. I know just the place to put them – the incinerator." Damini continued across the room to stand beside me at the window. "The weather has cooled down nicely out there. Earlier it was stinking hot. Were you cool enough up here?"

"I don't know," I shrugged, leaning back against the window frame. "I slept well enough, or at least I feel like I did."

"True," Damini smiled, covering her mouth with her sleeve, her black eyes glittering with good humour. "No luck with remembering anything more?"

I shook my head again, the smile on my lips fading as I thought. "No, no new memories. Not yet, anyway."

Damini hummed sympathetically, fiddling with the catch on the second shutter. "No memories, not even a name? That must be confusing." She paused for a moment, frowning imperceptibly at the latch. "Although… we could give you a new name, if you wanted? Names are important. In all the stories they're what make you what you are."

"Makes sense, I guess." I shrugged, at a loss for what to do. "Maybe, if you think it'd be a good idea."

"Let's just say I don't think it'd be a bad idea, shall we?" Damini smiled up at me, pushing the second shutter open to let in more of the cool night air. "Besides which, you need a better name than 'fish-girl', right?"

"Right," I laughed, a little shakily. "Then how should I choose one?"

Damini thought for a moment. "I know a fair few names. I could run through my list, and if you hear one you like the sound of, tell me."

"Sounds good." I nodded, watching a pair of piglets romp around a pen in the street below. Night hadn't made the street market any less popular – if anything, there were more people down there now than there had been in the sun yesterday.

"Well… Shula, Mohali, Mara and Kirmi are some of my favourites," Damini began, looking pensive. "Kumari, Liron and Lysandra too, and Gale." She looked up at me as if to ask what I thought. I didn't have to think, I just shook my head.

"No? Arethusa, Asenka, Aki? Kaziki, Lonnai?"

With each new word, I began to feel more and more as if this had been a mistake. Damini listed a dozen, two dozen more names, and none felt right to me.

Then she said something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

"What about Loki?"

I stared down at the lamps in the street, hardly daring to breathe. Memories flickered in the back of my mind, stirred up by that one word. They faded rapidly, but I stubbornly held onto the word, unwilling to let it just go back into obscurity. "Loki," I whispered, and something about it sank right down into my bones.

"Loki?" Damini asked, a small, hopeful smile on her lips. I blinked, and looked back at her.

"It feels like it fits." I said, shrugging. "I don't know how or why, but it fits."

"Then that is what we shall call you," Damini said decisively, clapping her hands in delight. "Loki!"


I stayed in the big house in Tusanto for nearly a week. It took me almost as long to get used to the routine Lorna kept.

The house played host to six people: Damini, Lorna herself, Auntie Aya, Aya's husband, and Lorna's two daughters. Truly it was seven, but I was told Lorna's own husband was out on a fishing boat somewhere, and I never met him.

Damini became my near-constant companion during those days. I learned more about her own past than I did mine. She led me back and forth across the city, down to the port, up to the ancient white palace where, she said, Tusanto's kings had once lived, and further afield, to the great College on the outskirts of the city. Carolinge was an old kingdom, and Damini seemed to know anything I could have wanted to know about it.

It was always what was beyond the horizon which demanded my attention the most, though. Damini smiled when I told her this, and spent an afternoon teaching me about the wider world.

Large and small details alike burned themselves into my memories – the string of bright flags across the porch of what Damini told me was a temple, the smells of salt and smoke and assorted humanity hanging heavy in the air, the bright azure hue of the sky and the wispy, translucent clouds within it. Carolinge's heat and ever-present dust coloured my recollections, with the splendid gold and purple hues of the sun setting over the waves as a permanent reminder of what I seemed to be missing.

I still couldn't remember anything from before my arrival in the street outside Lorna's house. And these days, the little fish of my memories came less and less.

On the seventh day, Damini dragged me down to the port a second time. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky, and the sun beat down hotter than any day I'd experienced yet. I followed without complaint, though sunburn on my face and forearms reminded me of just what tended to happen on days like this.

"Why the rush?" I asked when Damini's pace sped up from a brisk walk to a near-run. "It's just on noon, and we've got all afternoon."

