AN: I've been stuck for a while on a different thing for this story, so I decided to change gears and try out a different writing style to see if it would help kick-start my writer brain. And it worked! So here you go.
It starts with a boy.
He's small and poor and has no one to turn to, living on the streets of the Lower City. The boy's never spent a day in school, but he's small and fast and cleverer than the adults give him credit for. He knows how to pick a mark even if he barely reaches most folks' knees, he picks pockets and snatches fallen food and tears off before anyone can catch him. He can fend for himself and that's all he needs. (It is, tragically, all he knows.)
He often lingered by the docks and the taverns, snatching fallen coins and raiding bins for scraps. Where the drunks and the ladies would never pay mind to a grubby, homeless, gutter brat lurking in the shadows so long as they weren't in their way.
(There are more children like him on those streets than the people of the Upper City would ever know. If they bothered to look. Yet they still lauded their city as the Best, rarely ever looking at the people in the city below them, just the ones living at the top.)
But he's young and still learning the world and he makes mistakes. Sometimes he bites off more than someone as small as him could chew, no matter how fast or clever he thinks he is.
He gets caught on a navy ship, clutching a bag of coins that he'd thought he could escape unnoticed with.
He had been sure that, like so many other sailors he'd seen, they would spend their night on the shore in the houses full of pretty ladies or the taverns full of food and drink. Celebrating their feet being on land again after days or weeks or months at sea. Too drunk or too distracted to notice someone as small as him sneaking onto the ship to swipe a single bag of coins.
Once on board, he learns the captain and the doctor are still on the ship talking to each other. So he hides, hoping the two will leave soon and he can escape with his prize. But it's late and dark and the Lower City had been colder than he was used to for too long. The sound of waves and distant voices combined with the gentle rocking of the ship lull him to sleep in the small corner of the warm hold he's hidden away in.
He wakes late the next morning, long after they had left port that day when a sailor discovers him after dropping a box on their foot.
There's a frantic scramble that ends with him cornered on the ship's deck, baring his teeth and growling but sure that he's in for the worst. (He's a little thief, after all. One that's been caught in the act.) But he gets lucky, though he won't truly know how lucky until much later.
The captain is old, gruff, and as soft as a plank of wood, but he and the rest of the crew are all from the Lower City too. He knows what life is like there. They all do.
He looks down at the fierce, dirty child on his deck (dressed in rags and shaking in fear and trying so hard to hide it) and decides there's no reason to be cruel to a kid just trying to survive. No reason to get angry or to hit the kid or throw him over for trying to steal from them. That kind of thing helped no one, and they were navy men. They were better than that.
Instead, he orders one of the seamen to lock the boy in one of the cabins until they can hand him off to a ship returning to their home port.
So the boy is locked in a cabin, where the crew plans to keep him until they reach the restock port to send him home. But the sailors are kinder than the boy is used to people being. They keep him fed and warm and tell him grand stories of life at sea, fighting terrifying sea beasts and vicious pirates and defending the Republic with all their strength.
Every tale is met with childish awe and the Storyteller of the ship adores having such a rapt audience.
But, before they reach the port, the ship hits a snag.
A snag in the form of a ship of pirates that mistake them for a merchant ship they can raid. Suddenly, the Navy Ship is turned into a battlefield that they're struggling to keep above deck because of the small passenger hidden below.
The boy can hear the shouting and fighting above and finds that a seaman forgot to lock the cabin door after bringing him food that day. He slips out into the halls, wanting to know what is happening and hoping to find a better spot to hide. He finds his way to the deck, where the battle is raging loudest, and sees one of the crew knocked prone, an armed pirate standing over them.
People don't realize just how sharp a child's teeth are until those little teeth are buried in their arm.
The pirate howls in pain and the sailor gapes at the child latched onto the man's arm. Then he howls in laughter when the child is knocked off, only to seize a fallen belaying pin and do his damnedest to bash out the invader's knees with it. The seaman gleefully cheers the kid on, shouting "Get 'im Rookie! Get 'im!" and follows in his wake armed with his own cutlass.
The pirates are driven off, and the sailors change how they treat their stowaway.
