Angela knew she'd fallen asleep as her eyes began to stir, though her mind wasn't quite able to put together where she'd done so. It wasn't until she felt the subtle movement beneath her of a soft body in exhalation that she instantly recalled, her eyes shooting open and her arms flying out in front of her to push away whatever, or whomever, was there, though it only served to suddenly shove herself backward, her arms flailing as she fell onto her back with a thud, her arms quickly shoving herself upright to discover her intruder.

"Ow!" Fareeha shouted as she reached over to rub her chest, "That's the thanks I get?! Goddamn; no wonder you've only been with so few people!"

Angela's shouted in reply, "You-! I was just sleebing and-!"

Suddenly wearing a blush from embarrassment, Angela realized just how drained of energy she felt, such a sensation even taking hold of her mouth, resulting in the small bout of slur in her speech. While she was terrified and embarrassed, Fareeha merely offered up a grin as though proud of this woman's continued affectedness by her own hand, or rather, tongue.

"Oh my, princess; your speech seems as weak as your legs were," Fareeha chuckled with a smirk denoting such mischief in her teasing.

Angela's blush ran furious across her face as she tried to pick herself up, though, as Fareeha had predicted, her legs moved, but couldn't support much in the way of her own weight, leaving Angela with a frown.

"Don't look at me like that," Fareeha shrugged, "That's all on you, princess; it's not my fault you're a horny little thing."

With a still crimson face wearing a frown, Angela barked back, "Y-You think you're so smart, don't you? So wry and quick, huh?"

Fareeha grinned, "I did fetch me a nice snack for a while."

Angela's blush exploded once again at the insinuation, though as she tried once again to stand, Fareeha sighed, "You're not going anywhere until you relax for a bit. You've got time, it's not even dawn yet; just calm down."

"Calm? You want me to be calm?" Angela asked sarcastically, trying to will her legs to bring her up.

Sighing, Fareeha groaned, "You're quite a bit more agreeable when you're heated, you know. Look, just- Roll or drag your happy self back over here and have some of these blinis or something; I know you love 'em."

At the sudden promise of such a sweet treat, Angela's head slowly ran her eyes over her shoulder, watching as Fareeha reaches into her crate for a small pouch of the stuff, pulling out one in particular and wagging it in her hand, "C'mon, you've got time. Trust me, you'll do more harm than good trying to force it."

Angela's breaths were still hot from anger, though they gradually lessened as she slowly pulled herself around, making her way ever so slightly back toward the stowaway, "I hope you're happy…"

"Happy about what?"

"Manipulating a poor captain's daughter with food."

Fareeha grinned, "I'm not happy about it, but it's nice to know you're quite the easy woman to please."

Angela scoffed as though attempting to maintain some dignity despite her wobbling, "I happen to have quite exquisite tastes, I'll have you know. What, you think I'm one to be entertained by trifling objects?"

"That explains why you taste so exquisite yourself," Fareeha notes with a teasing voice, sending a furious blush across Angela's face, "You're even easy to embarrass!"

Had she legs, and not had an awaiting pastry, Angela might have immediately spun away and made her way out from the hold, but instead, she merely held her head low with a shaking motion, upset at her ease at being persuaded. Fareeha helpfully facilitated her accompaniment as she helped her over once she was close enough, pulling her up to sit against the wall beside her before offering the blini to her.

"See? Not bad at all; sex 'n sweets. I'd say you've been pretty well taken care of, if I do say so," Fareeha muttered proudly.

Angela dropped her head, "Can we, just- y'know-"

"You're not regretting it, are you?" Fareeha asked innocently, her voice lacking any and all malevolence.

"No!" Angela objected clearly, returning to her dreary tone, "I just- I don't know; I never thought I'd, uh- you know…"

"Ahhh," Fareeha nodded, her eyes dipping low for a moment as she worked up her next collection of words with a gentle breath, "For what it's worth, I never thought of you as a cheap little thing. A bit too fun to tease, maybe, but I wouldn't ever take anyone's willingness to partake in such a thing with me as anything less as a very heightened respectful thing. Or is this like a body thing? You religious or something? Should've waited for marriage?"

Frowning, Angela answered, "N-No, I- I mean, I was raised in a church for some time, but I'm not into all that- obviously, my choice in partners wouldn't have allowed much-"

"Are you feeling a tad guilty that it felt so good?" Fareeha interrupted with a insinuating curve of her voice, sending Angela into a tizzy.

"No!" Angela exclaimed, "I just- You know…"

Finding her unable to find the proper words, Fareeha took her place in speaking, her voice leaving in a much gentler tone than Angela had ever heard from her, "Just so you know, I don't treat this sort of thing as cheap, either. I wouldn't have done any of this if I wasn't already enchanted by your mermaid-like wet hair or charmed by your inability to take teasing with good humor."

She grinned, "It's a nice sort of disarming quality knowing you're so genuine."

Angela frowned, taking such a statement as a declaration of her being 'simple', "Gee, thanks."

