My days on the ship turned out to be far busier than I had expected. Whilst my official capacity on board was as a magician, in reality the majority of my time was spent on small tasks to keep everything running smoothly. Not being experienced in sailing, these were usually along the lines of helping in the galley to prepare food, making minor repairs or just keeping the whole place clean. Initially I did try to speed some of these jobs along with magic but quickly found that it was not just the captain who was sceptical of what I do. For the sake of harmony I decided to do as much manually as possible. In addition to the general tasks that needed to be done, my evenings were spent with Portia, going over the research she had gathered in preparation for our landing.
Julian found himself even busier. Between his duties as a doctor, which to him not only included the treating of the minor injuries of the crew but also ensuring that the ship in general was safe, and his day to day tasks up in the rigging we would only manage to glimpse each other from afar during the day.
It was lovely to watch. His movements, as he would climb up the ropes to whichever fix or maintenance needed to be done, were natural and practiced. When he was working on deck, I was able to see him, see the way his brow furrowed as he concentrated. Soon I started to notice his little habits, how he would circle his thumb and index finger together when he was examining something, how his leg would bounce slightly when he was thinking.
Despite only rarely being out of each others sight for more than an hour or so, we were both so busy with our respective jobs that when we would finally collapse into bed at night it felt like we hadn't seen each other in days. Those nights, too tired to even talk we would curl up into each other and drop into sleep like a rock into a pond.
We had been at sea for three weeks when the storm came.
It came at night, after Julian and I had gone to sleep, exhausted from the day. A sound like a landslide, seemingly coming on in only an instant. My heart hammered in my chest, and I looked at Julian. There was a concern in his eyes and I don't know if he had the same feeling as I did, or if he was just reflecting my own worry back at me. Something felt wrong in the air and I could feel the silent presence of the Tower in the back of my head. The moment stretched out as we stared at each other, broken once we heard feet storming past our door up to the deck. Snapped back to reality, there was only one thing to do, magical or not this was a nasty storm and that meant we needed to help.
Julian didn't bother to get fully dressed, only pulling on his heavy coat over his bed cloths and sliding bare feet into his boots before running out of the door. I took my lead from him and did the same, pausing for a second as I followed him out. Without fully knowing why, I slipped my card pouch into my inner breast pocket.
Out on the deck, I wasn't able to immediately process what I was seeing. Instead of just the rain I was expecting, there was also what looked like large white marbles striking the wood floor and bouncing up. One struck me painfully on the cheek the moment I stepped out into the pandemonium, cold and hard, and I realised that I was looking at a storm of hail stones.
"Never seen hail before?" Julian shouted over the din of weather and other sailors, he was standing at a crate and I hurried to help him carry it to where another two crew members were relaying things below deck.
"I have!" I shouted back. The deck was flooded with a bright flash from above and less than a second later a deafening crash of thunder followed. "Just nothing like this."
We passed the crate to the crew members, and we made a beeline for a cluster of barrels. The ship hit a wave and the deck tilted sharply, making me stumble. Julian grabbed my arm to steady me and I found my footing again. A rush of wind seemed to ease the hail for just a moment, replacing it with a torrential rain that seemed to be coming in horizontally.
I could barely see through the rain and the wind bit into my throat making it difficult to breath. All I could do was focus on the task at hand. Moving quickly, first with the barrels, then with ropes to secure what couldn't be moved. The rain and hail came in alternating waves. In the confusion of wind and flashes of lightning I caught glimpses of Portia, arms full of lanterns to take safely inside; sure footed Mazelinka, checking the lifeboats; Captain Barnum, coordinating his crew on their tasks. All the time I tried to keep my eyes on Julian, he was serious yes, his jaw set, but he seemed calm and so I was able to keep myself from panicking at the maelstrom that seemed to be occurring all around us.
A sharp rip came from high above us, only barely audible over the wind, and Julian froze. He all but dropped his end of the barrel we were carrying as he peered up to where the noise came from. My heart stopped when I saw his reaction to what he saw.
"What's happened?" I asked.
"The sail," He took a coil of rope and slung it across himself, "something come undone, and the sail's weak from the storm, it's starting to rip."
He ran off towards the netting that would take him up towards the rigging.
"Where are you going?" I shouted, panicked. He stopped reluctantly.
"I need to go up there and secure it, or we'll lose the sail."
"You can't go up there. There's lightning and the masts are the tallest things for miles. You'll be fried."
"I don't have time for this right now, Livi!"
"It's not safe."
"No! It's not! But if it doesn't happen we lose the sail, or worse. If the sail or ropes fall someone will get hurt, or worse. So please let me do my job."
"For the love of peace, Julian!" I shouted in frustration, "For once will you please not try to martyr yourself."
Julian froze, his face hardening. He took a step closer to me.
"I'm not being a martyr, I'm being a doctor," he snapped. There was venom in his voice that startled me, "My job is to safeguard every life on this ship any way I can and right now that is by securing that sail. Because I'm the one who sees it needs done. And I'm the one who knows how."
"Tell me how," I said, grabbing his arm to stop him running off, "I can use magic-"
"And waste precious seconds explaining to you something I already know how to do, just so you can feel like you've saved me from myself."
"But-"
"No!" He jerked his arm out of my grip and took a step back, "No buts. I have never let you down. So why do you insist on acting like I do? I need you, just once, to actually trust me."
"I do trust you," my voice was small, but somehow he still heard over the roaring wind and pelting hail. For a moment I could see, in the slightest softening of his expression, the hurt his hardness was hiding.
"I don't think that's true."
He turned to walk away, but before he had made it five steps there was an earsplitting rip. The next few moments became a confusing blur. The rope had come fully loose and taken a large piece of the sail with it. Vaguely I heard my name shouted as a blur of rigging and fabric swung down towards me. There was no time to react before it smashed into me, too sudden and surprising to hurt, and I fell back. The back of my legs hit into the wooden rail at the edge of the ship but the momentum of the rope kept on and so over the edge I went.
Wildly, blindly, I threw out my hands for some kind of stability and by some miracle caught something. Or, as I realised, something caught me. A hand gripped around my forearm as I hung off the side and, peering up through the rain, hail, and blood that was dripping down from where the rope hit my forehead I saw Julian leaning over the rail. His face was strained with effort as he tried to hold on to me. My feet kicked for purchase on the hull but couldn't find any grip on the rain soaked wood. My panicked movements worked against me and I slipped down, Julian's grip ending up around my wrist, then down to just my hand.
It was the storm. Our skin was too wet, Julian's grip wouldn't last. Wind howled in my ears and whipped my hair and clothes around me. With my free hand I tried to reach up towards him as he strained to keep his grip. He was leaning dangerously far over the edge and, in the midst of the chaos I felt a wave of calm come over me. Julian, with one last burst of effort, attempted to haul me back on board but as he moved my fingers slipped through his.
With only a second to form a plan as I plunged towards the water, I did the first thing that came to me. I focused my magic on trying to cushion myself with a sphere of warm air. This sphere shattered almost immediately, but it did seem to serve to break my fall just enough that my bones didn't shatter on impact. Even with this cushioning the water was still hard as a rock on impact, the back of my head hitting with a dizzying pain and giving me just a few moments to find the closest floating debris to hold on to before the confusion faded into darkness.
A/N: Hope you've enjoyed chapter two! I'm having lots of fun writing it. I would love to hear from anyone who's liking it. ~TrainingPea