(№7.3)

He tilted his hand as a breeze caught his hair, eerily and happily fiddling at the long, bottom-reaching coat he always wore, rough in texture thanks to the salty spray of the sea, conferring its own private authenticity. The waves sloshed below him and about, their beating against black wood engraving the air with a melody of its own, like a pulsating, thrumming rhythm. Above, the clouds gently caressed the curve of the atmosphere lovingly, a nice ring intermixing in the symphony of the world, perceived only by his ears. 

The world around always in motion, never standing still, never completely silent.

And yet not a single sound came from the body, the inner anterior of the ship, as if the silence had been dictated by some immortal rule. 

The Captain sighed, turning to cross the deck and to swiftly open (in the blink of an eye even) the door to the cabin of his Navigator on the upper deck, who currently thumbed through a stack of uneven maps, a slight furrow creasing his brows. Some silver pens, a compass, a sextant and a circle sparingly laid on his desk, the small cabin only illuminated by the cold flame of a blue oil lantern, the flame held steadily aloft, yet twitching slightly at the sight of its Captain.

Not a feather of personal belongings had found its way inside of the private cabin, but maps on every available spot, either hanging, rolled, stacked, flattened, piled, assorted in compartments, in varying states of decay and in nuances of cedar to burnt umber were spread and visible on every horizontal surface, even dangling from the walls, kept together by silver rings. 

It was to their benefit not being confronted by the deadly bleaching of the Sun. Though the humidity of the sea proved an equal deadly conqueror.

The air was always tight and tautened, dry to not have implied humidity accelerate the inevitable decay of the quality of the paper.

The Navigator prudently turned to face him at once, caution and respect in display of his quite neutral features. He appeared to mostly find the presence of his Captain bothersome, perhaps because he saw him, torturing, sending to death and cursing entire cities with a mere gesture of his prominent hand, and also the specialty granted for his shallow social behaviour and inability to pursue a liking amidst a crowd. Indeed it proved these days hard to find one tolerating his difficult presence, demanding respect and fear concurrently, two contradictions battling constantly, as was his seemingly calm demeanour quick to erupt in fits of unbearable anger, which could combust continents.

On the other way around, the Captain himself always sensed something slightly perturbing about the form of the creature steering his ship through the seven seas and beyond, but it never came to mind what exactly appeared to derange him;

The Captain sometimes figured his sun-kissed, tanned flawless, marvellous skin didn't look quite that right, as If he had skinned another creature to take on a more humane form, disguising his identity completely from what other hole he had crawled out to begin with. The Navigator's brown hair shone also so brightly polished, brimming and bending the sparse light by itself in impossible angles, sometimes appearing to give him a halo crowning which was quite laughable regarding their occupation, to consider thinking him to be an angel.

His eyes shone too brightly and his voice rather resembled the chiming of a bell than the painful screeching of the dead, their moaning and groaning usually unpleasant, even to the Captain, who only liked the screams of his living prey.

He wasn't quite like them also for the fact to never having to step outside or go to their sanctions with them, never leaving the ship afoot. Frankly, since they were simply forced to want and need the sanctions, he had never judged them, equally as he never felt the yearn to come join:

He wasn't alive of course too, the Navigator, but rather in the sense that he never had been to begin with, not truly, always rather in the middle of a spectrum of a conventional gamut of black and white, locked up in the grey area with them too.

Still, there was this absolute brilliance profoundly convulsed in the muddying darkness of secrets and enigma the Navigator decided to carry as a coat, but the Captain mostly sensed offness in the fact that he knew him for many, many years and in surety never exchanged more than fifty words with him.

Granted, he was never a talker himself, but the all-recurring arguments and deeply troubling conversations he had to forcibly have with his First and Second Mate only to amuse especially her during particular saturnine times loosened his tongue once in a while, finding it pleasant to talk about the weather this night, the cultural hypocrisy of humans thriving right and left of this bay or any other issue of her choosing, she felt at ease to heartily complain about, a fragment of humanity clung unto, which never applied to the Captain.

Now they both looked at each other and the Captain thought to recognise something seeming to be pity in the eyes of his counterpart and tasted pain in the air accompanied by a tension as thick and cuttable as a slice of good bread. His sharp senses agreed with him to only find weakness in this obvious attempt of portraying compassion.

He furrowed his brow at that reaction, regarding how an oil lamp curated more sentient emotion than the creature in front of him. Usually.