"What?" Fareeha asked with a teasing sort of tone, "It's a good thing. For the first moment we spoke, I hadn't much of any worry about you pretending to be something, or somebody, that you're not. I don't think anger or frustration are qualities people often pretend to have, after all; after so much time spent with so many who cower behind veneers and take control of their words to falsely heighten their status- I mean, you never even claimed to know more about being a sailor than I accused."

Frowning, Angela took a bite of the sweet-tasting pastry, "Maybe if you weren't such a jerk about it…"

Laughing in reply, Fareeha shrugged, "You know, you're only the third or fourth person I've come across that I hadn't a worry about your intentions. Lust might be a raunchy sort of motivation, but it's nonetheless honest. I can respect it, particularly from one such as you."

She paused as she quietly laughed amongst herself, bringing a blini up to her mouth to eat herself, resting her arm overtop her knee that she'd brought up, staring off into the distance with a nostalgic sigh from her nose. Angela might have been slightly frustrated a moment earlier, but by now, the silence was quite calming, and sure enough, after such a feeling before her nap, and taking in quite the scrumptious delicacy, she couldn't help feeling, at the very least, contented. The warmth coming off of Fareeha's body added to the feeling as well, the term 'afterglow' not too dissimilar to what Angela felt sitting beside this woman after their too-brief moment of connection.

"What, uh-" Angela spoke up, quietly, "Who were some of the others? Did you ever, uh...?"

"Make love to 'em?" Fareeha asked with amusement filling her voice, "Are you wanting to know if this sort of thing leads to being a partner?"

"NO! I just-!"

"I'm not easy to chain down, you know," Fareeha laughed, "As I'm sure you've already gathered. For your information, though, one of them was a girlfriend of mine, back when I lived in Greece for a handful of years."

She brought herself upward for a moment to readjust herself, unintentionally moving herself further away from Angela, leaving the deckhand feeling just the slightest lack of warmth as the stowaway began to speak again, "Let's see, Thalia was her name. She was a- Okay, before you know this, you need to know that I used to be in the Egyptian guard as a teenager, so by the time I was living in Greece, I was already sort of a hard woman? In Ilios, there aren't much of any jobs for women, so to make ends meet, I sort of fought my way into a security council that the city employed to keep its more seedy investments protected; they made a lot of money from their 'necropolis' of late-night entertainment. So Thalia was a bartender, and I was kind of a bouncer, I suppose, just making sure things didn't get too rowdy."

"I still remember one of my first nights there; she had already caught my eye, but you know, despite beating a guy up to prove my worth, I was still a woman, pretty low on the totem pole, so I was the outstanding professional. Now, we were all trained to know who's who- let's say there's a random gangster trying to flooze a waitress, we beat them up. but there are also gangs who are in good tidings with the city, and we need to know who's who so we don't beat up one of them- they could bend a barmaid over a table and fuck 'em right then and there and we weren't allowed to do a thing to stop it."

"So one night, Thalia was helping clean, and after my shift we got to talking. She was just like you. I mean, she knew she hadn't much of anything to look forward to in life beyond being a pretty little thing, but she never tried to fool others, or herself, into thinking otherwise. Though, therein lied the problem…"

"At some point, some dude decided to strike up a conversation; I suppose he fancied her. She did as she was supposed to- act interested, all that, but then he reached out as she turned around and smacked her in the ass, with nothing in the way of retaliation from her. I saw it, it pissed me off to no end, yet she didn't do a thing. This was all she had. All she had in the way of surviving in this world was her body, and it didn't matter how much I knew how wrong that was -how friendly she was, how kind, how many hours she'd spent learning how to knit elaborate clothing with her grandmother- her body was the only way she could ensure a living."

Fareeha sighed, shaking her head, "You have no idea how much that all pisses me off. She assured me, so many times, that she was used to being treated like a toy. I began to think that it was fine, at least she was used to it; but then I decided, no, it wasn't okay for her to be used to it- she shouldn't have to be used to anything like that. I'm getting furious just thinking about it."

She shook her head, bringing the last of her bit of blini to her mouth, "Well, this helps, I suppose."

Angela turned to her, "So, what, is that why you no longer do all that?"

"Kind of," Fareeha answered, "I tried to turn away and ignore whenever that stuff happened. It hurt so much, you have no idea, especially after we'd started seeing one another after our shifts ended. My living depended on me doing nothing if the wrong man did something to her, and as much as I just about dared to flirt with such a thing as retaliation, she kept telling me, she was used to it, it was fine, just keep my job safe, please, please…please…"

"She cried more and more when we were together," Fareeha's voice began to sink, "I think it was nice to her when I was with her. She didn't have to worry about being a woman, you know? Maybe after a while, it only magnified how horrendous her job was; and the more they took hold of her without warning, the bolder they got toward taking advantage of her inabilities, the more she broke down whenever somebody, me, offered any tiny bit of decency for their fellow man, er, woman."

Angela's brow had already curled up in sorrowful reverence before she turned toward Fareeha with curious eyes, "Did you beat them up or something?"

"No," Fareeha chuckled, "I became a sailor."

