Disclaimer: I only write this work of fiction for enjoyment and sharing with other fans of Digimon. I do not own Digimon or its characters and do not have permission from its owners to write this fic. Also, I am thoroughly inexperienced with the parts of a boat or with various medical effects described herein, so I can only beg purists to forgive me.

Chapter One, part two: An Identity Adrift

Dark waters. They lapped soothingly against her like her mother's soft, velvety palms; gently washing off the innumerous scrapes and scabs on her body, easing all the aches and bruises. It felt so comfortable, like she hadn't felt in years.

For a long, long time she just lay there, reveling in the comfort of simply resting on her side and letting the gentle waves lap around her, lulling her numb senses. She shifted in and out of conscious thought, and what little coherent reasoning she half-heartedly managed to string together simply dissolved in the water around her. Maybe this was what lying among the stars, perching atop a tear of Mistel, actually felt like. How easy was to just let go, to feel like this forever, never having to think again…

Glimmers of dull orange began to intrude on the luxurious blackness in her weary eyes, and she gradually began to feel a deep, stiff ache settling into her bones. The water still washed around her, but it now felt gritty and crude. Ever so slowly, she became aware of tiny abrasive grains biting into the soft skin of her upper arm, and a great heaviness seemed to descend upon her hitherto weightless, gliding body. As physical sense trickled back into her, her mind remained suspended in time, separate from the streams of thought. She could not think; only feel the shift in mood from relaxation and content to annoyance. Unable to conjure any semblance of thought, her heart was left to childishly whimper and long for the comforting blanket of darkness to be draped over her again.

It was growing evident that the blanket had been lifted, for no darkness could warm her skin to melting point. She felt unclean and covered with grit, and small, blinding spots of light began to dance in her eyes. The grating little noise that might have been a moan surprised her as it tore out of her now stinging throat.

The tiny pinpricks of invading anti-dark slowly expanded, pervading her reeling senses with first a dull red, then orange, then searing white-yellow. It burned painfully into her vision as another low groan caught her once more off guard. The lovely darkness had now fled altogether.

She had fallen from that ethereal perch—her head spun nauseatingly and her skin was melting from the heat it radiated. She willed the invasive light away, trying to crawl back into the darkness inside herself. But the darkness no longer welcomed her. It pushed her back out, trying to force her back into self-sufficiency.

This was too much. Her body was dissolving in the elements and now she had nowhere to run. She no longer had that alternative to simply facing the bright inferno threatening to consume her. Except maybe one… to simply give up. It was incredible how appealing that second choice seemed right now.

An terrible feeling of wrongness—she was in no condition to define it as nausea—twisted her innards as her body, if not her mind realized that the bile rising in her throat had cut off her air supply. Her stomach heaved, and without her permission it simply expelled its contents, seawater and all.

She trembled violently, her body caught in a rattling hacking fit just after she vomited. The light dazzled her and the tangy coastal air in her throat burned with the ferocity of her ill-being. Her world seared red as the hitherto stagnant blood convulsed within her veins.

Finally, finally Gorothin released her from the torment as she landed hard on abrasive terrain. She lay still, choking and mewing pathetically in her weakness. Then a blazing pain shot from her forearms to her brain and she inhaled with a sharp hiss as her eyelids scrunched and cracked open.

With a sudden yelp she shut them again, even as she threw her forearms up over her face, when an excruciating lightburst shot through her head as clean as a well-placed blade thrust. Agony ripped her ever-so-slowly restoring mind open, laying bare her last hope for returning to herself. She could no longer hide in the dark, but she was yet unready to come into the light. Her stomach convulsed as though threatening to erupt again, but there was nothing left to give. Unconsciously she realized why—a wild sensation of being lost; of being carried helplessly away by unending waves. She groped blindly, frantically for whatever her arms had been resting on and grabbed it. The edges felt splintery and crudely-hewn against her once-numb fingers, but though the abrasive surface seared her skin, she held fast to it, terrified of losing it again. And she continued choking.

Even as she retched miserably, that awful piercing light suddenly… faded; muted as though veiled and diminished. She was at last beginning to accept that she could no longer hide… yet even as she worked her way to this conclusion, her eyes autonomously flicked open again.

Swirls of grey danced before her, and her body fought her mind to keep her eyes open. The bland landscape shook slightly as she coughed again, but this time she could maintain some semblance of control, and the fit gradually subsided.

This time her own will powered the moan escaping from cracked lips, which was confirmed by a quick flick of her swollen tongue. A sharp taste that she somehow registered as salt seemed to crackle and bite unpleasantly at the tip. The hiss of flowing water behind her scraped gratingly at the inside of her skull, which she now knew to be aching horribly.

