Hell Hath No Fury - Book One

Piercing

It was dark and Ava had been patiently waiting for their night out to start. Theo rejoined her, then Xyra followed by Cooker. Cooker had been sleeping for most of the sun and then drinking the other part of it. She had taken a nap to get ready for another round of drinking. Ava worried about Cooker's internal organs. They didn't bar hop that night, instead, they were sticking to a bar close to the port. It was one they had been in on the second night, although the details of her time there were hazy.

Ava didn't drink anything, her stomach threatening to quit on her if she even attempted to take a sip of the foul-tasting dark liquor they served there. It was a laid back evening compared to their previous ones, the four of them just sat around and talked as the night passed them by. She was asked a little bit about herself by Xyra and Ava glanced at Cooker. Cooker had her glass raised to her lips, peeking over the rim to watch Ava respond.

Ava told the group that she was one of many children. She was raised pretty wealthily but she was out of the spotlight because she hated all of it. Ava had been tutored from home and she had decided to run away because of an impending marriage. She tried to stick as close to the truth as possible, omitting only her family name and her status as a noble. She did that partly to ease her own conscience about lying and partly so it was easier to track what she had told people. Ava in turn raised her own questions and found out more than she had expected from Xyra.

Xyra was from a great house in North Efriti. She ran away and stumbled across Theo shortly after Theo herself had left home. Xyra renounced her last name a few lengths before, legally, but had been a practicing "no-namer" for a long time before that. No-namers were those born with a last name that subsequently lost or renounced it. Xyra was an only child and was only 8 when she ran away and Ava was shocked that people that young could survive out in the world all by themselves. Ava could now establish a timeline in her head, Theo left home and met Xyra and then two lengths later Cooker joined them and they had been together ever since. Ava had managed to piece that together from cycles of collected information.

Like most of their conversations, they were about four dozen topics away from where they had originally started and they began to talk about tattoos. Xyra explained she had none, she was not a fan of pain and didn't ever want to endure the harsh process of it. Cooker and Theo booed and mocked her but Ava sympathized with Xyra; she wasn't sure tattoos were her thing either. Ava looked at the two tattooed pirates, she couldn't even tell how many tattoos they had, where they had them, where they began or where they ended. The designs that were visible on Cooker were intricate and looked like it took a lot of time and grueling stabbing. Theo was always wearing clothes that covered up her tattoos so Ava never really caught a good look at them.

"Speaking of, you reckon we should go get a small one done now?" Cooker asked and rolled up the sleeve on her left arm, "I've got space right here."

Cooker pointed to a spot on the inside of her forearm and Theo held out the same spot in hers, "Mine is empty too. We should get a siren on it."

"Aye, matching mermaids," Cooker chuckled and they shook on it.

Ava was baffled at how easy they were deciding to get something on their body for the rest of their lives, "That's all it takes?"

"Aye," Xyra answered for them, "a siren is a very sensible idea compared to others they've had in the past."

"I am officially at my limit with hearing shit talked about me. I am an excellent person with excellent judgment and I will not be told otherwise. Now let's go get our bodies permanently marked with painful needles," Theo got up and they all followed her request.

Ava had experimented a lot since stepping aboard the Scorned Woman but nothing could get her to get a tattoo. For some reason, the pain and the permanence scared her. She felt that this adventure she was on was a dream she was going to get woken up from at any moment and a tattoo would make her undesirable to her family, leaving her with nowhere to go. To affluent Baethan people and those with last names, tattoos were equated with criminality and poverty. Those with no last names were identified by their tendencies to get tattoos. Ava was afraid that if she were to ever have to go back that she would be dug a grave for having marked her body.