The Adventure on-board the Maria

A Calm Evening

The fire crackled in the cave, a soothing warmth and light coming from its flames as the crew sat around it, enjoying their freshly cooked fish. Eren ferociously gorged on his food, his appetite finally being satisfied. All his manners were out the window as he ate the fish with his hands and created a sloppy mess with his food, but nobody said anything about it, since they couldn't really blame him for being so hungry. Melody, looked away from him as she casually nibbled the last of her fish, before disregarding the bones. She then decided to look around at everyone, other than Eren. Armin, Eld, Petra, Gunther and Levi did their best to ignore his careless manners. Hanji ignored him, eating while she wrote new information into her scrapbook, from everything that Melody and Levi said that happened in the forest, to what her fish tasted like. Mikasa was constantly asking Eren to be more polite with his food and babying him like she was his mom, while Olua kept on complaining how disgusting Eren was being......with his mouth full. Noticing that everyone was distracted, Melody decided to go and spend some time alone. Making sure that nobody was looking, she slowly and quietly sat up and began walking further into the cave, to where all their things from the ship was being kept.

When she got to the back of the cave, she began rummaging through their things, trying not to knock over anything and make noise. Once she found what she was looking for, she turned to  check if the others had noticed what she was doing. When she saw that they hadn't, she bent down and picked it up. It was her guitar. Once she had it in her clutches, she turned back and began to sneak her way passed them again. Luckily for her, Olua had started another argument. "Could you be anymore sloppy, you pig" he snapped at Eren. "You're one to talk, and why are you always picking on me!" Eren yelled back at him, as Melody sneaked her way passed him and the others and out of the cave. Once she stepped outside she took a deep soothing breath of the surprisingly cool air. She examined the still, dark evening, comparing how different the atmosphere was to the warm, lit up cave. The air was still and quiet. There were no biting insects in the air, to Melody's relief. In their place there were these strange insects that lit up the air as they flew around in groups. Hanji called them fireflies, when Melody asked them what they were while helping set up the cooking fire. They were awfully beautiful, and reminded Melody of magical fairies. Their illuminated bodies brought colour to the otherwise dark outdoors, their colours varying between, yellow, gold, white, green and blue.

When she was done admiring the fireflies, Melody went back to walking across the sand, guitar in hand. She was making her way over to the rocks, where the ship was propped up. She continued walking over for some time, listening to the soft noise of her boots against the sand, until she reached the rocks. Taking a deep breath, she stepped onto the first rock and began climbing up the rest of them. She went around the ship, to the other side, to where she could see the ocean. She then began looking around for a comfortable enough rock to sit on. Eventually she found a flat rock by the edge of a dried up rock pool to sit on, which looked comfortable enough. She climbed over to it, placed her guitar to the side, and sat down on the rock. She then picked up the guitar again, and began to tune it. It had been a while since she played it, and there were some new songs she had written that she wanted to play, and now was probably the only time she was going to play it without the others hearing. She liked playing for them, but she wasn't sure if her newer songs were ready to be heard by anyone other than her. As she tuned the guitar, the chords sounded very off, due to the lack of time she played it. It took her quiet some time to get the chords sounding just write, but she got them to work eventually.

Once the guitar was sounding better again, she placed her hand in her boot, and pulled out her tiny song book. She flipped forward to some of the newer songs she had written, and began thinking about which one she should play. As she flipped through the pages, a strange sound caught her ears. It came from far off in the distance. Placing her book down for a second, Melody remained quiet in hopes of hearing it again. Her patience rewarded her as she heard it again, only clearer now that she was paying more attention to the noise. It was a familiar sound, but it didn't come from the beach or the forest behind her, it came from in front of her, far off in the ocean. Curious, Melody sat up straighter and began squinting out to see what it was. It took her a while, but after a long time spent squinting she eventually came across something. Far off, in the distance, she spotted a spout of water squirting out of the water. It was a whale, like the one they saw during the spring time. Melody sat back again, relaxing and listening to the whales calming tune as it continued to sing. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back for a bit, happily enjoying the atmosphere.