Morwin stared out at the ocean as the waves crashed and rolled on by. The smell of sea breeze lingered all around him. He didn’t care much for the men on the upper deck, so he stayed below with all the fake gems and stared out into the rolling ocean. He thought it best to just stay there and not interact with any of the men.

  Footsteps against the wooden floorboard echoed behind him.

  “Ah there you are, lad. What’re you doing down here all by yourself?” Captain Mikael asked. “You ought to come up and drink with us. My treat.”

  Morwin shook his head. “No thank you,” he replied. “I’ve never been on a boat before, so this sightseeing will do me justice. I don’t know how long the ship ride is going to be, but I’m going to spend every minute admiring the seas before it’s gone.”

  The captain gave a hearty laugh. “We’re going to be at seas for the better part of a month, lad! You’re going to be staring at nothing but blue for a while!”

  Morwin’s jaws dropped. “A whole month?!” he asked incredulously. “Is that how far away it is?”

  Captain Mikael nodded. “The Aylin Islands are quite far west from Agnius, ya see. This is the life of a sea trader. Spend a month at see, arrive, pick up cargo, and spend another month traversing the oceans. Ain’t much of a life, but it’s a hell of a relaxing one, if I do say so myself.” Captain Mikael raised an eyebrow. “Say, how long did you think this journey was going to take?”

  Morwin shrugged. “I dunno,” he replied. “Maybe three or four days at most.” Captain Mikael let out another laugh.

  “What about the pirates at sea?” Morwin asked. “It can’t be all that peaceful with scourges traveling along the ocean like that?”

  Mikael raised an eyebrow at that. “Say, where did you learn about something like pirates in these waters? I ain’t ever seen something like that, and I’ve been doing this for about a decade now!”

  “I don’t know,” Morwin replied. “Just… rumors.”

  “Well they’re not true,” was Mikael’s voice.

  “Will this journey really take a month? Not less than a week?”

  Mikael nodded, an ear splitting grin on his face. He seemed to be enjoying Morwin’s company. “If the journey takes three days, then I’d be a rich man by now!” The captain joined Morwin as he sat there and looked out one of the windows, watching the rolling waves with him.

  “Why don’t you go back up and join the rest of your crew?” Morwin wondered.

  “I like to see to it that all of my passengers are comfortable. Even the ones I’m more reluctant to take, in your case.”

  “You have nothing to worry about,” he assured the captain. “I am perfectly content here watching the ocean.”

  “If you say so, lad,” came Captain Mikael’s reply. He got up and went over to the staircase up. It creaked as he climbed it.

  Morwin returned his attention to the seas. A whole month?! He didn’t even consider the possibility of the journey taking so long. What would the rest of the crew do while he was away? Galvin, hiding with Guenevir on Stormwins Peak. Kaden, still under employment by Lord De’Shai but most likely under investigation. Jules, who probably went back to drinking his sorrows away. Would they all wait until he returned with an army from Aylin Islands so the battle could continue? Did Galvin know how long the journey was going to take him? What would he do all the time from here to the islands?

  “You’re thinking a lot,” a quiet voice said next to him. Morwin jumped up. Sitting next to him was a young girl with golden hair running down to her neck and blue piercing eyes. She appeared to be no more than ten years old. What was a kid like this doing on this ship?

  “Hello,” Morwin said, not sure of what else to say. He noticed a flower pinned above her scalpel. A white flower with green stems on the inside. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Lily. Named after this,” she said, pointing to the flower in her hair. “What’s your name?”

  “Morwin,” he answered. “How long have you been sitting there?”

  “Not long,” she answered. “I just came here to look at the view. The ocean is nice. Lots of birds. And some fish swimming below.”

  He peered out the window to the massive expanse of water below. He turned his head sideways and saw the port of Jovin City, barely a dot now. He returned his attention to the water. It’d gotten deep to the point where he couldn’t see much below it. All he saw was the blue and the darkness underneath.

  “You can see the fish?” he asked.

  “Yeah, there’s one right there,” she answered, pointing. Morwin followed the trail of her finger and saw that she was pointing to blackness.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said with a frown.

  “Open your eyes,” she said back. “There’s lots of them. Swimming around freely. Don’t you wish you were free?”

  Morwin raised an eyebrow. “What did you just say?”

  The girl, Lily, stood up. She leaned against the circular windowsill, allowing the breeze to blow through her hair. She wore a white tank-top and wore ragged flip flops.

  “Who took you on board?” Morwin wondered out loud.

  “Nobody,” she said. “I just came on board because I felt like it.”

  “Where do you come from? Are you from Agnius?”

  Lily frowned. “You ask a lot of questions, you know that? Come on, let’s go do something. Staring at the waves is starting to get boring.”