Had the past night and the violent bloodletting of just another living creature bothered him to this extent, right on their ship, the taste and stench so protruding, he still could sense the stain where death had mingled from here? No, it couldn't be that. They managed to exceed in far worse in the past and not a foul molecule had floaten through the night back then, which could be referred to the dark emotions emitted from the Navigator.

Now he did remember, why the verbal exchange had been so limited; there simply was not the need established to speak, when a mere glance sufficed to know everything about the being standing in front of you. 

The Captain broke the saturated, distressing silence exhaling useless air, which tasted like parchment paper on his tongue and said in a commanding manner: 

"We need to find a place to land on shore, as soon as possible. Given the ... unexpected circumstances presented to us in the past couple of days and the rummaging activity of the sky, we can't afford to run low on supplying ourselves". His words sounded unmoving, uninterested to his own flat ears. Dead. Just dead, accepted, buried, granted, an amusing eulogy praised in memory, carved till void. Hurtful, how his ability for expression to be restricted to the outside world and the innuendo only occurred inside for his own liking, or rather his suffering.

Maybe ever so lightly impelled, regarding what had happened last night, the toll it took and the price it paid.

It was just a neutral collection of sounds not giving away to the magnitude of sentiments he festered in his insides. He sounded bored. Over it. Neutral.

Even the Navigator - definitely being older than him, thus even more pragmatic, usually - seemed to be taken aback by his languid expression and his big soft brown eyes spoke full of concern.

He would now rather prefer to see the lack of any, prefer all past serenity over this nonsense. What an unusual night. Almost that troubling, he thought about making his grievance known by "tsking" humanely. 

All things come to an end, but for the ending to commence, there needs to be a debut.

"I am onto the task, studying the according maps, before your arrival. I possess quite a figurative compilation of maps originating from this area and might just locate a hidden bay we will be able to anchor in", the Navigator said in his usual carefree, ample voice, pulling out two sheets of brittle fine paper, carefully placing them on his desk. Not a care in the world, as if he had never seen misery spitting and revulsing in his face.

The Captain nodded. "Excellent. I already obtained information about a gathering of humans who abandoned the belief and refused to sacrifice to their respective gods. We will put them on trial". His raspy voice now became from dull, neutrally bored to almost eager, blood-thirsty, as he couldn't wait to let the humans who stopped to sacrifice be the sacrifice.

'Just like the little petty murder-pawn they want me to be', he figured, already turning around to leave in aversion to himself and to stare a bit more grimly at anthrazit clouds, scheming a plan that might not terribly fail, as a voice behind him goes on, sounding awfully indignant: "Really? That's why they are "put on trial"?" The sardonic irony was dripping from his words, alike his utter dislike. 

The Captain faced his Navigator again with a sour expression, the candle light of emotions flickering steadily to rather negative ones, for being questioned in his choices, churning in apology equally, since this was as good as it got, for the haul to be this meagre and pathetic. They just needed something quick and efficient. What was really disturbing though, was the ironic, challenging tone sending chills down. Oh, what an unusual night, how long he hadn't been challenged so indignantly, by his own crew member nonetheless. 

"Are you disobeying me to your apparent better judgement?", he asked in return with a hint of irritation in his voice, feeling his frustratingly neutral expression shifting, the mask misplaced by the crate of a volcano beneath.

Finally, the shell put on him seemed to be more or less cracking, if only for this instance and only, because his own horrifying fire melted it away.

The Navigator's eyes glinted knowingly, and he leaned himself against the bare wooden wall of his small cabin, considering his following proposal carefully.

"No, I am simply asking if we have more fortunate alternatives to face and souls to spare than to grant them with the worst burden of all for such a strait crime. It's not like we practise what we preach".

The air cackled and buzzed between where the eyes of the two met, toxic electricity enough to apply, as life wire replaced his blood vessels furiously brimming, angry with his opponent and himself, for one to interfere in arguments he possibly never could comprehend and for the other to be such a manufactured, bred little puppet with strings he thought to have neatly trimmed decades ago, emerging indestructible.

"Don't you think I would have chosen the fastest and most guiltiest people to ensure we are well hedged for our travel back and to face whatever the Wild Hunt sends in our faces?"

His words now weren't calm, as they escaped his ravenous, vengeful-yearning being, but he had no choice, he had no say, he had no will in this; For he was bound by ancient laws, rules, just like the Navigator was reckoned to be silent, have his secrets curated for all he cared and manoeuvre the ship whether the captain would advise, just how his First Mate had her own tasks and same strong desires and the Second was barely standing himself, faltering under the constant strain of guilt he himself knew well. They all were supposed to work like stoic clockwork, and if they didn't...

