Shiki wanted to be patient and respectful toward Lucy, really he did. Especially considering her age and what she had been through. But his investors were breathing down his neck, demanding instant results. If he disappointed them, then all he ever worked for would go down the drain. Things needed to speed up a little. After Lucy had gone to sleep, Shiki decided to see if Rebecca knew anything. She and her grandmother were extremely close after all, she had to know something.
"Hey, Rebecca!" He called to her as she quietly exited her grandmother's cabin. "I need to talk to you for a second."
Rebecca stopped and gave him a disgusted look.
"Don't you mean work me?"
"Look, I'm running out of time. I need your help."
"I'm not going to help you browbeat my hundred and one year old grandmother. And the fact you have the gall to ask me to do it, is sick. "
"I mean no disrespect, but you gotta understand something. I've bet it all to find those three treasures. I've got all my dough tied up in this thing. My girlfriend even left me over this hunt. I need what's locked inside your grandma's memory."
"Even if it might trigger some terrible post traumatic stress disorder? Even if it could cause her to have a panic attack that may end her life? Tell me something, is your project worth that risk."
"I know you probably think I'm just a greedy treasure hunter who doesn't give a damn about anything except money, and fair point on some aspects, but I promise you I don't want to hurt your grandmother or you."
"Then back off, she's been through enough. God, she wasn't even twenty-one yet when she had my mother and she had to raise her alone. No husband, no father, no one to support her. Yes, she did have loyal friends who would help out when they could but Grandma pretty much had to rely on herself all these years."
"She's tough one, isn't she?"
"You're damn right she is, and to be honest I have no idea why she called you up like this. It can't be good for her health."
"Maybe she wants to make peace with her past?"
"What past? In all the years I've known my grandmother, she has never once, before today, ever mentioned the Titanic."
"Not once?"
"Not once."
"Huh...I guess that means we're all meeting her for the first time."
Rebecca looked at him hard.
"You think she was really there?"
"Oh, yeah." He nodded. "Yeah, I'm a believer. She was there. You disagree?"
"Of course not. But I'm glad that you're not thinking that she made all this up. My grandmother isn't crazy and she's no liar."
"I know."
"Can I go to my cabin now? I'm tired too."
"Sure. Thanks for talking to me. Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
Rebecca proceeded toward her cabin, Shiki watched every part of her until she had disappeared behind the door. Suddenly he felt an arm on his shoulder turned to see Weisz looking at him with his eyebrows going up and down in a suggestive manner.
"Rrreeooow!" He purred.
"Shut up!" Shiki shoved him away at the implication, and later retired to his own cabin.
The very next morning, Lucy true to her word, was up at the crack of dawn and ready to continue with her story.
"In life I would later learn that I was not the only one aboard the ship that night who had met someone incredible." Lucy began. "That very same night, my friend Gray was still exploring the ship and writing down every little detail of the vessel. He had even gone as far as into the boiler room, and it was on his way back from there that he met a girl who was very different from me. She was poor and penniless, but not at all afraid to be herself. She always had so much love and sweetness to give."
"But what does this have to do with the diamond?" Weisz asked.
"I'm getting to that. Patience is a virtue, that neither one of you have. Work on that."
Rebecca willed herself not to laugh.
"Now where was I? Oh yes, so Gray was just coming back from the boiling room and making his way through the third class level..."
Gray was walking around in the part of the ship where the third class cabins were while finishing up in writing the last few details of what he had observed today.
"So much in just one day." He thought closing his journal. "I wonder what tomorrow will bring?"
He looked up from his journal and realized that he may have taken a wrong turn or two, because he was almost certain that he shouldn't have been in the third class cabin area.
"Oh great!" He groaned. "I really shouldn't wander around so much when I have a very weak sense of direction."
He opened his journal again and started skimming through his notes, hoping that he had been smart enough to write down where the quickest way back to first class was. Then suddenly, his hearing picked up the sound of music. Music being played by a flute, a wooden flute if he knew his instruments. It sounded like it was playing a folk song and it sounded very good. He wondered who the musician was.
With his curiosity peeked, he followed the music through various corridors. When he was getting close, the music stopped and he could now hear two voices conversing.
"Come on Juvia, sing it." That sounded like Gajeel. "You know you want to. It was always your favorite because I told you Mother would sing it."
"Yes but I never heard her sing it." He heard a woman's voice reply.
"But you still wanted to sing it just like she could, and I bet you can now."
"No I can't."
"Come on, please?"
"What if someone hears me?"
"So?"
