𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐍𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐍

𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

───── A LONG TIME AGO, someone told Eniya that freedom was the sea under one's feet and the wind at one's back. He had spun her tales of friendship that could weather any hard time, filled her with fantastic stories, and then went on his merry way, never to be seen again.

She had been left with dreams she had no right to entertain and hope that she had no right to feel.

Some part of Eniya blamed that man for where she had ended up. Some part of her still held a childish admiration for a man who carried himself with a confidence she knew she would never truly have.

Both parties agreed that should she ever run into that old con artist again, Eniya would strangle him.

Freedom, as she had come to learn, was more than that.

It was impossible to obtain, for one. Blackmail was commonplace, and debts and slavery could ruin lives. It seemed everyone was scrambling to have something to hold over another's head. Everyone had duties that would smother them, or they had to answer to someone.

Freedom in its most authentic form was nothing but a pipe dream.

Though she used to hold hope that it was something she would have for herself, Eniya had quickly been brought back down to reality. She had to turn away from her dream of living on her own merit—and even that had not been a decision she had made for herself.

It happened when she was fifteen.

Eniya had long since parted from her home, but as she crossed from the South Blue into the East, she knew that she would never be able to turn back. She clung to the railing of the ship she had bartered passage on and stared down at the ocean, watching as the dorsal fins of sea creatures raised out of the water, swam alongside the ship, and ducked beneath the waves.

There was no sign that anything was wrong.

Not at first.

It was early morning, and the sky was still gray, the ocean giving off a misty fog. Eniya had watched the horizon with such an attentive gaze, waiting for the fog to clear and give her the view of a golden sky, that she completely missed the sound of waves crashing against a second, sturdy hull.

It wasn't until the ship was practically on them with a Jolly Roger waving that those aboard the commercial vessel even realized they were under attack.

Too many lives were lost that day. The red flag of no quarter—which the pirates raised before the commerce ship and those upon it even had the chance to surrender—was forever seared into her memory.

It haunted her nightmares. By all rights, the fact that Eniya survived a raid was not a miracle but a fluke.

Her life had hit a low; her existence was in a lull, and every day felt the same.

It was as if she were coasting by, moving to nothing but one accident and then the next. Eniya couldn't even attribute her survival to luck because, at some point, good fortune follows the bad. And while she may not have been the most intelligent person to sail the East Blue, she was sure that ending up as a pet for Buggy the Clown was not good luck.