(№3.6)

Her groom grabbed her hand, whisking them out of the bowel's ship outside, where inferno raged.

An assembled convocation of the darkest, loudest clouds filled to the brim with drops and rubbing against each other conquered right above the ship, wind seeped through her hair with freezing claws and pricking needles running down her back, the captain and his crew crouching in the space of the wall all spread, fearful looks locked into each other and prayers mumbled a miracle might emerge yet, when aloft the wailing, nerve-splintering snarl of an animal cornered rang, one you challenged for its hunted prey, when the dark scenery cleared for the briefest of seconds and the screaming of the symphony reached the highest, most glorious, golden apex of crashing and splintering, a lightning bolt precise and the thickness of arms reached for the mast, pointed at it judgmental with the idea of an extended index finger and a lightning bolt struck the ship in sizzling cascades of singed, burnt timber and drops of illuminated water appearing like perfect pearls of crystals flying all around them.

A sharp of the most wicked pole had hit the girl straight in the brow and her long, beautifully hair greedily drank the water pouring from the skies, hanging sluggish over her shoulder, the boat still unceasingly tossed aside and aside.

The girl blinked little below the blood seeping into her eyes, groaned in the blooming tips of pain flaring alive, her groom coughing and sitting up beside her, drenched in shards of sail and wood and wiped desperately the blood from her forehead, half turning and blinking.

Unbelieving, she opened her mouth in disbelief, to perhaps note the obvious, but no words of wise epiphany would come. Trails of blood ran down her cheeks as if she had cried tears of crimson for the disaster evermore that had struck them.

The lightning bolt had fractured wood until meeting deeply the base of the ship, effectively just hitting a huge hole in the boat, the panels coming loose all around her and solely trailing away with the now all too eager sea wanting some bone as a price for the daring passage in such baleful conditions, water surrounding everything under and over deck, trailing down in the cupboard of a room beneath them and taking the lot of screaming crew and groom's family away into the ocean, her promised man gone beside her with the ice-cold water, all her body burned and shrieked as if thrown into blistering grease.

Her sight went blurry, the edges flummery and sounds dulling to ineffective white noise around her, languid slushing and whooshing of wind dimmed down tragically a hundred times, actions happening too fast for her brain to act and react to the consequences.

She bit her lip bloody, desperate to live, and gripped the remaining pole as fixed and grim she fathomed with a roar of ferocity, angry for the world, for the sloshing water, for the Black Sea of threatening her future, making her regret her decision terribly.

Another wave collapsed on the deck, masses of water violently massaging the wood, letting it break, letting it bend, letting it lend violence and toying around in a losing game.

Well, lost for the humans anyway. The crew was fully dipped and far away shipped from the boat, some screaming, some exasperatedly puddling with their arms, but it was a damned engagement, for the doomed tentacles of death lurking in the water gripped their ankles tightly and pulling them under water there, where calmness awaited and the water gloomily would store their skeletons as a keep-safe, until the fish would nibble that away as well and gone would be any idea of mortal residue, gone the image of this bunch of fools.

For several seconds, the girl thought what to do right now, right on the boat, alone and abandoned, as it was slowly and surely torn apart beneath her finger tips, the air clean cut out of her lungs, she desperately attempted to fight against the surface of the water attempting to raise beyond her head, to let it not in her body, to not give in the impulse of breathing in, of giving up, but oh no, where was the sky, the fleeting illumination of a bolting struck again?

The ship was torn again on one side and it seemed like all her useless, pointless questions and the panicked thoughts racing would halt any second now.

She was thrown off and off there, holding the edge of the boat firmly with mighty force, a grip that she hoped would not loosen itself, donating her to the sea where her end wouldn't be far.

Waves from the other side saved her, by flipping the ship to the other direction, the Sea trying not to break its toys before it hadn't properly played with them, no, an easy death was not what should be in store for her. The tales included in the collective of ballads were all brutishly flecked in blood, in hail and fray, and if not that at least remembered by remarkable struggle of scarred survivors.

The ship was staying upright again, all though with its bottom-half missing, kicked by a few childish waves, and slowly sinking, the sea still and anticipating the moment sweetly, letting it drown by the stark workings of physics. The girl was still kicking desperately, she was not dead, holding onto that though. She wasn't dead. Yet.