Well, lying down forever won't make it any easier. She was too tired to rejoice at the gradual return of her coherence. Restless energy was now crawling through her system—she had never liked sitting around and being useless. Ignoring the sharp biting feeling on her palms, she slowly, gingerly levered herself up.

Even her cautiousness could do nothing to prevent the resultant sick whirling sensation and she swayed for a moment, reeling as she struggled to regain her bearings. Once the world had settled down around her again, she cast it a sluggishly sweeping glance. Grey. Everything was grey. There was a nearly white patch overhead from where that terrible light was being strangled, but otherwise…

Maybe I was sent to the Realm of Dreams by mistake, she mused. Seconds later another thought jarred her—No, that can't be right. I… I'm alive. A sharp pain in her palms quickly corroborated that.

With a short yelp her stinging hands flew up to her face, then one quickly dropped back as that lost, drifting sensation rose suddenly and threatened to overwhelm her. She followed that trembling hand, struck by its sickly greenish pallor underneath the tiny sparkling grains coating the back. She was hanging fast to a dark wood plank with jagged, garish-looking edges, which contrasted jarringly with her bland surroundings. That explained the splinters on her fingers, she concluded disconnectedly.

In an instant, a sudden image flashed through her dully throbbing head: She was treading water, shivering in its chill. Her teeth rattled with the cold, but it was incomparable to the rage, grief and despair tearing at her heart. The thickly-muscled man ahead of her was frighteningly pale, but his face was set as he shoved her a broken-off plank, which bobbed helplessly toward her.

"Gilippen," she whispered, starting when she realized that the parched, cracking voice belonged to her. Gilippen… where had that come from? No—of course. Gilippen. Gili. He was the one who had shoved her this sorry piece of driftwood… but why?

I would have drowned without it.

Her heart was rent in two without warning, and she choked slightly as everything gradually came back. She'd been on a ship—they'd hit something… A faded, indistinct picture of a large, burly commandeering sort of man looking her in the eyes, grim and yet sorrowfully affectionate all at once, as she clapped her on the shoulder. Her free hand drifted up to her shoulder, remembering the familiar firm warmth of his weathered meaty hand right there, seeming to just fit. She had loved him dearly… known him for so long…

Pop.

The word exploded in her mind and her breathing hitched as sorrow arose and threatened to suffocate her. She couldn't put her finger directly on it just yet, but somehow… she knew that her father, Gili and several others were gone forever.

More disconnected words and phrases sifted into her immediate memory. Kalikar… the Kalikar. The ship… the proud ship that this little plank had once been a little part of. She gingerly lifted the piece and found it to be pure black. Yes. This must have been a part of the… the bottom of the ship, what was the word… the hull.

Run aground… crow's nest… Ralson… Ralson, he'd been one of the… what was it? Deckhands. Yukreph. He'd been another sailor. And so were Tigro, Shalleny, Niblan, Ereston, Halswith… so many words were flooding back into her that she couldn't keep track of them.

My little girl… murmured a rumbling bass from somewhere deep in her yet unreachable memory. It sounded again, but commanding and businesslike this time. Get to it, sailor. If we must die, we die honorably.

Unconsciously, she clenched her jaw against the tears that threatened to flow again; she now recognized those sentences as the last she ever heard from her father.

She heard his voice a third time. Be strong. I raised you to be a strong girl. Make me proud of you, Zoë.

Zoë…? Who was Zoë? Who—who was she? Her confused trailing thoughts were constantly interrupted by and entangled with each other, so she was hard pressed to get anything straight.

Just who was she? This question disturbed her deeply even through her newly revived grief. She could remember her father, the names of the sailors she had worked with, the name of her ship; yet she could not even recall her own deep past or her identity.

Careful of the lingering headache, she turned to the colorless waves, fuzzily reminiscing that in the lost past, she had always looked to them for an answer. She closed her eyes against the tang of the weak salty breeze wafting up to her, listening to the murmuring speech of Aunue.

Kali, kali, karri, kali, the ocean seemed to whisper to her, urging her on to the truth. It all seemed to point to the Kalikar, but Aunue often had an odd notion of what 'help' meant. She already knew what the Kalikar was…

But my name—part of my name—it sounded like Kalikar… she suddenly thought. Kali… Kaliken? No, that doesn't seem right. Karikal? Kalikath? She just couldn't get it.

She surprised herself when she slammed a fist onto the wood plank—immediately regretting it as the splinters dug deeper into the sensitive flesh of her fingers—and loosed a feral yell accompanied by the roundest, bloodiest oath she could contrive. A despairing sob finally broke from her lips. Why? Why couldn't she remember?! By the gods, what had she done to offend Mistel and so deserve this miserable fate?

A small gaggle of seagulls wheeling overhead shrieked and keened in alarm overhead. Ni, niah, ki! Ki, ni! Ki! Keah! Ki!