"I heard a rumour that one of the Marines' Admirals is due to arrive sometime around one o'clock," she explained, flashing me an impish grin and looking away almost as quickly. "I wanted to see him arrive, and I thought you might like to see him as well."

"Which one?" I asked, my curiosity piqued.

"Aokiji," Damini supplied. "The blue pheasant, in the ancient language I told you about, Yamato. You know, I never understood why the World Government adopted Yamato for formalities, when their main language was so much different. Even seven hundred years ago, Mariejois was already dominant amongst the World Government member-states."

I shrugged, my way of letting her know I hadn't understood a word of what she'd said. Damini was a College student, and often came out with bits and pieces of esoteric information that confused any layman, even one not burdened with my sort of amnesia.

"I'm sorry," Damini said, grimacing. "I couldn't help it. Just ignore it, it doesn't have anything to do with this. What was I saying?"

"Something about Aokiji," I supplied. "All I know about the Admirals is that there are three of them, and they're named after animals."

"Splendid," Damini grinned, her good humour restored. "Aokiji, Akainu, Kizaru. Blue pheasant, red dog, yellow monkey. Rather strange, as titles go. I guess you could call them the Marines' highest operatives, as the Fleet Admiral, their immediate superior, only rarely leaves Marineford headquarters. They're also the ones who deal with those who violate the Tenryuubito Laws – in person."

Damini had told me about the Tenryuubito Laws a few days ago, during a morning where we had seen an entire street full of people prostrate themselves before a lone woman wearing a glass dome on her head. It had seemed silly to me, until Damini had dragged me away down an alley, almost gibbering with fear. There had been an escort of Marines with the Tenryuubito, lingering a few paces behind her. It had been the woman's own force of personality, almost cultlike, which forced the people in the crowd to their knees.

"Anything else?" I said, knowing there was. There always was, with Damini.

"Well there is, actually." And she stopped, and looked up at me. "Have I told you about Devil Fruits yet?"

"About what?" I frowned, turning to gaze back at her. It was a familiar term, but only as far as I might have heard it on the street somewhere.

She smiled, covering her mouth with the sleeve of her scarlet robes. "I see I haven't. It's an unpardonable oversight, and I shall rectify that herewith."

"Right. So what are they?" I said as we passed under the gates to the port district, surrounded on all sides by a steady stream of people, both Carolingen and foreigners.

The district itself was just as full of activity, people packing the streets as they hurried between the workshops and the docks. The buildings, tightly-packed, intersected by dozens of tiny alleyways, were connected by walkways and cables ties between the upper floors, with flags, clothes being washed, and even birdcages hanging from these flimsy supports. As much of the district was built on stilts in the shallows of the harbour as on dry land. In the wooden streets above the water, the faint lapping of waves against the supports could be heard underneath the noise of people and the seagulls wheeling in the sky above.

Like everywhere else in the city, small stalls lined the streets, selling all manner of wares; down here, the predominant theme was maritime bits and pieces, and seafood. Damini bought me a fried oyster, almost as big as my hand, which kept me occupied for the next few minutes while she talked.

"Devil Fruits are specific fruits, grown on rare trees in half a dozen islands the world over, which, when eaten, give the consumer certain almost magical powers, but at the cost of never being able to swim again. Water hates the Devil Fruits, you see. There's something in it, particularly in seawater, which seals their powers. Still, some of the powers the Fruits give are quite incredible."

"Like what?" I asked through a mouthful of my oyster. Damini grimaced at that, and averted her eyes.

"Example time, then." She tipped her head back, gazing pensively at the sky. "Aokiji has the Hie-Hie no Mi-"

"The what?" I interrupted, sure I hadn't heard that correctly. Damini grinned, still watching the sky.

"The Hie-Hie no Mi. Devil Fruits' names are strange – they always come from the ancient language rather than our modern one. I was never good at languages, but 'Hie' means something like 'ice' in the ancient language, and 'no Mi' translates loosely to 'the fruit of'. So, the Hie-Hie no Mi, is 'the fruit of ice'. It gives Admiral Aokiji the power to create, manipulate, and physically become ice. We class it as a Logia, an elemental-type power. Of the three classes, Logias are the rarest, and some of the most flashy and powerful. I believe the other Admirals also have Logia powers."

