She sat on her makeshift bed for a few moments before reaching over and grabbing some of her clothes. The captain had her in his cabin for the past six years now as his Organ Keep. He almost always woke up before she, the only times she waking up before he being the times she awoke from nightmares at the ungodly hours of two in the morning. Reaching under her pillow she pulled out the old pocketwatch that she had been given by the Captain one day after mentioning it being difficult to tell the time by the sun as per usual because they moved around so much and, consequently, the sun set at different times each day. She smiled. It was seven in the morning.
She had lost count of the days, though she assumed that it was still early summer. She glanced over to the other side of the cabin, to the organ. He had obviously already left and she assumed he was out on the deck giving out orders. She got out of her bed which was little more than several bags stuffed with old corn husks with a sheet draped over it and then a blanket and she began to get dressed. It was just another ordinary day for her. She would get dressed, check the organ, revoice it if the organ was in need...
Once she had gotten dressed in her typical trousers and long sleeved shirt, she moved over to the organ. Running her hands over the wood work, she smiled. She remembered being taught to play the piano by her mother, then later the organ. She remembered so clearly playing at the Masses at her church. The most vivid memories she had were the Good Friday and Easter Masses, with their soul crushing and uplifting (respectively) music. Her moment of nostalgia was temporarily interrupted by the discovery of a new barnacle forming on one of the pipes. Frowning, she grabbed the chisel that she had placed next to the organ and began to carefully pick away at the barnacle before brushing it off. She noticed that some other places were starting to get rather caulky, and she set to work on those too.
This work was rather mind numbing and she often found herself reliving days of her life as she worked, almost as an automatic remedy to the tedious and boring task of cleaning the outside of the pipes. The first time she had done it, she remembered she was quite fearful. Whether the fear was from damaging the organ or from the hideousness of the crew and her new captain, she wasn't sure. It did take her several months to fully get used to everything. Six years later she was chipping away at various sea creatures that had attached themselves to the pipes like they were nothing. She had gotten rather comfortable working with it and was confident in her abilities. She was no longer afraid of damaging the organ -- she could do this sort of task in her sleep.
Sighing, her thoughts went back to her dream. She had often been plagued by dreams of her home -- sad memories flowing back. She missed her home and she missed Maric. He was the best friend she had ever had. She had made up a little dream that they would someday get married when she was eight years old, but that dream faded and as she entered her teenage years discovered she could not see him in that way. It was just as well -- his family had to leave town because of various debts on account of his father's gambling. It was a sad story, but it did have its fruits. Maric was the one who took her down to the sea, which she had so longed to be near for most of her childhood. She never could go because her mother was always giving her lessons on piano and language and the arts.
She loved her lessons, but she had a longing for the sea. When Maric took her down to the beach, she fell in love with the waves. Essentially every moment from then on that they didn't spend at Church together they spent at the water's edge. Several weeks prior to his leave, on the night that he had remarked that her eyes had the markings of a constellation in them, she had a dream. The dream was a strange one, a dream of swimming through the ocean, though at speeds no man could ever dream of going on his own. She woke up and told Maric about the dream. He had said that she had a very good imagination, but warned her not to let it get a hold of her.
"Damn," she muttered, having just barely scraped her finger as she chipped away at the pipe. She wasn't bleeding, but it was enough to snap her from her thoughts. She paused in her work to inspect her injury. It would bruise in the next few hours, she supposed, but it was nothing to worry about. She sucked on her injury for a moment before going back to work.
She didn't have any dreams after that first one until Maric had gone. It was about a week or so after he had left that she had a dream -- or else what seemed like it should have been a dream. She remembered she had been standing in her nightgown on the sands near her family's sheep farm facing the waters as morning light crept in from the dawn. For some reason, she didn't feel afraid despite the fact that she was forbidden to go to the beach without an escort. She remembered walking to where the waters washed over her feet, then further. Far further than she had ever gone, to where she was breaststroking through the waves. She was having a hard time swimming when all of a sudden her body had begun to feel a great amount of pain. It started in her back and went down to her legs before travelling back up to her head.
