A Vagabond's Tale [COMPLETED]

A Pirate's Tale - Completed!

Isla: I-la
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Chapter 1

The floor lurched beneath Isla's feet, but her footing remained steady. The rock of the ship was like the beating of her heart. Beneath her, the dark wood was worn smooth from time and the harshest weather. Overhead the black sails were taut, eating the wind that collided against the canvas. In the darkness of the early morning, the ship looked like nothing more than a silhouette. It sliced through the water, like a shadow gliding over the land.

Isla cut her gaze away from the horizon and to the storm that lay within the ship's rigging. The crew flew about, putting her commands into action. Around her, the fours corners of the kingdom had been pulled together. Talvish men with the palest of skin, the size of boulders worked beside dark, limber men from the Seau Islands. Stout, coarse Hendrain men traded words with stately, poised men from Loria. They were a collection of sailors that over twenty years had been packed, pressed and molded to form a crew that moved like a creature, fluid and precise.

The sky was lightening, pieces of the sun breaking the horizon behind them. Isla looked skyward, catching the last light of the fading stars. In their final farewell, she read the direction that she already sensed in the dip, bend, and tug of the water.

There was a feeling of peace and danger that lay at her feet. The ocean was a living creature that took what it wanted without mercy or apologies. To many, it was a terror that they only braved when there was no land left to travel.

Isla saw it with eyes of someone who has lived within its hold for years. The swell and fall of its waves were the lullaby that had put her to sleep growing up. The dark undulating land before her was one no man could map, but she knew it as others did not, just as her father had. It was as much a part of her as the blood that coursed through her veins.

As she stared at the endless sea a fire sparked in her deep blue eyes. The strength of her emotions seemed to brighten the gold that ringed the dark color. The source of her fire was the yellow glow of a lantern bobbing on the water and drawing closer. As the sun's rays cut into the night sky the shape of a stern took form.

"That the ship?" Hawk asked, his bass voice tinged with a Seau accent, his charcoal eyes narrowing.

Always standing beside Isla, he was like an unbending presence. A ship's mast, erect and strong.

"That's the ship," she said, her voice a contrast to his own, light and tangled with a mixture of accents. It was a result of growing up around so many languages at once. She had no true home dialect but seemed to fit with all of them.

The two figures standing at the helm couldn't have looked more different. Hawk stood a head taller than Isla with midnight skin, shaved head, broad features and muscles that strained against his homespun shirt sleeves. Even twice her age the wrinkles by his eyes were hardly noticeable.

Heading into her twenty-second year, Isla had honey-colored hair tied into a tail, sharp features, deeply tanned skin, and a lean, agile body. She was the picture of a coming storm, beautiful, captivating and deadly.

Hanging off one shoulder and secured with a strap across her chest was her father's coat. Despite the months of wearing it, it still smelled like him, the smell of the sea. The weight of it on Isla reminded her of the ghost that walked the ship, whispered instructions in her ear and still held the air of command she emulated.

"Captain Zev," Hawk said, "you know this plan is-"

"Completely foolish?" she said, cutting him off and never once looking at him, her eyes forever trained on the beacon in the distance. "Yes."