Below them, the girl's eyes flew wide open. She had not the gift of understanding the speech of Soprotae's children, but the cawing of the gulls struck her home. Ni… ki… they were both sounds in her name, that much she remember. Niki… but that was only part of it, of that she was sure.

Keah, keah, ki! screamed the gulls. Keah ki! Ni ki! Keah ni ki!

She reeled as the realization rammed through her. Keah ni ki. Ka… Kaniki. Kanikey. Yes—that was it! Kanikey!

Make me proud of you, Zoë, her father's ghostly voice reminded her.

Zoë… Zoë… The girl nearly fell backward from remembrance and utter incredulousness at herself. Zoë! Her frustration had momentarily driven the memory right out of her head, but now she was incredibly appalled at both herself for being so shamefully slowwitted, and the gods for toying with her sanity as they had just done.

She felt the name—her name—beginning to fade from her mind again and grasped desperately at it, just as she had clung desperately to the only physical remnant of her past, the wooden plank, not so long ago. "Kanikey,"she reminded herself firmly, affixing the title securely in her head out of terror of losing it. "I am Zoë Kanikey. Daughter of Murney Kanikey, captain of the Kalikar."

With a stabbing pang she belatedly realized that the second half of her statement now belonged to the past. Furiously wiping her watering eyes with the back of her hand, she let out a sharp exclamation when the salt still crusting the skin grated against her eyelids.

Swearing heatedly, Zoë Kanikey immediately looked to her beloved ocean for relief as she dipped her hands in the clear, bitingly cold waves to wash away the grit, then carefully wiped her eyes. The splinters stung, but they could be troubled with later. A quick glance down at herself told her all she needed to know about just why she felt so misshapen. Her upper body felt rather dried out and heated as the sun had beaten down on it, and her arms and left thigh glittered fiercely with salt extracted from the evaporated seawater. Her right arm and hand, which tingled rather unpleasantly as circulation began cutting its way through her veins again, was still planted firmly on top of the plank. She could feel the grains just sitting and gently grating on her weathered skin. But her left side, from her chest right down to her bare ankles and toes, felt shriveled in the inches-deep water they still rested in. Her clothing had been reduced to shredded rags that barely sheltered her skin from the elements.

Careful to avoid the small puddle of sick she had recently spewed, she pushed herself up out of the water and fully onto the gritty shore, wincing as the coarse sand and pebbles dug into her skin. Then, hesitating for a bit before removing her hand from the fragment of the Kalikar, she began to vigorously brush the salt from her skin. Zoë sighed in relief as the peevish itching sensation was abruptly removed, and again when the sun peeked out again between a gap in the heavy blanket of clouds. She blinked furiously, but at least she had the chance to dry herself out and the light did not glare off her skin to dazzle her this time.

As she reached up to brush off her the back of her neck, Zoë caught a hank of frazzled, knotted hair between her slender fingers, gritty to the touch with innumerous grains of salt. Well, that could be bothered with later. She had more pressing issues to worry about, such as the realization that she was thirsty.

She looked the morose grey shore up and down, fighting down the resultant dizziness. Nothing but grey sand and grey pebbles. Behind her, on the mainland, were dusty sand-dunes and dirt hills, with the occasional rocky outcroppings. Absolutely nothing to indicate fresh water within her vicinity.

Zoë racked her brain, trying hard to ignore the rising heartsickness as she tried to remember where they were when the… accident had happened and where their destination had lain. But apparently her mental capacity could only hold so much information so soon after waking; she could come up with nothing.

Closing bloodshot pine-green eyes against the memories returning to haunt her, she scanned the blended horizon. The sun in its lofty midday perch glinted off of the waves, but there was nothing far out to sea. There was nothing bobbing out on the water except the occasional floating gull. Nothing to indicate the presence of the dead wreck that was the Kalikar, or her ill-fated crew. Zo's empty stomach squirmed as she realized just how alone she was. Alone, stranded Mistel-knew-where in Soprotae's realm, with none to rely on but herself.

With a shuddering sad sigh, her eyes alighted on the plank. It had saved her life, and was now her only companion. A light zephyr floated in from the ocean, and she shivered. Damn! she growled silently. She had better pray Mistel that there was a village or fisherman's hut or at least something nearby that could sustain a shipwrecked young mariner with no semblance of supplies, or she'd never last the night.

Carefully and with a total lack of coordination, Zoë pushed herself to her bare feet. Her soles were nearly—nearly—as tough as the sturdiest leather; they could easily withstand a few miles or so of walking. If only she could say the same for her lax muscles. She lurched unsteadily about, nearly collapsing several times before regaining her bearings. Still, she knew that getting anywhere would be a struggle.