  The girl skipped off into the darkness, humming a children’s rhyme to herself as she skittered about.

  Weird girl she is. Morwin followed her. Surely none of the men above knew about her, right? Hell, Morwin didn’t even see her when he climbed aboard. How did the men from Agnius not catch her either if they searched the boat from top to bottom.

  Morwin followed Lily into another room. This room was full of beds, all symmetrical and bunked. Next to each bed was a single drawer.

  “This is where everyone sleeps. I wouldn’t sleep here, if I were you. The men snore really loud and they barely take showers. I would just sleep on the deck above,” Lily said.

  “So you’ve been a part of the crew,” Morwin affirmed.

  Lily shot him a confused look. “No, I don’t think I said that.” She continued skipping through the sleeping halls. Morwin sighed and followed behind her.

  “Then tell me where you came from,” he encouraged.

  “But mysteries make the world go round,” came her response. “Besides, you wouldn’t want to know about me. I’m not very interesting. This way for something really cool.”

  Morwin followed behind her again as she skipped and sang. They came to another room full of boxes like the one Morwin had originally came down to.

  “Open them,” she said, sitting next to one of the crates. Morwin complied and pried one of the lids open. Inside, there was an assortment of fruits. Fruits Morwin had never seen before. Exotic ones, that most likely came from the Aylin Islands.

  Morwin picked up a reddish berry. It was similar to the one that Lord Seldam ate on the dock, yet different. This one had a stem on it and paired with another of the berries. Strangely, it felt cold to the touch.

  “Eat it,” Lily said.

  “Are you sure that’s okay with the men above?”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “Come on goody two shoes. Who cares? If it looks yummy, then you eat it.”

  Morwin shrugged. He couldn’t argue with that logic. He popped one of the berries into his mouth. His eyes widened as the juices and flavor from within the berry popped and filled his tongue.

  Not only was the outside of the fruit cold, but the inside as well. He’d never tasted something so savory and sweet in his life. Not the bad kind of sweet, but the heavenly kind. As soon as he was done chomping on the chewy texture, he popped its pair into his mouth and continued on eating.

  “This… may be the best thing I have ever eaten,” Morwin said. He rolled the stem in between his fingers, examining it. “Is there some place I can throw this away? Some kind of bin or something.”

  Lily pointed to the open window. “Just throw it in the ocean. Everybody does it. Give the fish something to feed on.”

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  He tossed out the stem and let it get blown away by the wind.

  “You want some more? Go ahead, no one’s here to stop you.”

  Morwin stared into the crate. The temperature of this room was the same as the others, yet the berry tasted as if it’d come from the snowy mountain tops. They were preserved somehow, and he had no idea now.

  “You’re wondering how they’re cold, aren’t you? I don’t believe Agnius has the type of Blessing that can allow for this. Just look inside the crate, at the bottom.”

  He listened and dug through the rest of the box. At the bottom, there was a caged indent which stopped the fruit from rolling over a certain area. On the bottom of that indent, there was a mound of dirt. And on top of the dirt, a single flower. A blue flower which was tipped white along the petals. Some kind of fog emanated from the flower, glistening and shining in the air. As Morwin’s hand moved closer to the blue flower, the air felt much colder.

  “That’s a Myst flower,” Lily explained. “It makes things colder.”

  “How is this possible?” Morwin asked. “I thought making things cold came from the power of aquamarines. And even so, magic like this comes from gems, not flowers.”

  Lily plucked the lily from off her hair and closed her eyes. The flower started to glow a little. She sat the flower down on the wooden floor and watched it.

  Morwin felt a strange sensation overcome him. He worked hard to push against it, but the sensation grew stronger and stronger the more he pushed. The lily gave off a little bit of white light.

  Morwin was taken back, back to the days when he didn’t have to worry about anything. Days of sitting on his bed, daydreaming about things he no longer cared about. Days when he had no stress, no anxiety about anything. Just a child, carefree and growing up. A child with beliefs and admirations, and no worry in his mind that he has now. A child simply living.

  Morwin reclined back and leaned against a box. How he longed for those days again, to just be carefree. Lord De’Shai was his father. His mother, De’Shai’s wife, was still alive. They were his parents. They looked after him. They cared for him.

  Every day, he went outside to meet some of his friends, children from the other ministers that Lord De’Shai had him meet. They played in the yard together, playing tag with one another.

  Morwin rode a horse for the first time. The height he got from sitting in that leather saddle made him feel taller than everything else, that he could conquer the world.

  He played pretend with some of the other children. He held a stick in one hand and a shorter stick in the other. He used the longer stick to draw circles in the sand.

  “We’ll attack them from here!” he exclaimed. “We’re going to drive back the rebels and be heroes!”

