CHAPTER 6

Just Before Being Something

Makhai was at the helm still, making sure the ship stayed on track. Maija sat at the top of the left most sail's mast, legs crossed, looking up into the sky. From a distant viewer's point of view, it would have looked as if she was floating along the top of a thick blanket of dormant storm clouds, impossible to notice at any long distance.

Even in the darkness of night, the sky still was painted with a purple glow, now more clear during the night than during the day. Stars sparkled and flickered, their light drowned out by the sunlight reflecting off two moons. One much larger, brighter. The other dimmer, a sickly green in color and half destroyed, pieces floating off into space, seemingly frozen in time. She had seen those moons before, many many many times before. But there had been a time, a moment in her memory so memorable Maija could recall it with perfect clarity, that she had looked up upon those moons for the first time.

Maija was nineteen years old. At least, she guessed she was nineteen. There was only so long someone could count for. Counting the years. The days. The hours. There had been no good way of keeping time in this world, no devices to make it easier to calculate. And even if she had one, Maija had been given no starting point to guess.

She was able to close her eyes now and look back at most every moment in her memory. Maija could remember it in nearly perfect detail. Now feeling like an eternity ago, she could remember first equipping a similar grappling hook to the one that clung to her now. Remembered the coldness of its metal, the mustiness of the room it had sat in. Could even still feel the phantom of the cut across her palm she had received on her way out even though it had long since healed.

Her first ship, the heat of the day beating down at her as she slaved on, gathering resources on an island she couldn't remember. The rusted metal of the shipyard she used, very little directions for its operation.

The first ship she salvaged from. A small wooden one, not too old. The heat still every present, sand and dust eroding and tearing at the old metal. She tore herself into the ship's engines and found a compressor. Maija had earned five earth pigments from that piece.

When she had finally found Makhai. The look on his face when they locked eyes. Her broken down and afraid, him standing with purpose, a loving, caring expression in his eyes. Then he touched her, helped her. Gave her food, water, shelter. A ship a purpose for herself. A reason to live. A reason to keep going. Not just for herself but for someone else. For him and for her.

But there was a darkness so thick no light could break through it. A darkness no other person had lurking in their mind. A moment and series of moments that every single person should be able to remember that Maija could not no matter how hard she tried. Maija could not remember anything before.

There was a moment that Maija existed, and she could recall it perfectly. And then there was another moment, just barely prior to the last. A moment that Maija did not exist in. She was nothing just before being something. Someone.

She could not remember a family. Being a part of one. Maija had no parents that she could remember. No siblings. Brothers. Sisters. No friends. No family. No matter how hard she concentrated, how hard she fought back the blankness, she could remember nothing.

Maija was a nobody that came from no one and deserved so much less than she had been given. But she had been given such an innate sense of survival back then that she never questioned it and never thought about it. Everything was about survival. The next step forward, the best action to take in any situation that would keep her alive and going for as long as she could take herself was the only thing on her mind constantly.

Makhai had been the only one capable of bringing her out of a very dark place where a sense of survival, self-preservation would drive her to harming herself more than not. Maija had gone days at times without sleep for fear that she would not make it through the night. He cared for her when no one else would. Someone with no past, no connection to the world, he taught and instructed. He promised to her that he would do his part to take care of her, to alleviate at least some of the driving urge to keep living even though it wasn't always necessary.

For a moment, she had lost him. Maija had believed with everything she could, that Kaius had been toying with her saying that Makhai had survived but somehow, he had been telling the truth. But for that moment, she could feel that sense seep back from the depths of her mind like an itch. A voice in her head urging her forwards. On and on and on and on and on.

Wake up. Wake up. Survive. Survive. Survive. Survive at all costs. Your life is more important than anything else. More important than…

…theirs.

It was suicide to run back to New Unity. It was stupid to trust Lidia and Luke and go to Cliffside. But running away from it all would get her killed. And it will get Makhai killed. They could not survive through it. They needed something else. A plan. They not only needed to escape New Unity but destroy them. Then Lidia and Luke- Cliffside- would finally leave them alone. Only then would they have peace.

To be alive in each passing moment would not be enough. Maija needed to guarantee her survival.