Saint Seiya: The Legend of Seiya

82 - The Naked Time

Lunara released the button on the recorder, finishing her fake logbook. She was still lying on a tiny mattress on which she slept at night to wake up at the first light of the morning; and as soon as she woke up she would pull out her music player. For that morning, as soon as she finished her logbook for her imaginary crew, she realized that there was a certain fuss around the boat. She got to her feet, stretched, and hid the music player on a loose board under her mattress.

She went out to the pantry, where the crew usually ate a very thick piece of bread and drank some kind of fruit extract to get them through the morning and sometimes the day. That's when she noticed the first sign of a day that would be much longer than usual: the galleon's head cook, who served the day shift, was sleeping on top of his desk.

"How lazy." Lunara said, and then helped herself to the bread and juice.

The clamor of the boat, like a certain excited din, could still be heard through the wooden walls of the Galleon. In addition to the five main officers, the Galleon also had a crew of nine or ten brave sailors who helped in the operation, mainly so that there could be that change of shifts.

The little girl finally climbed the stairs to the lower galleries and came out on deck to a full-on racket; the first thing she saw, and which was unthinkable, was that the ship's helm was completely unoccupied and turning from side to side, attending only to the moods of the sea.

She looked around and saw a large group dancing in circle very excitedly among themselves near the forecastle. She ran to them and saw that, among them, June was the most animated clapping, singing, pulling rhymes and throwing sailors to the center of the circle to dance. Lunara had never seen the Chameleon Saint so loose and she was torn between the excitement that filled her and the shock of what was happening. But then her little eyes noticed Seiya hugging the keel of the bow with one arm and letting the other sway with the wind that blew the hair from his face.

"Seiya! Hey Seiya, what are you doing?" cried the little girl, climbing onto the forecastle.

But the boy seemed intoxicated with enormous happiness, singing amusing rhymes to the ocean loud and clear, his chest full and high. He didn't seem to listen to her, lost in the madness of the seas.

"Oh, Seiya, that song is terrible. What's going on with everyone?" she asked.

"Lunara..." he began in D major.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Little one, my aurora." he rhymed, and she could see that he was improvising terrible lines.

"Oh no, Seiya."

She left the forecastle and went into the cabin of the only person who wouldn't be carried away by all that nonsense: Captain Kaire. She crossed the deck of dances and sorrows, climbed the quarterdeck and crashed into the Captain's cabin screaming for him, to get out, to help, that everyone had gone mad.

"Leave me alone!" Kaire shouted from inside.

"But Captain, your ship is crazy!" she said.

"My ship!" repeated the Captain, and so, like a lunatic, he was screaming without ever leaving his cabin.

Lunara was a little lost, as it seemed that madness had attacked her Captain as well. She then descended from the forecastle and noticed, glued to the ship's rail, very serious and contemplative, the immediate Geist. She ran to her, for surely she was the only one who could have been sane on a wild night like the one that had apparently attacked the ship.

"Geist, everyone's gone crazy!" she began.

Geist had her eyes focused on the horizon line that divided ocean and sky; her eyes, always so hard, were framed by a sad, arched brow; she had one hand resting on the wood of the rail, as if to keep her balance.