--/Review Thank you's/--
Xirleb70: Thank you! Go me! yay! lol
Bea: I'm continuing so review! :)
ladyknight: lol, do you want to know what I did on my cruise, I worked on this story! I'm obsessed! Ahhhhh!
Hyacinth: Thanks for putting up with my computers oddites....And I do tend to call Naiya Lia, I realized that halfway through, I thought I'd fixed all of them Thanx!
Lady Mage Dragoness: You have a really cute pen name, and I wrote more! yay!
demented-dreamer : Sorry, Naiya's fourteen/fifteen she doesn't quite know because she has no parents to tell her :( ]
Mae: Yay! you like! you like!
Lots of Reviewers, Thank you, Thank you. And I'm almost done with my other big ficcie *sniff sniff* So I'll have more time to work on this one. I wrote six chappies while I was on vacation (aren't I sick?) so I'll update as soon as my poor overworked Beta reader (Hyacinth) can correct my mistakes heehehe, Review!
Chapter 3: Storm
I wrote this chappie on the way to Florida. I had fun with it. I think the Naiya/Coven relationship is going a little fast, and there isn't a lot in this chappie, but you tell me. I think you'll all Like this chappie so Review!
Sailors are very particular about names. They always have to mean something. Most sailors get assigned nicknames. They come onto ships at the age of fifteen and there name doesn't mean anything, so they get assigned new ones.
Naiya had grown up on the sea so her name was more specific; she was guessing Coven had been born in the sea as well, to receive such a bold name as god.
"Naiya, wake up, he's in a bad mood today." Coven said, leaning right over her 'bed'. Naiya nodded and rolled over. Pulling on a halfway lean shirt she and Coven walked up to the deck.
Coven was right; the captain was in a horrible mood. He had gotten drunk last night and was currently blaming his poor health on the pairs cooking. The sailors around them were trying hard not to laugh. Coven and Naiya both wore identical smirks and were leaning casually against the side of the boat as he lectured them. Naiya was smirking because the 'most diligent captain' had left the wheel and the boat was heading for the rocks.
Naiya knew that at the last minute she could grab the wheel and steer them to safety, as could any of the other sailors on board. She looked at Coven who winked and made a rude gesture at the captain. The boat was five feet from the rocks. Naiya grabbed the wheel and jerked the boat away from the rock and sent the captain flying over the edge.
She grinned as sailors started yelling 'Man over board' and Coven dived in to rescue him. Naiya was grinning as she steered the boat further out to sea.
Coven and the captain were hauled onto the boat and the captain immediately stomped off to his room.
"You just had to save him right? Your inner morals compelled you to rescue the captain who can't swim." She said bluntly.
"I'm a sailor, I haven't got morals." He smirked. "And I only save him because I wanted to swim. And how do you know if he can swim?" He asked cockily.
"He sunk," Naiya said, laughing.
"And you don't?"
"I can swim!' She protested.
"Prove it." He said as he tossed her overboard. She grabbed his arm and hauled him into the water with her.
"Hey!" He yelled as he popped up from underneath the water,
"See?" She said as she swam circles around him. "I can swim." She said before feeling the water currents under her. By his expression Coven felt it to.
"Boss, get in here!" He yelled. One of the bigger sailors hopped into the water with them. He got a confused expression on his face as he felt it too. "What is that?" Coven asked him.
"Whirlpool maybe." Boss said confused.
"No it's not." Naiya said. "Hurricane." Coven's mouth dropped.
"You sure." He asked her with the usual fifteen-year-old arrogance.
"Positive, we got into one a few years back, I was in the water for a day. I know what it feels like.
"She's probably right." Boss said. "Back on th' boat, we have to get out of these rocks, there isn't a port safe from a hurricane till Pirate's Swoop." He said. The two teenagers nodded and scrambled up the side of the boat.
As soon as the news reached the captain's ears he laughed. He said a fourteen year old girl wouldn't know a hurricane if she was flying around in it. In any case, they sailors were moving boxes indoors and tying it down. They re-enforced the sails and pulled them down. They would need to raise and lower them strategically to survive this storm. Naiya had climbed up into the bird's nest and was figuring out how long they had.
"How long?" Boss asked he as soon as she climbed down.
" An hour, probably less. It's coming up behind us. Maybe we can use its wind to go faster without getting caught up in it." She said.
"Good idea, take the wheel." He said.
"What?" she asked confused. The captain would never authorize that.