The Navigator looked at him with narrowed eyes and spoke calmly: "I just find it quite interesting how you seem to only further aggravate your grievance and bestow it jolly onto even more people, just like what occurred the forth night".

The Captain shook his head at him, his hungry heart wanting to rip this beautiful face to shreds.

"My grievance, is quite my problem, I would say, as is all of this quite not my choice. Apart from that, these people are not people, not anymore. No men and women left among their ranks, only behemoths in bodies praising civility and morality, while squashing it with their feet, the next second. All alive and in perpetual misery, the species of the thinking animal, more need than thought, spiralling forever more in a vicious cycle, providing the energy they need in order to survive and pass on their mortal fault to descendants, evermore staining the earth of this world. My only grievance is the fact they have the will to change that, but not use it, and thus emerges the justification to do it for them, as they cannot cut the own threads binding them in their joke", his eyes locked deafeningly with his counterpart who now only seemed like an insecure boy, shrunken and dispelled to his lowly position, uncertain, crumbling and nothing more. "And thus are we, the means to keep the living in check".

The Navigator didn't object to that, only seemed upset, sorry, as he would be the one to name responsible. Yet there was a question, brimming in his eyes, the Captain shaking his head slightly at it, barely able to contain his pitiless rage, to be afflicted to just another one of his own.

The Navigator swallowed it down, and instead began something similar: 

" I did not mean to dispute with you about things intrinsic to the world and impossible to alter, but rather just to ask...

How is she?"

The tension relented from one second to the other, just how stale bread gives its sad last puff when being cut into. They would never turn to talk about such figures, such subjects openly, yet well, it happened to be a night of odd rarities.

The Captain studied his Navigator for a while, now brimming more than ever with naïve and youthful convention, he normally just stuffed himself full, shrouded it hoping no one to see, so no one would claim him to be an imposter on a bleak ship occupied by the Dead, willingly though wearing this air and standing to face him.

He was so full of life it was ridiculous.

He shouldn't care.

They both shouldn't.

They weren't alive, it should be out of his hands to steer his fate, and yet last night, seemingly he did just do that: Act on the impulses of his heart.

Funny though how he asked how she was and didn't conclude she would now be nothing else than hollow and destroyed, as this was exactly the choice he made.

'The only trickling flame on this damned ship, fighting to remain alit' , coursed through his head, while he shook it.

Shall he say 'fine' just for good humour?

The night so long terminated and shifted bland to be humorous in the slightest. If he was to, he would have either laughed in outrage, or because it fit like the glove did the hand.

Instead, he turned his back to him, mumbling only an "It is, what it is" on his way out.

Now the last scrap of cool anger has been taken away from him.

He was trapped within, not a flag to hiss to warn and cry to people, why more stormed in him that it should be.

An empty shell, only filled by the misery and yells of those poor fellows who were destined for elimination on his bloodied hands, every scream, every severing of flesh and skin conserved and collected in him, another burden to carry.

It reminded him of her odd, wincing breathing sounds, lastly having useful lungs, hands grabbing her throat, more and more blood trickling and trickling down, until seized by death.

He was well accustomed to cries and screams of any kind.

The stitching of her neck had been testing his patience, ornery black thread refusing to be mended, as he closed the wound to better heal.

Injuries were taken over the border.

His pale hands scooted out from the long sleeves of his hood, accosting the railing as wind roughly tugged at their black linen sail and how wind caressingly toyed again with strands of his hair and his hood.

He sent an irritated look towards the sky where his foes rested, but thought to himself it was worthless, because he probably looked still neutral, still unfazed, still like a statue, glinting malice in his bland eyes further provoking their spirits only more.

He didn't feel the cold of the blazing breeze or the gnawing chill.

The Captain wondered what could have happened out of the silly little story about a human girl, who once almost pierced him with an arrow she shot at their Ship to communicate with them, in another life, another story that had never happened, an instance seen by him, but not executed.

Better to remember it as such a fiction, for reality had shaped fairy tale into a horrific nightmare.

And now it wouldn't matter because he enslaved her to him just as how he was enslaved by his mother who had betrayed him to be spared of her punishment, punishing him still after all this time.

You, my heir will kill them all, she said to him in a lovely voice for it was her who should be trapped a statue, a lonely figure forever, condemned to give a part of herself away to every singular separate change, as he did, until there would be nothing left for charitable distribution, perhaps the day everything would be finally over, the day they could only hope would arrive rather sooner, than later.