Hell Hath No Fury - Book One

Request for an Invite

For once, Theo allowed someone else to row the boat. The Scorned Woman was behind her, showing up as just a speck on the horizon. They had once again anchored miles from shore out of precaution and were taking two rowboats to shore. They were going to beach and hide the boats a few miles away from the city they were aiming to get passage out of in order to get to Dricaster. The route there had been relatively quick, the winds being on their side, which allowed them to get to Nefriti's coast from the rendezvous in record time. They had taken a more dangerous route to get there in the spirit of trying to cut as much time as they could to make it to the ball in time. All of their plans would be for naught if they missed the ball, they would have no way of reaching Viv.

The route they took was faster than their usual way up the coast but it wasn't often they risked going that way. However, in the face of a lot of the Eloxian warships navigating the waters close to the east coast of Efriti, they had to take the risk and go further into the ocean. This new route was usually avoided because of the sharp underwater formations that could gut a ship open from the bottom. Between Navi and Theo though, they had managed to avoid anything more than superficial damage that could be repaired once they arrived at Corinspe. In addition to underwater formations, the underwater monsters that lurked the seas around that area were an additional threat. Even though Theo was having her own small, not so big, spiral about Riva being angry with her, the lack of any threats from the sea showed her that whatever was going on, Riva was still around.

The way that they were timing things meant that they would arrive either the night before or the sun of the ball, which was cutting it close, but it was better than missing it. They would need to book passage to Dricaster for all of the crew embarking on the mission and they would need their transport to not stop the entire way there if they wanted to make it on time. It would be expensive to convince anyone to provide them that service but hopefully the money they brought with them would more than suffice. If not, they were fucked and had no way of getting to Dricaster.

Theo hadn't been looking forward to the mission at all, she had been dreading it since Xyra proposed it. There were too many unknowns for her liking, the timing, the logistics, the actual mission, the extraction; none of it was set in stone and that made Theo on edge. They would also be on land for a while and nothing made her more anxious than having nothing but miles of soil on all sides of her. But while she was dreading the mission, she also couldn't wait until it was upon them. She wanted a break from the nothingness, from the constant concentration it took to try and be chill, to be calm, cool, and collected. She needed something to direct her energy towards.

It wasn't like Theo was feeling particularly sad or anything but things felt lackluster, empty, dreary the past cycle. Everyone was always working, there was no break from sailing, her companions were never around, and the joy and spirit of the ship was being strained under the stress of everything going on. Not only had the comfort of a relationship with Ava been ripped out from under her, all of her friends might as well have been an ocean away with how little they interacted. Besides that, the sun-to-sun business was fine, efficient, they were making good time but even if the winds were on their side on their trip to Corinspe they would still be unbelievably late. Theo usually didn't mind being late, but every sun she was late to the meeting was a sun that the opposition had an opportunity to control the narrative, to propose a plan for what to do next. Even with the low mood, the stress of threats from the seas, and the worry about their tardiness, her biggest problem was none of those. The thing that was on her mind the most was Riva, who was not gone but could be considered absent at the moment.

Instead of spiraling with thoughts of inadequacy and doubt, of tension and pressure, of heartache and distress; instead of running to Xyra for help and reassurance or to Cooker for advice, she dealt with things internally and without catastrophizing. It sounded more impressive than it was, what might have seemed to others as Theo regulating her emotions during a stressful time was more along the lines of Theo pushing most negative thoughts away. All of the emotional learning she had done with Ava, all of the times Ava pulled teeth to get her to open up had vanished. Theo bottled everything up and had just decided to be relaxed, laid back. She was a chill captain, she was a cool captain; no problems or thoughts of anything except what the next sun brought.