Tsuki ✔️COMPLETE

Chapter 11: The Piper

The Disaster and the Wanderlust dropped anchor two days later. The two ships pulled up to a coral reef teaming with glistening fish and lowered their row boats to cross the shallower waters as Gaku directed them to a series of small, white beach islands.

Fruiting trees waved their leaves gently in the wind, bounties ripe and bursting, ready for harvest. In the shallows small, silver fish darted to and fro in small shoals around their hulls, suspiciously eyeing the new wooden creatures in their territory. The island ahead looked like a tiny paradise, untouched by human hands.

Rubi sat in the sand under a tree with Indra, eating a spiky fruit that had put up a decent fight until she had sliced it, sketching individual specimens in her logbook and watching the children play in the shallows. Sama was running around like she should be, splashing and throwing herself around in the water with the others her age.

While Kai was further inland, stretching his legs and gathering supplies with the others, she suspected the demon was somewhere in the waves keeping guard.

She had become consumed in her thoughts last night. She was thinking about the prison break, namely those few souls who fell to the ground below when the rope was cut. The two, or more, the guards had intercepted too. Her mind whirred with faces, features swapping in and out, trying to recall their likenesses. It was almost impossible to assume they had survived. She felt torn between hoping they had survived the fall or died on impact.

Mimi had been resting in the side room no more than ten paces away, but as she lay in bed she felt she could not bring herself to wake her.

Rubi mulled over it for hours, a very real red stain sinking into her clean record. What they had done was dangerous. The reality that someone could die had not seemed real in the moment, and now it just made her feel sick to her stomach.

Surely fighting back against the system to free them was better than letting them become a dusty skeleton like that man on the upper floor?

Once the escape was on, there was no doubt they could have been killed by those guards. One went for Mimi, a small and unarmed woman.

You can't always save everyone, she thought. I did my best.

She breathed deeply, trying to appreciate the smell of greenery and flowers. Her sketch was coming along nicely. She liked to draw the intact fruit, a cross section, and the leaves and flowers on the tree which it had come from. While she was not the best artist, still-life was within her skill range. At home, she had always loved the works artists would paint on ceramics for the royal palace. Bright, beautiful fruit and vegetable motifs in powdered quartz and glass paints decorated goblets, vases, crockery, and tiles. Their farming prowess was well known across the world, a huge staple of trade, and they celebrated it openly.

Indra was scrunching his toes in the sand near to her, smiling in the sun and listening to the nature around him. He was enjoying having his feet back on dry land. The sunshine and the air felt warmer without the spray of the sea on your skin.

"When will we head off again?" he asked her.

"Probably tonight." Rubi said. "Setting up camp would be a lot of work and we have the ships ready to go."

"It's been a nice break." he replied. "How did Gaku know where to find this place?"

"He's travelled far more extensively than I have. He seems to know all the best hidden treasures wherever we go. I'll be adding it to my map for sure."

"He's a good guy, Gaku."

"Yeah, he is." Rubi agreed. She closed the log book and put it back in her drawstring bag. "Do you want to go to the water? We can find some shells or something."