Intending to stay like that, even with all odds massacring against her goal, she sat upright on her remaining panel, green, ominous lightning striking undeterred of her outright, unjustified misery and thunder delivering matching background music for a good and majestic fiasco, water as if poured out by buckets a last incentive; as these humans were to leave Earth with an inferno, sculpted out of betrayal and wrong decisions, of water and waves, in the middle sitting a trembling girl, with a heaving gown supposed to be her wedding apparel, blessed ironically with a wound suffering by the touch of salt water, wondering how her life would have been under different circumstances, in another story, narrated down by another tale. She wiped the sea water off her cheeks and turned and turned her head to not see a single soul on board, all men lively gulped by the avaricious beast the sea was. It was cruel to compare it with an animal. An animal was afraid, sometimes merciful, brimming with sensations even in the most primal of the forms. The sea was inanimate a monster, harshly and claiming, hungering for souls until the end of its day, until the rays of sun had evaporated each and every drop, only a large gaping hole desecrated a reminder of all the lives it had taken.

Wrong made simile or not, in a world of grey-scaling scenery and roaring, groaning elements of tempest, having claimed all but one soul, the art of poetry, interpretation was rather deemed antic, absurd. Her infliction burrowing a hole in her forehead, blood devoid of prevail flowing in her eyes, pungent with the sea sprawl she had thought only hours ago so calming, touching, reviving. Ridiculous.

She was the last one living.

The last woman standing.

The last hopes of the Dacian tribe to resurrect, to survive all this cruel trick in a complot.

What a heinous joke.

What a cruel, cruel joke of the universe to punish those who cared the most.

With cold limbs, the girl stood up, the oscillating wreck, part of the ship designed very difficult for her and her hands in the eye of mayhem grabbed the mast tight.

She narrowed her eyes, her view shimmering, when she saw the good part of the ship was already gone by the wind and gone by the waves, her throat closing up with frustration and saltwater coiling up in an empty stomach.

She asked herself if she would be in this situation if her mother would have lived, if the Skeleton Crew wouldn't have killed her off, a childhood that deserved to be told, that was wonderful and passionate like in those stories the villagers would sometimes tell, gathered in clusters around the sacred glow of the pyre.

No one would remember her with a twinkle in the eyes, at the mention of wondrous memories. What a fool she was to choose the pedestrian, boring life to die so unsatisfyingly in a battle she possessed none of the tools to properly fight, rather stomped on and beaten, until she would fall asunder, denounced to a skeleton in the boiling precipice alone, nobody finding her remains, ever.

Pressing her face in the tethered wood, she thought about trying to make it up to her; the crew punished thousands offering her recruitment, a resort to the biting ordinary, only to reject it, reject an offer because she was too proud, too stubborn to ever accept someone's help, and realise it only when it was too late. Ere errors would teach an example, it had to happen already once, only in grave, regretful, spitting retrospect, most devastating, when it was too late, which it proved to be right now.

Yet in return, their appearance possibly caused this storm, to let her pay ultimately, as everyone was to have a second chance, but never a third one for redemption.

When the boat collapsed and the girl finally hit the surface with her head and body, she had given up with the world, her weather-resistant resolve shattered by facing her own immaculate stupidity, nibbled and solubilised away, by the grandest proportion of watered down water of the sea and abrading sea water, gladly giving up once and for all.

From the corner of her eyes, she thought to see a man, floating and grabbing harshly a piece of wood with quivering fingers, more reflex than conscious act, shouting towards her and another, huger ship coming slowly towards them, majestic and blue shimmering even though it wasn't night and no shore in sight, the ringing of a million sounds of storm too shallow in her ears, the salt water already causing desired, hollowed hallucinations of what she most longed for.

And it definitely seemed for one second they would heavily fight with the currents too, the storm as well, which couldn't be. That couldn't be her Skeleton Crew, no, who struggled never with the sea as the sea was their whipped, humiliated lap dog.

The wind howled in her ears, tugged at her hair, the waves lusting, pulling at her clothes impatiently, how a man does when undressing a lady in the confines of his chambers, intimately only alight by the flame of a candle, as this scene was lit by the penumbra of gray roaming clouds, when she finally made peace with a world that never wanted her and was tucked under, simply giving up all useless fray.

The first second was soothingly right when she closed her eyes and salt ceased to irritate her eyes and the cooling, flopping currents only pulling her deeper into the delicious, silent gorge. As time trickled by, her movements went rigid and she attempted to swim back to the upper-world, yet when the sea charged you once in its wiring, gripping fist, there was no escape, it was a wet purgatory with screaming souls, squeaking sounds bursting, her limbs uselessly puddling and motioning all around her, her throat hoarse and burning bitterly, ablaze in brazen mettle, the impulse of life-preservation activated in a soul unwilling.

