My eyes open to a dark ceiling. A small fire crackles in the corner, a beacon of light in the otherwise gloomy room. The musty scent of the walls jolts me further awake. I sit up and squint at a rhythmic tapping that comes from beside a lantern with the fire in it.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," a gruff voice says as the tapping stops. "Now, can you tell me how this thing works?"

My eyes adjust to the light, and the pirate that attacked me in the alcove dangles my aether belt for me to see. At the sight, my heart drops. "Please, give them back. You won't be able to make them do anything anyway." A rope tied around my hands and a ring in the wall prevents me from reaching out.

The pirate lowers the belt. "No kidding. I just want to know how it works."

His words bear no hostility, so I relax enough to breathe normally. "Sorry, but it would take a very long time to explain, especially since you have no prior knowledge."

"That's just perfect," he says, glancing around. "Neither of us are going anywhere fast, so why don't you get started."

My mind races, trying to figure out how best to start the topic. Before I can decide, a door creaks open and closes. Faint footsteps descend the wooden stairs behind the pirate. A slim figure appears beside the lantern with their back turned to me. 

"How's the prisoner?" they ask. 

The curly-haired pirate shakes his head. "If you want to know how she's doing, why don't you ask her yourself?"

They pick up the lantern and approach me. “How’re you feeling?” they ask bluntly.

The flames light up a tough, feminine face, and time grinds to a halt. One eye as blue as the sea mesmerizes me. The jagged ends of a scar peek out from either side of a leather patch that covers the other eye. Fluffy orange hair that burns as brightly as the flames lies in a simple braid and flows over the front of the figure’s shoulder. 

My mind races again, trying to figure out how a human can possibly be so beautiful, before coming to the only natural conclusion. “A fifth Goddess,” I mutter. 

The Goddess glances over her shoulder at the pirate in the corner. “Just how hard did you hit her?”

“It was only hard enough to knock her out… probably.”

She points at me. “Don’t you see how dainty she is? You clearly overdid it and now she’s permanently damaged.”

Hearing a Goddess be concerned about me makes me smile, and to quell her worries, I speak up. “A-actually, I’m just fine.”

She sighs. “No, you’re not. You think I’m a Goddess or something. You’ve clearly lost your mind.”

“But there’s no other way,” I say, tugging at the rope to try to get closer to her. “Someone of your beauty can’t be human.”

Her cheeks turn red, and she takes a step back. “What?” She shakes her head and turns around. “You’ve clearly gone crazy.”

“No, I—”

A door creaks open and closed, and heavy footsteps stomp down the stairs. The lantern in the Goddess’ hand illuminates a large man with a round face and no neck. “Hey, Vio, sorry to interrupt, but the captain wants to see the prisoner.”

She peeks over her shoulder at me. “Does he?” she scoffs and turns to face the large man again. “Good luck to him, then. She’s gone crazy.”

Before I can give my rebuttal, she puts the lantern down and climbs up the stairs as quietly as she arrived and leaves the room. 

The large pirate walks past me to the wall and tinkers with the ring the rope is tied to. “Don’t try to run. You won’t get far.” 

An agonizing minute passes as he tries to undo the knot. “Forget this,” he says and grabs the rope with both hands. He tears the rope apart. 

A shiver runs down my spine at the thought of what a man of his strength could do to me if I tried to run away. 

He takes hold of the rope still connected to me and leads me towards the steps. “Remember, don’t run.”

I want to ask for my belt before we leave but think better of it. I nod intently and follow him up the stairs. 

We exit onto the deck of the ship shrouded in darkness. Torches light spots on the deck, and the stares of other pirates pierce me as we walk along. I stare down at my feet to try to hide myself from their glares. 

The large man stops to knock on a door, and I nearly bump into him. Afraid for my life, I make certain that I don’t touch him. “Captain,” he shouts. “I’ve brought the prisoner.”

“Excellent. Bring them in,” Captain Swift says from behind the door.

My escort opens the door and drags me into a small but well-furnished room. The bright lights from numerous candles all over the room hurt my eyes and force me to squint. 

Captain Swift grins at us from a lavish red chair on the other side of a dark wood table. “Would you please untie her?”

The pirate nods and manages to untie the rope around my wrists without ripping it apart. 

I breathe a sigh of relief and rub my aching wrists. 

“Thank you, Julius,” Captain Swift says. “Unfortunately, three is a crowd, so if you wouldn’t mind standing guard outside. Make sure no one interrupts us.”