"Classes?" I barely had to prompt Damini on this; she had plenty of information to relay to me.

"Three classes, one with two sub-classes. Logia powers, then Zoan powers, which allow their user to transform wholly or partly into an animal. The Zoan class also has two sub-classes: Ancient Zoans, which are extinct animals, and Mythical Zoans, which are animals that only ever existed in myth. Normal Zoans are relatively common as Devil Fruits go; Ancient Zoans are almost as rare as Logias, and Mythical Zoans are the absolute rarest.

"Then you have the Paramecia class, which basically comprises of every power left over from the other two. They're the most common, and also the most varied." She skirted the base of a huge stone tower, walking purposefully into a shadowed alley at the base of it, and clambering nimbly up a pile of rubbish and onto a ledge cut into the tower. "Okay, up here, Loki. Follow me to the best views in Tusanto."

I pulled myself up after her, listening to her continuing chatter.

"For a Paramecia example, Whitebeard's Fruit is probably the best. He has the Gura-Gura no Mi. 'Gura' is the sound of earthquakes in the ancient language, so correspondingly the Gura-Gura no Mi allows him to create earthquakes. It's theoretically powerful enough to destroy the worlds, which is a distinction I've never seen used for any other Devil Fruit before, even some of the most powerful Logias." She laughed, and turned back to me, her expression suddenly seeing older and wiser than I'd given her credit for. "Then again, that's how the world works, isn't it?"

The ledge widened at the end, leading into an internal corridor. Damini led me along it, grinning mischievously now her moment of wisdom had passed. "Anyway, the reason I brought you up here is because it's Aokiji, not Kizaru or Akainu, who is arriving here today. The other two travel on warships, but Aokiji occasionally turns up on his own. If there was one Devil Fruit I'd consider eating, it'd be the Hie-Hie no Mi. It's like the sea doesn't even exist for him."

"What do you mean?" The corridor turned into a spiralling staircase, ceiling so low I had to avoid knocking my head on it. The back of Damini's trailing scarlet robes disappeared up the steps in front of me.

"Well, you'll see when we get where we're going. This is one of the oldest buildings in Tusanto, the king watchtower. Once upon a time it was the Guardian hub, but these days it's officially disused. Everyone and their mother knows at least half a dozen different ways to get into it though, so no-one cares if you flout the law a little bit." Giggling to herself, Damini pushed open a wooden door at the top of the staircase, and a warm breeze raced into the tower. She led the way out onto a broad walkway, fenced with battlements, which looked out above the roofs of the surrounding buildings.

I followed her along the walkway, catching glimpses of the harbour between the taller buildings in the port. The water itself wasn't very far away, perhaps half a dozen blocks. The seagulls screaming in the air above the city couldn't quite drown out the murmur of the crowds below.

At the end of the walkway, there was another set of stairs, leading up and around the outside of the tower. Damini raced up to the landing, turning to wait expectantly for me. I was reminded of the first time she'd led me into Lorna's house; she'd done exactly the same thing there.

"Come on, there's only a few stairways left. And up the top, you can see everything."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," I reassured her, starting up the steps. Climbing stairs was nothing new to me; it was just that I'd never climbed so many in one go.

She was right though, I realised as I arrived at the top of the stairs. Damini leaned over the battlements, unable to go any higher. A cool sea breeze tugged at her robes, setting the loose ends aflutter. She blazed in the sunlight, her skin and hair inky black against the bright blues of the sea and sky, her robes almost glowing shades of red and orange.

The watchtower must have been the highest point for miles around. Tusanto sat in the middle of a vast bowl, the harbour occupying the lower half while the city itself sprawled over the flat land behind the port, reaching up onto the surrounding hills. The blocky white Palace, the home of Carolinge's Parliament, sat on the nearest hillside a couple of miles to the south, while the College, made of the same white stone, occupied a lower hill on the northern side of the harbour. The gap which led from harbour to open ocean gleamed, pale with more than just reflected sunlight.

"Look," Damini breathed, nodding towards the harbour entrance. "I think that's it."

"What is it?" I asked, frowning, unable to figure out what the growing white mass was. Damini shook her head, absorbed in the spectacle.

