Here we are again! For everyone who has read the story up to this point, thank you so much for your support. It really does mean everything to me that people appreciate the things I have worked hard on. In my opinion, the story gets much more dynamic from this point on, so I hope you enjoy it even more!
To the anonymous reviewer known as randomperson: Thank you so much! I'm very glad you've been liking it so far! ^^
On most nights, if they had nothing to do after dinner, they would go up to the lookout. Sometimes Hakuryuu would try to tell more about the stars-though Alibaba would learn little, listening less to his words and more to the sound of his voice. More often, though, they simply talked. Sometimes they talked about everything, but more often than not, they talked about nothing. They bantered and bickered over nonsense, over minutiae, in order to take their minds off larger and more troubling matters.
"You know, I've been on this ship for a few months now," Hakuryuu casually remarked one evening, "and I still don't know the name of it."
Alibaba picked idly at a piece of skin around his fingernail. "Strictly speaking, she doesn't have one. But when I need to call her something, she's the Dragoness. "
He raised his eyebrows and nodded a bit. "I like it."
"It's much too nice for this old hunk of wood. When I was young, my...my brother and I dreamed of commanding a whole fleet of these things. We made plans every night to one day run this huge shipping empire and then sit on our butts and never work another day in our lives. We'd own a hundred beautiful caravels, with sails big enough to block out the whole sky, we said!" He chuckled. "We planned it all, down to how many pretty maids we would keep in our houses. We knew if we could have enough ships, we wouldn't have to live in the slums or sleep in that nasty old dockyard anymore."
Hakuryuu swallowed, suddenly feeling a sense of awkwardness at all this personal information. He attempted to change the subject. "Why that particular name?"
Alibaba slowly turned to face the young man's mismatched eyes. There was a harmony to them now, the same sort of harmony the sea strikes with the sky at the horizon. Over these past weeks, Hakuryuu had proven himself to be a sensible and attentive listener. And, yes, even in that short time, a trust had developed between them.
He took a deep breath to prepare himself, then began to recount the story of the black creature in the water. He talked of the sightings over the years, of the single eye glinting at him through the clear water and the rippling of the dark, shining scales. He told of how, to his knowledge, only he was able to see the beast. And he even admitted that, unbeknownst to anyone, he still searched for it today.
"You know what the funny thing is?" he said rather wistfully. "I always kind of thought that that animal-whatever it is-appeared to me on purpose. Like it had a message for me or something..." At last, he turned to Hakuryuu, who had done nothing but listen and watch intently for the entirety of Alibaba's tale. He blinked at the young captain a few times, seeming unsure how to respond to the new information.
At long last, he had only one comment for Alibaba: "Well, that seems a little self-centered, don't you think?"
Alibaba stared for a moment. Then, he laughed. He laughed a free and jovial laugh that skipped across the waves and echoed into the distance, as though it would never end.
Hakuryuu blushed, cringed at his own words. "Sorry, sorry, I don't know why I said that. I didn't mean anything by that, really, I just had no idea what to-"
"No, no!" Alibaba managed to get out between his chuckling. "I just...I love that you didn't even questioned that the thing existed, that I wasn't just making it up!"
"Yeah, well," Hakuryuu muttered. "I know you're not crazy."
"Thanks." Alibaba smirked as he started to climb down from the lookout. "I appreciate that."
Hakuryuu hesitated a moment, waiting until he had already climbed down a little ways. Then, very quietly, he whispered, "I hope you find that creature one day."
He stared straight down, over the edge. In the dim pre-morning, the winds had not yet begun to blow in full force and the waters remained remarkably calm, the waves seemingly nothing more than little scribbles across the great flat expanse of blue-black. He looked down at those scribbles as one would view the writings of a foreign tongue, knowing a message existed there but unable to decipher it. Somewhere in the tumult of his tangled thoughts, he wished desperately that the sea would spell out an answer for him if he waited long enough.
Intuitively, Hakuryuu went to touch his sightless eye. It was a fraud, naturally, a glass eye magicked to move and turn as the real thing would. But, of course, it served no purpose outside of cosmetic reasons.
He had boarded this ship in the hopes of locating the eye that had been stolen from him-or, at the very least, the person who had done the deed. It was the same hope he had had every day for so many years, the goal that dragged him across the world's seas in search of any clue, any clue at all. At last, he had been led to the Dragoness, hoping that his search would at last come to an end.
But it didn't.
The blood behind his eye-the seeing one-began to pulse hard as Hakuryuu began to summon gusts. His remaining eye still allowed him to retain dominion over storms at sea, though he had lost control over the water along with the eye that had been stolen from him.
Hakuryuu had searched for years, and finally, when he thought he had come so close, he realized that he had never been farther away. What was there for him to do now?
As the gray clouds accumulated above, he stood. The water would not give him the answer he sought-it was the answer.
He did not jump so much as he fell, slowly, attracted by some pulling force to the depths below.
It was before dawn when Alibaba woke to the great splash.
Instantly, he sat up and attempted to make out the vague shapes in the dim light. A dark form sat in slumber in each of the hammocks...except for one.
He leapt up, his legs operating faster than his mind as he raced to the upper deck and desperately searched the waters for signs of life, any life. But the waters grew choppier by the moment, and every time he thought he spotted someone moving, it turned out only to be a rising wave or tossed bit of foam. He called out, but his echo was thrown back in his face like an insult, and he received no other response.
It was just as before. He didn't think. He grabbed the rope. He jumped. He broke through the glass surface of the water.
The sole difference was that, this time, he did not save Hakuryuu. He did not even spot another human. Instead, beneath the waves he found himself face-to-face with a great black serpent.
Now, at last, he saw the beast as a whole, in all its vastness and majesty. The beast seemed to him like the embodiment of a great sea current, coiling and twisting, changing the course of the waves while still being at one with the sea. Its teeth and claws, both the color of polished ivory, must have been the size of Alibaba's head. Great whiskers trailed off the ends of its reptilian face. He recognized the scales-dark, so dark, as though some heavenly smith had smelted the night sky itself into hard armor. However, for the first time, he noticed now the weakness in that armor: a scar that ran the length of the dragons body and ended at the side of its face.
He also saw that the animal possessed only a single eye...a remarkably familiar eye, one that possessed an intense intelligence, a human understanding that contrasted with its snakelike appearance.
For many moments, Alibaba and the dragon stared at one another, unmoving. Neither of them opened their mouths, but the great serpent spoke to him nevertheless. He was sure of it, for just before the animal turned to swim away, he heard the familiar voice of a certain former castaway in his mind. Just a single sentence.
'It was fated.'