*****
“Okay. Let me get this straight.” His hands move frantically in the air as if trying to file the story together.
“Okay.” She responds. Her body sits with crossed legs on the wooden hull of the ship.
“Laurena. What did you do?” He’s speaking above the chugging howls of the ships engine.
“Well.” She rubs a finger along her pointed chin. “It all went so fast, but it started with us getting away–”
Zill slashed a dull blade at the pirates, one by one he carved them off the ship. Crimsons men falling back into the floating pier, or taking a dip into the world below.
A hand swiped along his forehead, clearing the built up moisture along his brows. He leans forward on the rear of the ship, one leg forward. “Not so tough now, are ya?”
Then a whisper enters his ear, a gentle voice. “Now its time to return the favor. Time to sell you.”
Laurena’s slender fingers push against his back, and with a little giggle she pushes him off the ship, leaving Zill tumbling on the peer.
“—and that was that!”
“He sells you to the most flamboyantly feared pirates on this island. We rescue you, then you throw him to the most flamboyantly feared pirates on this island?” He brings his hands down in a dramatic gesture, fingers extended out.
She taps a finger along her chin. “Yep. That’s it. That sounds a lot better than my recollection.” Her smile is unreasonably large shaking the sentiment of forced sweetness behind it.
“We are going to break him out.”
“Grimm.” Her tone shifts from innocent to stern. “Do we have to?”
He shakes his head. “Yes. I made him come get you, now we have to go get him.” A hand ruffles through his bleach blond hair, yanking on it in uncertain frustration. “I mean one time was a charm, but a second time?”
“See? We don’t want to risk getting caught again.”
“We?” Grimm gives her an informal grin. “I’ve yet to be caught. I’ve left that to you two.”
She sighs. “Touché.”
Grimm looks away from her with a sense of exhaustion. It’d be over 36 hours since Zill’s capture and they’d still formed no solution let alone a cohesive agreement to save him.
The sky dimmed on the horizon far below them, a rare sight in the skies above. Especially in the sector of islands they inhabited. They resided in the shadows of islands that blockaded the suns descent between soil and sheer girth.
Living in the skies was always mans dream, but upon the continents of Elysian it was a proven fact that any given dream cannot hold up to the facts of reality. Many of the continents had become nothing but shells, dumping grounds to support the larger ones and after the Qualm incident all airships besides military ones have been band and much of the technology is reclusive.
He looked back towards Laurena; when quieted down and she was caught in her own thoughts there was a sense of forlorn melancholy that drew itself around her. She did not belong in the humility of these islands that much was evident to him. Even in her tattered clothes, that dulled along the fading rosy rays of the sun there still stood a bearing of peculiarity.
Grimm’s eyes lock back onto the skies, where the clouds were always thicker. The ship creaked in its bearing adjusting its bearing for the changing wind currents, which always were stronger at such high elevations of these islands. He patts the ship’s side. You’re a good girl, showing me a world I’ve never seen.
Laurena moves along to his side, leaning on the ships railing overseeing the sights. “Is it always so beautiful out here?”
“Only when you’re this free.”
“This free?”
He smiles. “Nevermind.” There was no point in troubling her in their matters.
“How do you plan to get him back? This won’t be as easy as it was with me, that pirate will be waiting this time.”
“I know.” He sighs figuring that even the first time he’s free in the skies, he’d still be burdend with the world’s problems. “Crimsons not your average thug. He has a strong hold on this area.”
“So he’s bad, huh?”
Grimm’s eyes pause upon the vanished horizon, only a dark light from the stern of the ship giving them light. “Sometimes. Ya.” He points towards an island that glowed with a faint light. “See that?”
Laurena leaned forward on the railing, her body stretching over the vast nothingness. The islands all hovered with an odd similarity, green shades at the top that faded to a rustic brown of Earth at their bottom much like mint covered chocolate patties. One island in particular stood out, little sprinkles shone along its edges and in its center.
“That’s Crimsons Empire.” He points to one lighted dot that rose above the others. “That’s where we’re going.”
