Children Of The Sky (The Scripts Of Neptune, Book 2)

Chapter 35

It'd been a long time since Crynia had seen her dad genuinely nervous. His sunhat had gained six new creases in the past ten minutes, and he kept looking around like he had to assure himself he wasn't dreaming. It seemed to pique Jack's amusement as they wove through the amiably busy streets of the small seaside town--he'd called it Verige. The townspeople seemed to know him; the butcher greeted him, and a number of men who looked like farmers traded waves and grins as he passed.  

The smithy sat near the town square, which was little more than a loose circle of buildings with a well and a statue of a woman holding a sword in the middle--Jack told her it was Dreail--and Karlon slowed when he saw the sign. It was his sign, retrieved by one of Jack's fast-flying crewmen per Crynia's request from her father's old shop in Ctash.

Inside was a cold forge at the back, with a few anvils arrayed before it, and a vast number of tools even Crynia, in all her years watching him work, would have been at a loss to name. They lined the walls, waiting for a smith to take them up and use them.

Slowly, Karlon stepped into the room, setting his hat on a chair to the left of the door and running a hand over his freshly-cut blond hair. When he turned, his grey eyes were glassy with tears.

"It's wonderful," he said, laughing a funny little laugh at his own choked voice. Crynia couldn't keep the grin off her face, and she found herself tearing up worse than him when he pulled her into a hug. "Thank you, Raindrop. You don't know how much this means."

She did, but she didn't say so. She just smiled.

After he'd hugged Jack--he'd made such a startled face Crynia nearly choked trying not to laugh--Karlon shooed them away to find lunch. Guessing he really wanted time to explore his new shop by himself, and not faulting him one bit, Crynia let him have his way and followed Jack out into the market.

They found a sort of flatbread-wrapped fish to eat at one of the many permanent stalls scattered among the buildings and wandered the slender roads side by side while they ate. Crynia marveled at the stonework in some of the houses; they couldn't have been considered much more than shanties or cottages at best, but their crafting clearly had been a labor of love.

"What's your favorite thing about the sea?" she asked Jack after they'd finished eating and found themselves on the rocky edge of a road along the coast, listening to the cries of seagulls and the crash and retreat of the waves in the strong wind.

He took awhile to answer, looking out at the water with his hands in his pockets as if it'd give him an answer. Looking back to the path when he stumbled over a rock, he gave her a sort of half-shrug and a sly smile. "It isn't easily tamed. You can wrangle seas, sure, but the ocean itself? It's this great big...this great big thing, and neither man nor beast has ever been able to say it's theirs for certain."

"What about you? You're rather talented at thwarting it, at least. That storm the other night barely rocked us."

Jack hummed a low, thoughtful note and cocked his head. "I suppose I'm on more amiable terms than most," he admitted. "But even I can only do so much. Keeping the waves calm like that around the ship isn't the easiest thing I've ever done. I slept the whole day afterwards, remember?"

Pondering that as she walked, her long skirt plastered to her legs by the wind--she'd found she liked wearing them, when she wasn't on the ship--Crynia folded her hands behind her. "What did you mean when you said you can wrangle seas? Isn't it the same as the ocean?"

Jack's laugh rang out in the wind. "Who told you that? No, seas are fascinating things: they haunt coves and fool with swimmers if they're feeling particularly mischievous. You can tame them with a great deal of time spent there. They're lonely old creatures."