With a sudden turn from the sad to the confused, Angela's eyes narrowed, "Huh?!"

Shrugging, Fareeha explained, "What? You knew I was a captain! I quit my job and hopped onto a series of fishing trawlers, worked my way up to captain soon enough, and eventually made my way to captaining my own ship, carrying cargo all around the Mediterranean. First thing I did was bring my Thalia aboard; I figured if we couldn't beat in enough skulls to change Ilios, we'd just make our own little world aboard a ship of our own. Thalia, well, she wasn't much of a sailor, but she got the hang of enough to be serviceable to the point where nobody'd complain about her tagging along. We actually became sort of a joke around the Mediterranean after I insisted she share my captain's quarters- that's when you know you've got it made. 'The Twin Sirens' they called us; said we were so good at collecting fish because we were practicing their speech and trailing their scent between one another's legs; there were some other ones, but that one, I always thought, sort of got the point across."

"Wait, hold on," Angela insisted, "I thought this was you explaining how you ended up here?!"

Fareeha turned to her, "You asked about the other woman, who was my girlfriend, and who also didn't make me feel wary of their intentions. I'm not gonna give my whole life story after one moment of sex, you know."

At such continued flagrant insinuation, Angela's brow curled with worrisome confusion as she spoke up, quietly, "…so is she dead?"

"What?"

"I mean…" Angela paused, mulling over her words, "You're so open to this kind of thing… This woman sounds like she was so special to you- If this kind of thing is as deep in meaning as you've suggested, I don't know why you'd take me if you two were still able to be, uh…together."

Fareeha nodded slowly, "Ah. Well, what I can tell you is that I'm a loyal person; I'm like a dog. I'll starve to be with a lover rather than feast with a baron. Well, there was one time- We had broken up, or at least, I thought we had; I guess she didn't think we'd done such a thing. So I got with somebody else, and she came back around."

She smirked with a sudden, proud swirl of her lips, "Turns out I'm the kind of woman some would rather share than give up."

Fareeha turned to eye Angela, who seemed rather taken aback by her words, clearing her throat and returning to the original question, "I'm loyal, and open enough to sex to share it with you. Draw your own conclusion."

Angela shrugged, "Okay, okay. I just figured I'd ask; I'd hate to step on anybody's toes or something. This Thalia just seemed special to you."

"She was," Fareeha nodded, "She was."

Absent Angela's gaze, Fareeha slid her free hand down toward her side, slipping it into her pocket. There remained her necklace, her hand taking it into her palm, curling her fingers around the bulbous frame of the tiny bottle. She massaged her thumb along the course grooves of its corken lid, swirling the flesh of her thumb along as if contemplating its opening, though she decided against it, simply keeping ahold of the vial-like bottle between her fingers.

"I think that's dawn," Angela muttered lowly, her eyes peering up toward the cracks in the hull that allowed just enough of a view toward the sky through grated floors, unable to hide the regret in her voice that she'd be leaving soon enough, "Hopefully I can walk easier now."

Fareeha grinned, "Unbind me next time. It'd be easier on you if we were more horizontal; then you wouldn't be forced to stand."

"Pfft, alright," Angela scoffed sarcastically, "I'm pretty sure I'm far enough along the path of disobedience; I'll just dive in completely next time."

At such humor, directly after such a personal act, Fareeha couldn't help but chuckle at Angela's continued brashness, "I'm like a drug, princess. You'll be back soon enough."

"Yeah, about that 'princess' thing I told you to quit doing," Angela charged, pushing herself up toward her more stable legs.

Fareeha eyed her with a grin, "It's only because you're such a brat sometimes. Would you prefer that?"

"I'd prefer 'Angela', quite frankly," she frowned, "I've quite refrained from referring to you as stowaway; I'd enjoy the same courtesy extended my way."

She turned toward Fareeha, who'd followed her up to a standing position, taking a short step into her chest before raising a hand up to place on her chest, feeling the soft contents of her clothing, which so brutishly concealed such magnificence, "Though, I could see myself starting again, stowaway. It makes me feel as though I have some claim of ownership over you or something."

"See? Brat," Fareeha confirmed, before dipping her head low and stealing a kiss.

The two remained with their lips entwined for but a moment before Angela felt a pressure against her own chest, that of Fareeha pushing her away so that she was the one to relinquish such an embrace of delicate skin atop another. At the end of Fareeha's reach, Angela found the pouch of blini there in offering, Fareeha's smile as sincere as she'd ever witnessed it.

"Take it with you," she shrugged, "Don't worry; they're not the spicy kind."

Angela feigned reluctance, but ultimately accepted the pouch, holding it at her side as her arms fell, leaving her staring at Fareeha for but one more moment before turning to leave, offering nothing in the way of words, already knowing they'd be seeing each other again. This was another act that compelled Fareeha to believe in her choice of words to refer to Angela, her lips still spun in amusement as she returned to sitting down, propping her head to the side as her eyes shut, returning to that dream space that she'd so rudely been interrupted from.

The same dream space where she could see Thalia once again.