The tide turns

Chapter 1 / Desperation

Warning: This story contains manga spoilers.

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Greenland was just a small silhouette on the horizon, and it looked smaller than Gudrid had ever imagined it would be. It had been her whole world, her tiny village, her parents's vik, the sheep, Leif, Tulla, and their farm, and the lines that were drawn in the sand.

She remembered every line, every dot, and every circle, the landmasses and the currents; she had drawn them by herself a thousand times. She wondered about the lands far beyond Greenland, about the people, the food, the forests, and the wild nature that could grow there.

She wanted to go; she had wanted to go since the first time Leif told her about it, and she had tried to go as well, storing away on his merchant ship, hiding in barrels and sacks, but she was always found and thrown back onto shore, and she was always told the same thing: "Women can't be sailors."

The life others wanted for her, as an obedient wife and eventual mother trapped in Greenland for the rest of her days, was not what she wanted for herself.

But she was a woman, and according to Leif, women weren't meant to sail.

She tried again, and again she was yelled at and thrown back onto the shore. They would never allow her to go with them.

She would never be able to leave Greenland if she didn't take her life into her own hands, so Gudrid had stolen a row boat that was mounted to a pole in the water. To an adult, the water went to just above the knees; to her, it was to the waist, and it was freezing cold.

In hindsight, she should have gone back home and taken a blanket, some food, and fresh water before she untied the boat and inelegantly crawled into it. She lied there at the bottom of it for multiple minutes, rubbing at her wet legs and trying to get them warm again. By her head were a couple of ores and an old fishing net, and at the moment she decided that that was all she would need.

That's how she ended up on the ocean, further from home than she had ever been, and she was still going. The ores were in place, and she was silently drifting further away. Still, she was not scared, not in the least.

She stood up in the small boat, and she almost lost her balance and fell over when it started swaying and tipping. She probably wasn't supposed to stand up in it, but she steadied herself, lifted her arm far above her head, and howled with laughter as she waved goodbye to Greenland. 'Good riddance,' she thought.

For a moment, she wondered what Tulla would think when she realized that she was gone. Tulla, her sister-in-law, had been good to her, and it almost made her feel bad to leave without saying goodbye or thanking her for all she had done. Almost. She would probably think she had finally managed to successfully stow away on Leif's ship.

No more marriages, no more stupid womanly expectations—Gudrid felt as free out on the ocean as she had always imagined she would be. Nobody else could understand that.

She sat back down in the boat with a thumb before she wetted her finger in the puddle on the bottom of the boat and drew lines on the dry wood. She couldn't remember all the names of the lands surrounding Greenland, but she knew that Iceland was close, but she didn't want to go there. From what she had been told, Iceland seemed even worse than Greenland. cold and barren. She wanted to go farther.

Gudrid, unfortunately, didn't know how far was too far for a small row boat like hers. She would have to cross the ocean, not just a small body of water; it was massive, and the ocean was dangerous, with unpredictable and tall waves the size of houses and storms appearing on a clear sky.

It had been a mistake.

Maybe if she had realized that then and noticed the dark clouds on the horizon, she could have still managed to row her way back to shore, but she didn't. Gudrid was optimistic, and she kept going, and that would almost cost her her life.

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Gudrid had lost one ore and the other was stuck. The small row boat was taking on water as it was thrown around by massive waves, and the rain pelted Gudrid in the face like arrows.

She realized her mistake.

It had been quiet and all had gone well for 7 hours after she left Greenland's shores, but then she had sailed into a storm.

The ocean was no longer blue, reflecting the endless sky, but black. It was like an abyss that was trying to swallow her whole.

Gudrid looked around frantically; her hair, having come undone, was wet and sticking to her face as she tried to spot land or maybe another boat with more experienced sailors, someone that could save her.

She was going to die. She was only 13, and she was going to die alone and scared, never having lived out a single dream or desire.

"Help!" She screamed, her voice raw. She had already screamed and cried so much that she no longer knew if she was trying to call out to humans or gods. "Ple, please don't let me die here!" Nobody listened, of course—not humans, gods, or the ocean itself.

All Gudrid could do was shiver from the cold as she held onto the remaining ore, her knuckles turning white from the strain, and wait for the inevitable. Eventually, her boat would flip over in the storm, and that would be it. She would drown.

It happened in mere minutes. The wind grew stronger, the rain heavier, and then, with one large dark and looming wave from the left, her boat was hoisted up, and then it flipped over completely and sank into the darkness, and Gudrid sank along with it, letting out one last scream.

The rain had already felt cold on her skin, but the water of the ocean was colder and shocked Gudrid to her core. Almost immediately, she felt too weak to move her limbs at all.

Her heart was beating fast, and her lungs felt so empty that they ached. She drew half a breath in an instant, desperate to get air, before she greatly regretted it, feeling her chest fill with water.

She was drowning.

She was going to die.

In that moment, she thought of the family she had left behind: her in-laws, her parents, and her siblings. She was never going to see them again.

It was a mercy when something hit her hard on her head and knocked her out.

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I've been hesitant to post this on Wattpad since I know that this ship isn't that popular, but I've decided that it can't really hurt, so here you go