"I don't want to embarrass myself."
"You're going to. Besides, the old hag is going to be outside smoking for the next hour, let's make the most of it, huh?"
"Alright. But only because there's no one else close enough to hear me."
Gray heard the music play again and this time the melody was accompanied by the most lovely and ethereal voice the young man had ever heard.
"I wish I was on yonder hill
'tis there I'd sit and cry my fill,
And every tear would turn a mill,
Iss guh day thoo avorneen slawn.
Shule, shule, shule aroon,
Shule go succir agus, shule go kewn,
Shule go dheen durrus oggus aylig lume,
Iss guh day thoo avorneen slawn."
Gray found himself being unconsciously drawn closer and closer to the unseen singer. It lured him down three doors and he stopped at the fourth door where he learned that this place held the source of the music and voice.
"I'll sell my rock, I'll sell my reel,
I'll sell my only spinning wheel,
To buy my love a sword of steel
Iss guh day thoo avorneen slawn.
I'll dye my petticoats, I'll dye them red,
And 'round the world I'll beg my bread,
Until my parents shall wish me dead,
Iss guh day thoo avorneen slawn."
The door was creaked open, Gray carefully and quietly peered inside to see the people inside. He was so determined to know who the singer was, that he had forgotten how improper this looked. He could see Gajeel sitting on one bunk bed, playing a wooden flute. And he could see that sitting across from Gajeel on the other bunk, singing along with the tune, was Juvia.
"I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
I wish I had my heart again,
And vainly think I'd not complain,
Iss guh day thoo avorneen slawn.
But now my love has gone to france,
To try his fortune to advance;
If he e'er come back, 'tis but a chance,
Iss guh day thoo avorneen slawn.
Shule, shule, shule aroon,
Shule go succir agus, shule go kewn,
Shule go dheen durrus oggus aylig lume,
Iss guh day thoo avorneen slawn."
Gray was instantly fixed into astonishment when he saw the fair young lady of wondrous beauty. And despite her humble clothes and lodgings, she had to be the prettiest girl he had ever seen.
"Hearing you sing always makes me think of Ma." Gajeel said. "She'd be proud to see the kind of woman you've grown up to be. Her and Da."
"I hope so. I really do." She sighed in a bittersweet tone. "Can you imagine what they would say if they were here with us? What they would think of the ship? What was the rest of it like? Selene wouldn't let me leave the cabin all day."
"Well since we're third calls there are only so many places we can go to. But everything here is a beauty Juvia. Even where they let the dogs shit."
"Did you see the ocean?"
"Yep, and it was as deep and blue as your eyes."
Juvia smiled at the compliment.
"Do you think Selene will let me explore the ship tomorrow? She can't seriously mean to keep me here throughout the entire trip."
"If she does, I'll help you sneak out. I may not look like it, but I'm way smarter than her."
"I believe you."
"Tell you what, tomorrow morning we'll get up early while she's still asleep and- Hey who's back there?!"
Without thinking, Gray had leaned out too far against the door and caused it to become more ajar. This allowed Gajeel to spot his figure, and when he stood up, Gray bolted.
"Stop! Come back here ya peepin' Tom!"
Gajeel chased after Gray however the American fellow was a much faster runner. Ran so fast that Gajeel didn't have time to recognize who it was, and eventually he was able to give the angry Irish man the slip. But in haste to flee, Gray had dropped his journal at the doorway which Juvia discovered. She picked up the journal and studied the details of the cover carefully. She could tell from the design and the material that this was an expensive item, and she figured that it probably belonged to someone in first class. If Gajeel had found it, he would have must likely sold it or chunked it, saying,
"Serves the shaobhadh right!"
But Juvia didn't think so, and it's not like Gajeel was a perfectly proper and chaste gentleman all the time. She could recall one Summer, years back, he and the other village boys would sneak off from doing their chores to spy on the village girls at the swimming hole. Juvia was six at the time and one day she followed him out of curiosity then innocently exposed their perversion by calling out to him. Needless to say Gajeel and every one of those boys earned themselves a nasty whippin from their fathers.
"Peeping Tom or not, this person is entitled to have his personal property returned to him." She thought. "And plenty of decent people are guilty of peeping."
For a moment, she stopped to make sure that her stepmother wasn't coming by the cabin at the moment. When the coast was clear, she stepped out of the cabin and went up the stairway, searching for the quickest way up to the first class level. She expected to just go up, find the owner of the journal, return it to him, then scurry back down into her cabin and that would the end of it. Little did she know that this would just be the beginning