Before, they had always called him Boy or Brat but now they call him Kid and Rookie and meet his face with grins and laughter. He's allowed out on the deck and given simple chores that even someone as small as he could do. Sailors ruffle his hair when he does well and explain how to do better when he doesn't. Even if he complains sometimes, he doesn't want to leave.
(He's found a life that feels more like home than "home" ever did.)
It's not hard for the seamen to figure out that there's no one waiting for their rookie in the lower city. No parent worrying themselves sick over where their kid has gone and why he hasn't come home yet. He's alone.
The sailors know he's too young to join officially but… Their ship is small, and rarely ever gets inspected by the higher-ups. No one would notice one more body working their decks, so long as it didn't invite trouble. And their fellows wouldn't care if they spotted a kid cleaning decks in exchange for food. (They just- wouldn't mention that the kid was sailing with them too.)
So the Rookie gets to stay, working the cabins and helping clean the decks. And that becomes his life for several years.
But things changed in the Republic and sailors needed to know things now that they hadn't before, things that their crew couldn't teach their little Rookie that he would need to grow up and rise in the ranks. That folks would notice as he got bigger and stronger and others spotted him with them. The captain knew they couldn't keep him hidden with them forever.
So he called a favor from a cousin and struck a deal with their Rookie.
Four years on land, going to school and learning all the things younger sailors were expected to know now, then he could apply properly to the Navy. And the captain would vouch for him and make sure he joined their crew officially. Then he'd be fighting with them, as a fellow seaman, for the Republic. For folks in the Lower City like them.
He's reluctant, of course. (The ship is his home and the crew is his family.) But he agrees.
He stays with the captain's cousin and goes to school. He does his best, even when he wants to bust heads or scream in frustration. But he goes and he learns and gets the grades he needs to be a proper sailor.
In one life, he makes it with very few hiccups.
He gets the grades and joins the Navy. He climbs the ranks and fights for his home, getting the strength and skill and wisdom to lead the people around him. He earns his own ship and crew and strikes fear into the pirates of the sea who think his home is easy prey.
He sails to distant seas and dives to the darkest depths. He sees the best and the worst of the world, saintly souls and age-old grudges. He sticks to his morals through it all and helps those who turn to him for it. (Because he remembers where he started. He remembers being small and hungry and alone. If he can help someone suffering the same things, he will.) He fights sea beasts and pirates and rescues innocent people from disaster and refuses to leave his men behind.
And the sentiment is shared by his crew. It is unspoken, as none of them feel it needs to be said aloud, but they would fight tooth and nail for their captain and follow him to places only madmen would go. (Many times, that's exactly what they do.)
He becomes a hero in the eyes of the people and a Respected Elder of the Republic. He helps change it for the better and acts as a voice for the people of the Lower City.
And when a war long-thought dead returns to the world, he and his crew are ready to fight. The navy is ready to defend their home against the greatest threat it's ever seen, led by the Captain who had once been just another Boy on their streets.
But in another, his captain comes to visit and learns that their rookie has vanished.
He'd gone out two nights before to get something the captain's cousin forgot while shopping and never came back.
Captain and crew scour the streets trying to find something, anything, that could tell them what happened. They find the rookie's wallet, money still inside, knocked under a merchant's stall. And a wizard combing the area because of a strange magic they could feel there, though it was fading.
An alert goes out about the abduction (as that is all they can think of for why a teenager in the Lower City would leave without their hard-earned money) and the sailors of the docks go into their own hunts. Even if the city guards ignore the event, dismiss it as just another runaway, the people of the Lower City go into high alert. Children and teens are kept under close watch and adults spread word of the possible danger in whispers.
They all ensure that the disappearance is Known and that people know who went missing in hopes he can be found and brought home.
(The wizard is kind and determined and tells his fellows of the magic he'd found and throws himself into research when he learns of the young man that may have been stolen away by it. Especially when he sees how little the town's guards seem to care about the incident. He will help, and stars help anyone who tries to stop him.)
The ripples go far and wide, and a watcher none of them knew of notices. They notice that someone who should have been there is suddenly gone.
And they start searching too.
(Because he will be important. He needs to be there, even if no one knows just how important he is to the place he calls home. The light he carries is needed to help make things right, to help rebuild what had already been destroyed once.)