"Ice," she murmured. "It's ice. Aokiji can turn the surface of the ocean to ice for a short while."

I watched in silence as the ice spread across the water, a pale finger stretching towards the Marines' dock on the southern side of the district. There was a dark shape, barely large enough to be seen at this distance, moving slowly across the surface of the frozen waves.

"They say he has a bicycle that he rides across the ocean," Damini said softly, grinning in open awe. "Light and molten rock are all well and good, but he's the only Devil Fruit user I've heard of who can navigate the world's oceans without the use of a ship."

"Wow," I agreed, simply, but profoundly. That sort of freedom – well… I wanted it.

A faint crack split the air, fading rapidly but soon followed by another one. Then more; the ice was breaking up behind the admiral. But he'd reached the safety of the dock by now, and I lost sight of him in amongst the Marine vessels berthed there.

"That's what I wanted to see," Damini said, leaning on the battlements with a satisfied look in her charcoal eyes. "I think I was ten, the last time an Admiral ventured all the way out here. That would have been six, close to seven years ago now. When they come to the New World, they usually stay near Chaeronea or their G1 base."

"Then you're… sixteen?" I said lightly, latching onto the only fact I understood in that sentence. Damini shot me a coy look.

"Closer to seventeen, actually. By rights I should still have a year of study left up at the College, but I skipped a grade a few years back. So I'm free as a bird now!" Her mood dropped, as quickly as it had risen. "Only thing is, now I have no idea what to do with it."

"Well, what do you want to do with it?" I said, drifting back to the stairs. Damini followed me, frowning faintly.

"Honestly? I don't know. My options are either to go back to my family, submit to my father's demands to find a husband, or to stay here and carry on in the College. I'd hate being an ordinary housewife, but becoming a professor or a politician doesn't appeal to me either. I studied meteorology and geography; political science just bores me." She paused at the top of the stairs, and I stopped halfway down, turning to look at her. There was something her voice I recognised, which in itself was a rare enough occurrence that it was worth noting.

She feels trapped, I realised. There's something she feels is out there for her, just over the horizon.

"It's just... I'm sure there's more! I want to travel, go around the world. See all sorts of new things. Here in Carolinge, we're a summer island. I've never seen snow, never seen ice before today. Even rain is rare. If it weren't for the aquifers, half of the island would be an inhospitable desert." She shrugged helplessly, gazing out across the water with longing in her black eyes. "I just want to start walking someday, and never stop."

"You wouldn't go far," I began, and she looked sharply at me, lips immediately forming an objection. "Water all around," I clarified hurriedly, gesturing loosely towards the ocean. "Can't walk on water."

She stared at me for a long moment, long enough that I wondered whether I was forgiven or not. At last, though, she smiled. "True enough. If that's your sense of humour, I think it might take me a while to get used to it."

I sighed, glancing up at the deepest reaches of the sky. "It was nothing, really – I just said it without thinking, before I realised you might take it differently. I'm sorry."

"No need to be," she said graciously, grinning her impish grin. "You're right, after all. Although there is another reason, other than the one you just mentioned."

"There is?" I waited as she hurried down the steps, then feel into step beside her. She nodded furiously, eyes wide and earnest.

"Pirates. They're everywhere, out on the ocean. Mostly you're safe if you're on land, because the major islands are all part of someone's territory and there's sort of an unspoken code among pirates that you don't attack other people's territory. Especially not if they're more powerful than you are. Out on the ocean though, everything is fair game."

"Are pirates that much of a problem?" I wondered why there were only three Admirals if that was the case.

"Here in the New World they can be." Damini smiled. "The four Blues and the first half of the Grand Line are more dominated by the World Government, but here, it's every man for himself. Not many pirate crews survive for long out here, but the ones that do tend to be very strong. I mentioned Whitebeard earlier? He is the strongest pirate in the world, and one of the oldest. He has claimed Carolinge as his territory, which is actually more of a deterrent to lesser pirates than the World Government."

Despite her harsh words, Damini was grinning. "You don't look as though you disapprove of that much," I commented, feeling a faint smile drift across my lips.