Julius nods and exits the room.

Being alone with Captain Swift causes me to freeze. I came here to retrieve the book from him, but now that we’re face to face, my confidence is gone. Without Winry and the other aer, I can’t muster even a morsel of courage to speak up. Any words that form in my mind won’t come out of my mouth.

We stare at each other for what feels like an eternity. 

“So, tell me—” Captain Swift points at me dramatically. “—why did you do it?”

I break eye contact and glance down at the red carpet beneath my feet. “S-sorry, but what do you mean?”

“Feigning stupidity, are you?” He cackles. “Unfortunately for you, I’m fluent in moron! Now, tell me, why did you sneak onto my ship?”

His words blindside me. “I didn’t… the curly-haired man knocked me out and brought me here.”

“Really? You’re innocent?” His finger drops slowly. “That makes things awkward. I thought we had an intruder, but you’ve been kidnapped.” He strokes his scraggly beard. “Now what?” 

With the way he’s acting, he doesn’t seem like a bad person. Maybe I don’t need to be scared of him after all.

“E-excuse me. You stole a book from the bookstore in Ellorin, and I’ve been asked to get it back. Can you, maybe, umm…” I close my eyes and steel myself. “Give it back!”

“Ah, I already took that back. I was looking for a cookbook, but that’s not what that was. It said, ‘A Baker’s Life’ on the front, but it seemed like a diary, so I gave it back.”

My eyes snap open. “You’re telling me I came here for no reason…” I fall to my knees and laugh to myself.

“Not exactly.” Captain Swift rises from his chair and walks around the table. “You see, you just admitted that you came here willingly. That means—” He points at me once again. “—Intruder! To the plank!”

The door flies open and crashes against the wall. 

“I knew you were up to something stupid,” the Goddess says as she storms in.

“Gah, Vio.” Captain Swift backs away from me. “How did you even get in here? I thought Julius was standing guard.”

The large pirate pokes his head in the door. “Sorry, captain,” he says, biting into a cookie. “For some reason, I just couldn’t stop her.”

“You traitor,” Captain Swift says, glaring at Julius. “I can’t believe you took a bribe." His gaze drifts to the Goddess. "Can I have some?”

“I’ll make more as long as you let the prisoner go.”

He takes a step back. “That's unfair. You know I can't do that. It goes against my pirate pride.”

“Since when is murder a part of being a pirate?” She crosses her arms. “We steal treasure, not people's lives.”

“Isn’t the gift of life the greatest treasure we could steal?”

“Captain, I swear…”

He retreats to his chair and picks up a large black hat. With the hat on, he almost matches the picture on the wanted poster. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t make the intruder walk the plank.”

Without hesitation, she lifts a finger. “First, killing a random person is as pointless as nipples on a man.” She raises another finger. “Second, we—”

“Ha, I got you,” Captain Swift shouts. “I said give me one reason, not two, so I win. To the plank she goes!”

The Goddess steps between me and Captain Swift. “Since when is it bad to have more than one point for an argument?”

Seeing her gallant figure up close encourages me to speak. “Seriously. And I don’t think you win an argument just because you say you do.”

She turns to me and shakes her head. “He’s only saying that because he doesn't have a good reason himself.”

“What about his pirate pride?” I ask mockingly.

She grins at me. “He can count that if he wants, but it’s not enough to convince anyone.”

Her smile elevates my spirits to levels I didn’t think were possible. No one’s ever defended me like that, not without expecting something in return. If the roof weren’t here, my jump for joy might take me all the way to the second moon.

“What’s with the double teaming?” Captain Swift asks. “Julius! Help me out here.”

“Sorry, captain, but I’m with Vio on this one,” he says from the door.

Captain Swift winces. “Betrayed again? I can’t believe it.”

The Goddess places her hands on the table and takes a deep breath. “Would you listen to me for one minute, captain?”

He strokes his beard for a moment. “Fine, I’m listening,” he says as he sits in his chair. “But only for one minute.”

“As I was trying to say earlier, we need an aether to help find the treasure. Right?”

Captain Swift averts his gaze. “Right… the treasure. The treasure that is…”

“Captain, if you aren’t joking, I’m staging a mutiny.”

He jumps out of his seat. “I was just joking! Obviously, I know what you’re talking about. It’s the entire reason we came to this wasteland to begin with.” He laughs awkwardly to himself and stares at me. “But I’d feel bad forcing this poor girl to come with us on a perilous journey.”