She looked down at her rent trousers and sighed with quiet relief when she found her belt and canvas drawstring pouch miraculously intact. So were its contents: four gold bits, a tiny steel plate and a small flint. With the bits she might be able to buy her sustenance—if she could indeed find one who supplied them—and with her good old flint and steel she might not freeze to death this autumn night. Her heart sank, however, as she thought of her knife, locked in her little chest aboard the doomed Kalikar. She hoped that she wouldn't need to use any weapon in the short term. And at the moment, it seemed that the short term just might prove to be very short indeed.

There was nothing in sight to burn for a fire that night. Nothing except… Zoë groaned as she set her eyes on the little wooden plank at her slightly swaying feet. To burn that, she felt, would be like cannibalizing her only friend. It's just a godforsaken piece of firewood! her reasonable side argued. It's useful, why waste it?

Zoë eventually acquiesced to necessity, but the prospect of using her inanimate savior thusly still saddened her. She carefully bent and picked up her only friend, cradling it in her hands. "Well, guess it's just you and me now," she murmured. The gulls overhead screamed their encouragement. Keah ni ki! Keah ni ki! Ni ki!

And with that, Zoë Kanikey, last crewmember of the Kalikar, took her silent companion and turned to trudge painfully up the incline leading to the dirt dunes several meters above, searching for her life.

Reviewer Responses

reviewer 101: Hey, hope you're still there, though I understand if you're not—and in that case, I'm the only one to blame. :( Sorry again! Anyhow, I'm inclined to agree as far as couple mush—I've believed for a long time that good fiction revolves around the plot, not the couple. Glad to see the description was up to scratch in your book. Helpful critiques? I hope so too!

Akino Ame: Wonderfully intriguing? I hope I can keep it that way. The Abomination is proving very hard to control. :-/ When you refer to the similarities to Third Ship Kisubo, I wondered if you thought I was lifting the scene direct from that book. Funny thing is, I was very vaguely thinking of Daja's situation while writing that chapter. (Speaking of which, from the looks of your updated bio you've found Protector of the Small; good for you. It's a great series.) And no, no magecraft or anything fantasy/science-fiction is planned thus far for Drifters; it'll be strictly realistic, or as near as I can make it.
I recently read your updated bio and was blown away by how you spoke of me. I don't deserve it, seriously! Akino, I'm completely floored that you think so highly of my work, Kouzumi included—I haven't even put Kouji and Zoë into a scene together yet! Geez, now I feel really spoiled. Thanks so much! You really made my day. (P.S. I'm well aware of how name-spelling inconsistency drives you up the wall; don't worry, there's a reason why I'm using Kouji's Japanese name and Zo's dub name. The explanation won't be until much later, however.)
Thanks for those Ryuki recommendations; I'm looking into them! A Forbidden Love looks especially promising.

chibi minamoto: YES! I have decided that I will include the rest of the Frontier team. However, don't look for them anytime soon, sorry. (wince) I don't remember seeing Izumi that cruel before…

ichiiko: Yet again, glad you love the descriptions! I myself am a bit unsure about them, however. :-/

won't say: Too much description? I'm not at all surprised that you pointed that out; in fact, I find that I have to agree. No time to get revising just yet though; I've got another revision project running and I still have to update! Well, I haven't even put Kouji and Zoë into a scene together yet, let alone a romantic one, so I'm quite surprised at all this positive feedback I'm getting regarding the couple's role. Thanks anyway, though!

Gemmani Girl: Thanks! Well-written… let's hope I can keep it up.

Carbonated Angel: Ah, yes, I'm a Tolkien-phile. I'm still trying to find a way to get to Rivendell from here; I hear Master Elrond is Halfelven himself (like me!) and maybe will accept me into the Last Homely House. ;-D And may I note that you're not the only inexperienced newbie here… I might have been here since October, but I haven't updated for so long that I'm still a newbie for all practical purposes. But in my book, newbies who can pick out good writing are off to a great start. Thanks a lot!

Aelynsage: Like I just said to Carbonated Angel—I may have been here since last October, but I've been posting so erratically that for all practical purposes I'm still new. But lurkers and new authors still often have valuable advice to give, so don't apologise for being new; I would definitely think just from reading your review that you know what you are talking about.
I really appreciate your honesty. Constructive criticism makes me feel great; thanks for your advice! Yes, I will work on the gods' names (if you backpedal to the prologue you'll notice I added a little guide), though maybe if I write them in enough readers will get used to them. If you think this little fic is confusing already, try reading the first fifty pages of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion and you'll find out what it's like to confuse gods' names. ;-) As you just read, the story is still split-sided, but that will soon change. :-) Thanks for adding this to your favourites! Maybe this fic isn't so lousy after all.

Again, my thanks for your support! All I can say is… you guys rock.

Until Fate crosses our paths again…
Raven

P.S. Today is 9 October, or so it seems… and if you're reading this, my friend (you know who you are!), HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! :-)