She ducked her head, pressing the cuff of her robe over her face to hide the smile on her lips. "Pirates fascinate me. Whitebeard is one of the better class of pirates, from what I hear told – the ones who are more concerned with adventure and strength than treasure and killing. He's been a major power in the New World for close to forty years, which is incredible, no matter what you think of the man." She looked around furtively, seeming pleased that we were alone. "Please don't tell anyone I said that, though. Most people think that pirates are all scumbags, with no exceptions. I would be ridiculed for admiring Whitebeard. It is a relief to finally be able to tell someone without fear of being punished for it."

"Lorna being a lawyer, would she have punished you?"

Damini stopped smiling. "Yes, and I would have understood had she done so. She sees a lot of the damage pirates do, even when they aren't looting and pillaging defenceless villages. But you, you have a completely open mind now, because you don't have the memories telling you what to think. What is it like?"

I shrugged. "To be honest, I feel completely blank. I can't even remember what it's like to feel some emotions, though I know what they're called and what they should feel like. I'm noticing small things, and I feel like I shouldn't bother with remembering them, but I do anyway. It feels like I'm trying to fill my head up with things- anything I can- because it's scary when it's totally empty like it was when I first woke up. I can't not think about anything."

"Your mind sounds busy," Damini commented, resting her hands in her lap and playing absently with the hem of her robe. "How do you feel about it?"

"Blank, again. Like I just don't care." I gave a frustrated sigh, and tipped my head back, gazing up into the darkening sky. The sun had slid further earthwards in the time that we'd been standing out on the jetty, and the day was now closer to evening than afternoon.

I turned away from the sea, my feet slowly taking me back towards the entrance to the tower stairwell. Damini followed, uncharacteristically quiet.

Sunlight reflected twice, once off the waves in the harbour and once in the tower windows. Past the grime and dust coating the glass, the panorama of the docklands, and past that, the sea, stretched from the bluff on which the palace sat to the hills where, somewhere, Lorna's house was. There was a dark shape blotting out the part of the reflection directly behind me. I stepped back once, and the shadow resolved into a pair of figures. I recognised Damini, a short, slim figure swathed in red and orange, but the tall blonde woman beside her I had never seen before.

A strange thing happened then. Instinctually, perhaps, I looked into the blonde woman's eyes. Unblinking, she stared back at me, breathing calmly. Her green jacket fluttered in the breeze, lending a semblance of life and movement to the delicate birds embroidered on her sleeves.

Her eyes widened at the same time as my own did. She was me.

She- I was tall; Damini's eyes would have been about level with my collarbones. My hair- rich shades of sunstreaked gold and wheat- just brushed the tops of my shoulders in its ponytail. Shorter locks hung loose around my face, framing a broad, high forehead and big, slanted eyes. A slightly square, solid jaw meant I wasn't, and would never be elegant like so many of the Carolingen women I'd seen, while strong cheekbones and heavy eyelids gave me a sharp, piercing gaze. My eyes were slanted, narrower and much more angular than Damini's, and though I couldn't tell their exact colour, they looked like they might have been blue.

I looked down at myself; saw broad shoulders and strong limbs, coupled with a natural fighter's stance- feet planted solidly, a little over shoulder-width apart, arms loosely held at my sides. The Carolingen robes swathing my figure fluttered in the breeze, the afternoon sunlight setting the bronze edging ablaze.

Cocking my head to the side a little, I studied how my reflection mimicked the movements, focusing and memorising each and every feature. This is me, I thought, and at last I had a face to put to the name – Loki.

Loki meant this blonde hair, these slanted blue eyes, and a sharp, scrutinising gaze, letting no small detail past without being inspected, judged, and remembered.

I wouldn't forget again.


Word Count: 8507

That scene with Aokiji is one that never made it into the first version despite the fact that it was one of the first scenes I dreamed up for this fic. :| Lord knows why I rejected it back in 2010 (can't believe it was already that long ago I started…)

Essentially this is the new version of old chapters 1 and 2. Next chapter, we get into the adventure itself (which is also going to be significantly different from the original version, but on the bright side the chapter after that is a whole different kettle of fish.

Also, I'd like to acknowledge a friend of mine from deviantArt, Eriin84, who once told me something invaluable about fish. That is all. *seriousface*