Balance and Wind

Chapter 11

Jysmn had woken before the sun had fully risen, had snuck from her room, to find herself to be the only one awake. No maids bustled around, ready for the morning. No one worked on a ship, whose working hours were from sun up to sun down. This wasn’t something Jysmn was willing to give up just yet.
 

           She remembered laying in her bed, out of protest, for at least another five to eight hours before she dared rouse from bed. But she was a worker now. And there was something of the mornings silence. That, and this was the perfect time to slip out and away from her mother and sister. And the hollow feeling in her chest at each portrait of her father.

            Pulling on an adjustable corset, one Marvella had made for her, she tucked a rather baggy blouse over it. Tucking it beneath her belt, which she fastened her blades too, she looked much like how the young prince would dress in his youth.

            The reminder made her huff, turning away from the mirror, before lacing her boots.

            Sparing her “room” a once over, her stomach churned at how unlived in it looked. What she wouldn’t give to be back in her room on the boat. Her belongings were still strewn through it, marking it as hers, but she doubted she would ever set foot in it again.

            Her boots echoed on the marble floors, which had been shining to perfection, especially in contrast to her scuffed boots. Keeping her gaze ahead of her, and not on all the portraits of her family both past and present, she kept her chin up, dark hair swishing behind her in a too-tight pony tail. She didn’t mind the soft hair that caressed at her shoulders. It had never felt this clean in a long time. Usually she was pulling salt from it, the hair drying out from the coarse sun. she swore she had some blonder highlights, if she looked at it close enough. None of this was important, it was all just in an effort to pretend not to notice the portraits that had been put up. At least ten frames back, she had stopped appearing in them.

            As if she were dead.

            The serious looks on her parents faces told her that she may have had that third strike, if her father had lived long enough to mark it.

            Eyes forwarded, she reminded herself sternly. That deep, commanding voice returning, even if it was just in her head.

            Jysmn finally made it to the back door. It was made mostly of white paned glass, usually opening out to let the breeze from the forest and the beach into their home. Shimming it open, she didn’t bother to disguise her noises. It wasn’t like her mother or sister would hear it. No one ever did.

            Opening it, so that the maids or whoever did it in the morning, wouldn’t have to, Jysmn stepped out in the cool air of the morning. The finely kept backyard was at a contrasted level of light between blue and gold, slowly changing into the morning. Sun rises and sets were better out at sea, in her opinion.

            Wasting no time to do what she came out here to do, Jysmn set off down the too many steps in a jog. Her mind calming, as she tried to repair her land legs. The open field was the very opposite of the cramped levelled space of the ship she was used to.

            Faster than she thought, Jysmn was running along the trail, which led through their small private forest, one their father refused to cut, down to the beach. She remembered the exploring she would do with other kids and cousins, even sneaking down there with Marvella more than a hundred times. Where they had pretended to be sailors. It was also the first place she discovered she had magic. When Jysmn had willed her paper boat Lady Jenny taught them how to make, to glide along the water with a small gust of wind in its sails.