  All of this flashed within Morwin’s mind as he sat there and took in the aura of the flower.

  Innocence, naivety, longing, serenity. All these emotions coursed through him.

  The light from the flower was gone, and just like that, all the feelings he’d just experienced sapped away. Afterwards, he felt a sense of… emptiness.

  “What… what did you just do?” he asked Lily.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I just used my gift. The flower did the rest.” She paused for a moment, looking deep into Morwin’s eyes. “Why are you crying?”

  He hadn’t realized it. He reached for his face and some dampness clung to his fingertips. Tears were flowing. But… why?

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged.

  “Lilies are flowers that represents innocence,” Lily explained. She took the lily off the floor and reattached it to her hair.

  “Did you… did you do this to the Myst?” Morwin asked, motioning to the flower at the bottom of the crate.

  Lily shook her head. “That was done before they even departed.”

  “How long does it last?”

  She shrugged. “It depends on how mentally strong the person who performs the magic is. Or someone on board has the Blessing to be able to do that. I would guess… one of Mikael’s men.”

  “Why not Captain Mikael himself?”

  “Because the man is a dunce.”

  Lily got up from the floor and started to wander around again. “Where are you going this time?” Morwin asked, following her.

  “Just… exploring.”

  Her ventures took the two of them further below deck. They came to a grand door with a circular window on it, embroidered in gold. The handle itself was also made of gold.

  “This is the captain’s quarters. Mikael practically sleeps and lives here.” She gave a light knock on the door. Her knocking was met with silence. She shot Morwin a glance and rubbed her hands together menacingly before turning the doorknob and pushing the door open.

  “We really shouldn’t be in here,” Morwin whispered forcefully to Lily. “What if we get caught?”

  “You’re a guest here. And I’ll be able to get away easily. Don’t you worry,” she said.

  Morwin nodded and stood there nervously while Lily rummaged through the room. She dug through his trunk and pulled some papers and ledgers out. One of the things she pulled out what was the bottle that Galvin had given to the captain earlier, an object wrapped in a strange material Morwin never saw before.

  “Ooo, what’s this?” Lily asked, holding it up proudly.

  Morwin leapt to her and snatched it from her. “Private things between my brother and the captain,” Morwin said. “Don’t touch.”

  “You have a brother? Me too! Well… I once did. Not anymore,” she said cheerily.

  Morwin gave her a sympathetic look. “What happened to him?”

  “It’s complicated,” she said, moving her hands and placing them on her hips. “And what did I say about asking me all those pointless questions? Knock it off!”

  Footsteps. Loud footsteps echoed. “Who’s there?” the sound of Mikael’s voice rang out.

  Morwin stood there, not knowing what to do. He moved to Absorb some of his opal and hide his presence, but the room was already ramsacked through, the trunk open, and he was holding something private between the captain and his client.

  Aw shucks.

  The captain rounded the corner and met eyes with Morwin. He narrowed them. “What in blazes are you doing here, in my quarters, boy?” he shouted, marching up to Morwin.

  He glanced side to side, but the girl that was just here, had vanished into thin air.

  “I’m… sorry. I was just wandering around the ship.”

  “Alone?” the captain raised an eyebrow. Morwin nodded.

  “I’ve never been on a ship before, sir, and I just wanted to have a look to see what was around.”

  “Understandable,” the captain spoke coolly, snatching the bottle away from Morwin. “Did you have a look at the contents inside?”

  “No sir,” Morwin said. “I wouldn’t! It’s your private business.”

  “You seem to have an understanding of privacy,” Captain Mikael said, motioning to his open trunk and bits of paper strewn about all over the floor. He gave an audible sigh before moving to clean up the mess Lily had made and put the papers back into his trunk.

  “I’m really sorry, sir,” Morwin tried to apologize.

  The captain moved his hand to silence him. “Don’t be sorry. I never went over the rules of the ship with you, so I have some blame in that. I’ll go over them now so you don’t mess up.

  “Rule one: You don’t enter the captain’s quarters without the captain’s explicit permission. Rule two: No weapons allowed on board. We’re merchants, not pirates. Rule three: Alcohol only on the deck. Not below. If something happens like a fire, that could be catastrophic. But you don’t seem to like alcohol, so it won’t be a problem for you. Follow those three rules and we’ll get along just fine.”

  Morwin nodded along fervently. “Yes sir, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

  The captain sighed. “Save your apologies, lad,” he said. “Just make sure I don’t catch you in there again. Welcome to Mara’s Dream.”

  He walked Morwin out of the cabin. Morwin turned around to give one last look, not finding a hint of the strange little girl anywhere, before the captain shut the doors to his quarters and locked the door.