Then, she was completely immersed in the cool, calm water, engulfed many metres and felt as if at peace, singeing paradise.

She breathed it in, let the water willingly in and her body was tugged deeper and deeper, sultry, filling her with water heavier, drinking up any via the pores in her cells and completing her meagre form. They were one and the water was her. Her brain had long descended the thought of hope and now was on it to weaken her pulse and make her as comfortable as possible. Above, a storm hissed and raged. Below, the transitioned deceased had moved on smothered by the pledge of this outwardly dream.

A wooden, sharpened object came prying upon from a differing current, deeply clashing in her throat, biting deep and convulsing out in eddied swirls of blood gently suckled at by the water giggling like a schoolgirl and lusting for more, and more would yet stream into the concoction mixing and connecting. Now it wouldn't matter much if the girl would die because of a stabbing wound or due to suffocating, water burning holes in her lungs the size of finger nails.

She smiled how the water felt like silk on her skin and the grains of salt a caressing, genial touch, her hair batted around like one of the finest fabrics.

The bells were ringing loudly and yet far away, peace was at bay, and she had the sudden feeling her mother was with her, holding her hand with warm eyes hued just like hers, accompanying her by exiting the life of the living and being gone and lost like everyone else would be eventually, guiding, motioning her onward to step on that last delicate obstacle separating both.

Lightning echoed further and further, the waves were far cooler and smooth down here, letting her enjoy her last precious second on Earth, the puddle of blood eddying and surging out of her mortal wound in fine fumes around her form arrayed. The hand of her smiling mother stroking her hair of her eyes and blowing more precious blood off down the abyss carefully.

A cascade of notes, the hulling of leathery greenery, the mesmerising passings of a thousand dawns, fragments when she was at her happiest, memories rushing through her mind, delicious meals, honey on bread, a ray of sunshine, sitting at her cliff, a breeze caught in her face.

The simplest things counted the most and are the most valuable treasure of what mankind could possess for treasure; that she did understand now.

If this was even a sliver of what her dark, sombre eternity was going to look like, death would be so easy. Ridiculous, because not even the span of the five paramount minutes had passed, but let her still acquiesce to fantasy with romantic fingers.

She ought not to die now, not really, don't worry. For her life wasn't hers and her skin augured to belong to someone else.

While cuddling with death's fast embrace, she had no idea what was going on just a few feet above her head, where a man was crying soaked in the streaming of rain thrown as if out of buckets, grabbing onto his piece of wood, cutting his palms open, splints opening deep and a very heated discussion unfolded on board of the blue glowing ship, weaker gleaming as per usual though, thunder only illuminating what might have happened up there.

She barely felt it, how the waves aloft welcomed another guest jumping into the floods, under huge protest of other members on board, the water disgusted, awfully still around that hooded figure, diving deeper and deeper to get through to her.

The girl opened her eyes and gagged, when a cold, freezing hand would grab her tight, enclosing her chest and pulling her to the surface. She fought not and protested weakly. Her limbs were languid and frozen, dark silk touched her skin in burning fix points.

Her ears exploded and back she was on Earth with hell on its loose and waves and thunder battling, lightning shrieking.

The girl heavily breathed in and out, choking and coughing, trying to get the water out, but it was worth nothing, for her gripping wound seized her and she almost completely toppled her weight on the form in hood, drenched in water, easily holding them both above the valley of silence. Her ripped open skin rubbing in a squelching, splashing sound, colouring her dress crimson and spilling like a waterfall down the bulge of her throat, view sizzling and flashing, attempting with no luck nor chance to push her saviour away, as she didn't want to be saved; she wanted to go back, to see her mother and dance with the angels 10.000 miles under the surface, be engulfed in silk and rot to fish fodder, but her hero was too strong for her and arms like steal – (if she recalled correctly out of blurred slit) pale white arms freezing, chilling to the touch – swimming with her towards the blue glowing ship, desperately trying to float up on and not follow the destiny of the other ship, debris thereof still swimming around them, tasked with a very skilled navigator, managing to halt against water and wind, green lightning and thunder four able elements as well.

The lungs of the girl were about to explode with the amount of sea water she swallowed, but why wasn't she unconscious like featured in her father's books?

Disappointing. Why did she have to suffer? Numb fingers of hers grazed the cut and she swallowed, hissing at the smarting.