She could have sworn she felt her insides moving around within her. Before she knew it, she closed her eyes and breathed in the salty air through a blowhole at the top of her head. She didn't realise any of this though. It was almost as if it were completely natural. In this dream world of hers, she swam free like in the previous dream, speeding along the reefs and chasing nurse sharks from their hiding spots. She leapt out of the water to catch the dawn's first light and crashed back into the waves. She wanted to enjoy this dream as long as she could, so she swam as far out into the ocean as she could. She swam in her dolphin body until she could swim no more and had to rest. Contented with the adventure of this dream, she allowed herself to fall asleep in the waves.
Only she woke up in a cage in a very strange place.
She woke up inside a cage in a lower part of a ship, though she didn't realise it at first. The first things she saw when she woke up were barrels containing unknown items, though the smell of gunpowder was thick in the room. She was dressed in her gown as she had been, though it was soaking wet. She simply sat there alone in the dank cage for about an hour before she heard movement. What she saw when it came into the light from one of the side windows was the most hideous thing she had ever seen. It was a monstrous fish creature, mostly human, in a way. Its face was covered with what looked to be a pufferfish, his cheek expanding and contracting as if the thing itself were a living entity. She scooted to the back of the cage and curled up trying to shield her eyes from the monster. She was too scared to speak.
The monster called out for the captain, but instantly more creatures came and surrounded the cage. There were all sorts of hideous creatures with varying degrees of humanity left in them. There was a thundrous noise and the mob of them parted. A terrible looking creature approached her cage. It had what looked to be a peg leg, one hand consisting of five tentacles of varying lengths, one hand being a large crab claw... Most strikingly the creature had a beard of tentacles which writhed as he looked upon her with eyes of cyan blue. They were the only human looking part of him, save for perhaps the bone structure of his face. She continued to cower in the back and the creature, dressed in a large, blue jacket lifted a pipe to his mouth and stared at her in silence.
"What be yer name, girl?" he snarled.
Andante opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. His gaze that was locked on her harshened and he continued to wait. She eventually mustered up the strength to say her name. "Andante. Andante Shepherdson." She swallowed heavily, having found it rather hard to speak with her breath being so shallow and her heart pounding against her rib cage at a thousand beats a minute.
The octopus creature seemed satisfied with her answer and smoked his pipe for another moment.
"Do ye know how ye got out here?" he asked, his gaze still harsh.
She glanced up at him, focusing on his eyes and only his eyes. She couldn't bear to look at anything else. She swallowed again, but shook her head.
His reaction to her was that of frustration masked by thought. He watched her pensively, puffing his pipe every few moments. The crew remained quiet, quite interested in this conversation. Some were eyeing her rather lecherously.
"I had a dream." She said, finally.
He stared at her and his eyes seemed to suggest that he was waiting for her to go on. Another puff came from his pipe.
"I had a dream that I was swimming in the ocean. I dreamt that I was a dolphin. I swam until I was tired. Then I went to sleep." She said, her sentences short because of her shaky breath and her shivering out of fear.
His eyes widened a little, but not too much. He gave a slight 'hmph,' and looked from her head down to her body, though the look in his eyes was that of apathy.
"Ye weren't one of mine before. Do ye have any skills?" he asked.
She didn't seem to notice the first part of his statement, as her whole mind was focused on the interrogative after it. Her life could be on the line. A part of her were wishing that it was all just another extension of the dream, only a more horrid part.
"I play the organ. I voice organs. I read and write music. I speak Italian. A little. I clean." she said.
An eyebrow quirked at her and the Captain pulled his pipe from his mouth, looking to the crew members to the direct sides of him.
"Take 'er to me quarters. "
And with that, several crew members picked the cage up and Andante whimpered pitifully as they carried the cage up the stairs and onto the deck before heading into a large room that was shrouded in darkness.
It was the same room she was in this day as she cleaned the pipes. The same room she had slept in and worked in for the past six years. Her work and memories were interrupted only by the sound of a door being opened with such force it nearly fell off its hinges.