Jewel of the Sea [Black Sails]

Chapter One

A/N: Images used are just found from google searches (unless otherwise stated as fan art given to me).. I don't art well

(Alira)

The salty sea breeze ripped through my long-tangled waves of unruly icy blonde hair as I gripped the rope net of the shrouds leaning out over the sea as The Atlas cut through the crystal-clear waters. Sea spray splashed up misting me as we continued on our course, returning to port at Nassau. We'd completed our first successful voyage since arriving at Nassau. I'd been sailing with my elder brother, Captain Viktor Krasimir, and his small crew since we left our home in the Asian isles to make a living in Nassau.

Behind me, the men of the crew were skirting their duties laughing boisterously and proudly exclaiming which whore was going to be walking away with their earnings and what establishment they'd be pissing it all away on drink, drugs and whores. I cast a glance over my shoulder to the men behind me. My brother and a handful of our closest friends who we'd grown up with over the years had set sail nearly a year ago, it had taken us almost that long to reach Nassau. We'd faced many obstacles along the way, casualties from sea, foe and disease, we suffered through illness, starvation and overexposure to the harsh elements, but we persevered. After losing so many of our friends along the way, my brother began hiring crew members on from various ports we landed, and now when I looked at the crew around me, I found fewer and fewer kind faces I recognized. Most of the crew were strangers to me, I hardly knew any of their names and they all kept their distance.

One of the hired-on crew members had made the mistake of trying to pick me up, Viktor punched him so hard his neck snapped from the blow, and since then the crew hired on avoided me like the plague. My brother was a fearsome looking man of seven and twenty towering taller than any man I'd ever seen easily surpassing seven feet (2.23m). His height was matched only by his brawn and brute strength, he was built like an ox, all rippling muscle and cold sharp features. Everything about him was hard and cruel, he wasn't always cruel. When I was a child he'd always treated me gently and with affection, he always doted on me, but after losing so many of his closest friends and the woman he loved, he grew cold, even toward his beloved sister.

My gaze flit to the main mast as I felt a shift in the wind, those fools were too busy losing themselves in their perverse fantasies of drowning in booze and whores they hadn't secured the tie downs. I spotted the cabin boy a young lad of nearly twelve climbing the shroud toward the crow's nest and groaned, the gust was going to topple him, a fall from that height was lethal. Swinging myself onto the deck, I darted forward and caught one of the loose ropes the fools had forgotten to tie down just as the gust hit the main mast. Everyone panicked as the cabin boy let out a yell of terror as he was suddenly knocked from the shroud.

I swung through the air holding the rope tightly between my thighs and winding it around my leg leaving a single hand free so I could catch the boy before he fell to his death. He gasped as I caught his hand in mine. "Wrap the rope around you, quick!" I yelled, there was going to be another gust.

He scrambled to do so with his free hand wrapping the rope around his waist twice while desperately clinging to my hand. The second gust was much stronger than the first and propelled us to the foremast. I struggled to swing the boy forward.

"Grab hold of the fighting top!"

He scrambled to do as he was bid clinging desperately to the ropes on the foremast, I released him once I was sure he had a foothold before landing nimbly across the yard arm for the lower mast sail. I held back a laugh as I noticed the boy clinging to the foremast for dear life though he was safely tucked on the fighting top and had thigh high railing all around him to keep him from falling out.