The world was going under, oscillation carried them across, her hero trying desperately to hold her and fight off the waves, she might just admire him.

Or her?

They reached after what felt like years the roped ladder, climbing their way up board, when a strong breeze hit the both of them without forewarning on the middle, letting them almost fall and tumble in the water once again, for a round two she definitely wouldn't survive, when the girl spotted – with darkened view and kind of sleepy, sunken eyes – her father, holding firmly to the piece of wood, staring at her or better the person embracing her with all might, skin completely drained out of colour and eyes risen in shock.

"...", he tried to spell out her name, tried to mouth it, when her saviour threw a dagger in a quick twist without so much as flinching or turning around, piercing her father's left eye, to let his gaze change quickly, from astonished to knowing, before being claimed by the water almost like his daughter would have been.

It was the last encouraging dap her heart had needed to finally die and become cold, closing her eyes and simply ceasing to try, giving up and yielding finally. She felt like being tossed on hard wood the next second still only barely and someone landing next to her, the vibrations rippling a splitting tide through her lungs as water poured onto her lull, loose head.

Her rescuer came close, embracing her from behind in a one-sided hug and pulled twice on her chest, resulting in her coughing, protruding more blood and gagging and vomiting the sea water on the deck of the blue ship, something no human being could have said about themselves.

She fell backwards as her hero let go of her, rolling to her side, blinking, and remarking a new dark, sudden figure at the edge of her view, heavily blurred, as if twisted by the world to not lay a glance on it just yet, for it couldn't mean a more certain end, this unknown hooded figure dripping wet with rain and hands folded before a chest seeming angered, someone else leaning over her.

The person that saved her.

Her mysterious acquaintance had saved her. Her friend.

She coughed and felt almost relieved, sleepy, and satisfied, intoxicated, before falling finally unconscious, blood rushing out like a never-ceasing pond out of that clashing, unreal wound, violent red and splattering on her beautiful gown.

The other person that later would be more or less distinct to be the leader, the Captain of the Skeleton Crew gestured to her obvious wound that would kill her, grim tension brooding from the macabre shades of whatever lurked beneath the hood.

The person, her hero, her saviour, call her whatever you want, revealed herself to be a young woman with brown hair and amber eyes, the wind pushing her cloak back, about time to make the conundrum that presents the Crew of the dead, less of an enigma and even more a mystery to solve.

Of course, one might only see what one wanted to see, amidst the haziness of a storm, a young girl wearing a cape, certainly being a part of the most famed horror story there is, with an elegance tending to bear quite another ballad poising as explanation.

Nevertheless, she leaned over and felt for the other girl's pulse, undisturbed by the blood running over pallid fingers, her small smile that erupted in her triumph convulsing the other.

Nothing.

Finite.

Dead.

Rain poured down on our girl, who lay motionless on the planks. A foreign thing, a stranger, a doll, an object almost, the breath of life gone and carried away unmistakeable forever.

Her saviour shook her rain wet hair in a meaningful gesture, seeming almost pathetically innocent, as she wasn't going to accept that, even though she knew better.

The captain, who in honour of a death they might have nothing to do with (or did they really), to the - big - surprise of everyone looked indifferently down to the gone girl, bleeding on his deck. He might have been bestowed the face of a monster, a beast, vial creature or the character of the most handsome man standing, but you won't know that for now.

"Please", said the girl in the same dark cloak as he wore, with a calm, weary expression.

She knew he would do it.

He had longed for this instance years ago, seemingly so interested in a pedestrian, extraordinarily normal girl, it was quite curious. And in the end he had almost let her die still, as if curiously wanting to know if she'd retrieve the girl gone for him.

His expression was a mask of hollow equanimity, secretly though content and confident in the saying that no one escaped his Crew once and got away with it unpunished, oh no.

Death made her peaceful face appear much younger, immaculate and unflawed. The face promised to him a millennium ago fetched the desire he curated for too many countless nights.

A girl destined to be gone, before comprehending even the meaning of the word.

He applauded himself for his smart, cunning scheming, self-explanatory gazing up to the clouds, victory inscribed too arrogantly and too soon, but that expression of pure, tenuous serenity would soon be knocked out of his face.

Forgive him, this Captain of the Dead, for his incapable omniscience not even gods fathom to obtain all that simply, gave even himself the semblance of being unbeatable and invincible.

He still had a lot to learn.

But how we have gotten here is probably another beast to tackle, the worst part to explain and even harder to comprehend.

For to understand the end, one might first learn about the origin.