"Captain's hiding in his room. He's not comin' out. You said you've survived a hurricane, take the wheel." He said before turning away. Naiya grinned; she'd always wanted to be captain for a day. Taking the wheel, she immediately called for the middle sail to be lowered. Then the front sail angled to catch the winds. She took a big breath, it was up to her to get them out of this.
The winds whipped at her hair; pulling it from the hose tail she'd put it in earlier in the morning. Seeing an opening in the rocks they'd been sailing in all morning. Why they'd been sailing in a grove of rocks she didn't know, but they needed to get out of them.
A large wave crashed against the side of the boat, throwing Naiya against a large box, moaning she stood back up and found a rope. She tied one end around her waist and another around a post. Seeing another wave behind them she called for the sails to drop and angled the boat so it slid up onto the wave. She stopped steering and let them ride the wave as far as it would take them.
"How high?" She yelled as rain began thundering down onto the boat.
"Eight feet! They're gettin' bigger!" Boss yelled at her. All of the sailors were tied to the boat in some way. Coven was bailing water and trying to man a sail at the same time.
More waves crashed onto the boat, slowly getting bigger. Then she saw it, a white wave. All of it swirling, turning water, as bad as they come. She yelled a warning to the crew and they all grabbed onto part of the boat. Naiya tried to get the boat onto the lower part of the wave, but it did nothing.
The wave crashed onto the boat with a thunder. The main mast broke and all she heard before her rope snapped and she was overtaken by the wave was the splintering of wood and the gruff yells of the sailors. The boat rolled and Naiya was caught beneath it.
As soon as she got her head above water she was once again forced underneath. She knew well enough not to fight the ocean. The ocean was king and you did as it bid. Emerging from the depths once more she realized they were on the wide edge of the hurricane, if the boat could stay on that edge they could ride it out. Taking a deep breath she was submerged again.
Naiya was thrown back into the rocks she had just escaped; her head was thrown into a rock. Climbing on top of the rock she reached for her head. The wound stung from all of the salt in it and when she reached up to touch it her hand had watery red lines running down her finger tips. Great, a lifetime in the water wounded is half what it would be if I weren't. She thought to herself.
Diving directly into the next wave Naiya dove down as far as she could and then swam for the last place she'd seen the boat. Popping back above the surface she looked around her. It was far, far behind her. It looked like they where rowing. She dove back underneath the surface only to be thrown against more rocks. Gritting her teeth she climbed onto a rock to wait the storm out.
--/--
Gentle hands picked her up and moved her. Sighing she batted her eyes open. Coven was leaning over her; he seemed to be checking for broken bones, bruises, whatever by the way his hands ran over her body gently. She opened he mouth and he shook his head.
"You're dehydrated, a few of your ribs are cracked and you have a nasty infected gash on your head." He said sternly. "You tried to get back to the ship after you were thrown off." He said looking at her intently. "You know better, in a storm you are always supposed to swim for shore." He said. Naiya hung her head. He was right. It was the crew's job to find lost crewmen after a storm. Not the crewmen's job to find the ship during the storm. She looked up to apologize only to find Boss standing there in his stead.
"Well girlie, ye'r quite the talented one huh?" He said. Naiya looked at him confused. "Took us the better part of two day's to find ye. And then you're in the middle of a rock garden. We had o send someone to jump across the rocks and then jump back with ye on there back. We just got ye on the ship ye know." He said. "I though poor Coven was goin' t'have a complex."
"He's mad?" Naiya asked.
"Just a little. Give him an hour or so, it's goin to take ye that long to get up I'd wager. An ye better thank David, he's the one who got ye." He said before leaving the barracks. Naiya didn't know why, she shared the barracks with all of the men, changed in there with them. She always had, she didn't see the difference in sex as a big deal.
In reality it only took her a few minutes to get dressed and ready to go. Her ribs hurt every time she breathed.
It was late evening by the stars and Coven was way up in the first mast. Gritting her teeth she slowly climbed up the side, Her ribs protesting at every movement. Clambering up onto the mast she sat next to Coven on the wide wooden bar. He didn't look at her.
"I'm sorry." She said. "It's just, I was supposed to be at the wheel, and then I was flying through the air and the boat was rolling, and all of you were attached to it. I felt responsible," she said in a rush. He looked at her shocked.
"Naiya, that was a hurricane, ain't nobody in charge then but yourself." He said bluntly. She nodded glumly.
"That, that wasn't how I saw it," She said. He just looked at her. She looked at him.
"What?" She asked. He just smiled, and the first time she saw him. Dark brown hair, dancing sea blue eyes. Tan skin, and then there was something else, something in him sparkled.
"What?" He asked, she just smiled. Sea god, huh?