“Now you want to pretend you have morals,” she says with a sigh. “Well, if you won’t do it, I will.” The Goddess twirls around and stares at me with her beautiful blue eye. “We need your help to find a mysterious treasure. You can say no if you want, but—”

“I’ll do it,” I say without any thought. “Anything to help a Goddess.”

She takes a step away from me. “Not this again. How many times am I going to have to tell you that I’m not a Goddess?”

“Oh, I get it. I’m sorry. You want to keep your identity a secret.” I smile at her. “Don’t worry, my lips are sealed.”

“No, unseal your lips. I don’t have a secret identity.”

Captain Swift bursts into laughter. “Looks like you two are getting along well already.”

“What part of this says, ‘getting along?’” the Goddess asks.

He walks past us to the door. “I’ll leave you in charge of her, what with you two being such good friends already.”

The Goddess glares at him. “We are not—” Captain Swift waves and walks out the door. “—friends…” Her glare turns to me and nearly freezes me in place.

Out of instinct, I duck my head and look at the ground. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for? He said it, not you.”

I lift my head slowly to meet her gaze. “You looked really angry, so I was trying to protect myself. Force of habit.”

Her brow furrows. “Why would that be a habit—” She shakes her head. “You know what, never mind. It’s late, so I’ll take you to where you’ll sleep. The ship is small, but I’ll try to show you around tomorrow.”

She leads me out of the room and back onto the deck. “By the way,” she says as she closes the door behind us. “So you’ll stop calling me a Goddess, my name is Vio. I’m the quartermaster of this ship, which means I’m in charge of keeping things in order. So if anyone bothers you, especially the captain, let me know and I’ll put them in their place.”

Her words make the hair on my neck stand on end. “That sounds kind of scary.”

“I’m not scary—” She coughs into her fist. “Ahem. What I meant was that you need to be careful on this ship. The guys don’t see women very often, especially not a cute, dainty one like you, and I don’t know how they’ll act around you.”

“You think I’m cute?”

Her shoulders slump. “Please don’t tell me that’s all you got from what I said.” She sighs. “Whatever. It’s too late for this.”

We walk down a flight of stairs and into a torch-lit hallway. Snores and shouts escape from the many doors as we walk past. At the end of the hall, a cracked wooden door stands slightly ajar. The Goddess opens the door and motions for me to enter. She closes the door behind me and lights a lantern on the table in the center of the room.

“It’s not much, but here it is,” she says, glancing around the room. “This is my room.”

“Your room?” I ask, my eyes darting between a pair of beds on opposite sides of the room. “Am I sleeping here?”

“We don’t have any extra rooms, and there’s no way I’m letting you stay with any of the guys.”

“I have a roommate?” I ask, stunned at the thought.

She tilts her head. “Sure, you can call me that. Anything is better than Goddess.”

Hearing her say that it occurs to me that being called “Goddess” might bug her like it annoys me when Joshua calls me “Princess.” If she wants me to call her by name, I need to respect her wishes. 

“Anyway, make sure you get some rest,” she says, motioning to the neat bed with a green blanket. “Tomorrow will be a long day for you, so sleep while you can.”

I sit on the bed and stare over at the other one, expecting her to be there, but she remains by the door. “Aren’t you going to sleep too?”

“Later. There’s still some things I need to take care of before I can rest.”

I jump to my feet. “Vio,” I say as she reaches for the doorknob. “Can I come with you? I still need my belt from where I was tied up earlier.”

She shakes her head. “You need to sleep. I’ll bring it back with me when I’m done with everything.”

“Oh, okay… Thank you.”

We stare at each other in silence for a moment.

The door bursts open and the curly-haired pirate comes in breathing raggedly. “Vio, we have a problem—”

“Yes, we do.” She shoves him out of the room and slams the door. “What were you thinking just barging in here without so much as a knock? What if one of us had been changing?”

“Sorry,” the pirate says from behind the door. He knocks. “Vio, we have a problem. Can I open the door?”

“Yes, you may enter.”

He opens the door. “I found a stowaway.”

Footsteps echo down the hall, heading towards us. “Hey now, stowaway is such an ugly word,” a familiar smug voice says. “I prefer the term ‘boat enthusiast’.”

The curly-haired pirate steps aside and Julius throws a bespectacled man in a gray academy uniform onto the ground. “My goodness, you guys are rude,” the man says as he stands up and slicks back his dark hair. His eyes lock onto me and he grins. “Fancy meeting you here, Princess.”