Thread: Here Be Dragons [ Forsaken Dreamer and Terucin ]

Tessa and the ocean had never shared a particularly close bond. Or rather, Tessa and water. In childhood the girl had nearly lost her life to the river just outside her village when she had fallen into a fast-running river swollen from recent rains. She had survived the encounter thanks to a passing fisherman and his son, but there was never much love lost between her and large bodies of water since. Of course, sometimes taking to the ocean was inevitable at times, and she had grown out of the irrational fear of the ocean from her childhood and replaced it instead with a vague unease. Upon turning nineteen Tessa had been offered a place among the students of a fairly well-known academy, but an ocean lay between her and her goal. She had wasted no time in securing passage on a ship set to embark on a month-long journey to a port city relatively close to the academy. There would be a stop along one of her country's other port cities on the way to pick up a shipment of supplies that were unavailable in this one, then three and a half more weeks would see her safely to her destination. The first portion of the journey went by with little incident. Tessa remained in the cabin she had been assigned to pass most of the time, emerging for little more than meals and short breaths of fresh air. She did, however, leave the ship for several hours when they had been docked to pick up supplies. Once Tessa had grown accustomed to the infuriating motions of the ship, she began to emerge more often, even striking up conversations with the three other passengers on the journey, a wedded couple from the pit stop and another girl, this one from a town several leagues from her own. The company even took the edge off her discomfort, and within a week after turning toward the open ocean she had grown comfortable enough to be able to forget her unease for a while. Nearly two weeks into the journey, she had woken to the sound of shouting and a muffled drumming sound filtering in through the ceiling. She left her cabin, still in the plain white dress she slept in, climbing up onto the main deck - and abruptly retreated back below deck. What had been a perfectly calm evening had turned into one of the most violent storms she had ever seen. The fear she had left behind weeks before returned almost immediately full force as she returned to her cabin, pacing back and forth in the small space as she waited for the storm to pass. Several minutes later Tessa flinched as a loud crack sounded, followed moments later by a floor-shaking thud. In an instant she had fled the cabin, having decided that she might well be better off braving the rain than listening helplessly to unknown horrors happening on deck. By the time she reached the deck she was very nearly seasick from the movements of the vessel as it listed to one side, then the other. The mast had been claimed by the storm already and now lay along the length of the ship, and what seemed like the entire crew was on deck. The ship leaned to the side again, but this time it was different. A massive wave had pushed up against her side of the ship, certain to flip the entire vessel, and almost before she realized it she had let go of the railing dozens of feet above the water, plunging into the water far below. She came up above the water again clutching a large piece of what looked like part of the siding of the ship, pulling herself onto the slab of wood that was just large enough to accommodate her. Looking back, she could vaguely see the ship slowly sinking below the surface of the water, the underside of the vessel bobbing back and forth with the waves, already quite a distance away from where it had overturned. Tessa clung to the driftwood as the minutes passed, and as quickly as the storm had come, it was gone, as was the ship. A light rain still fell, but the waves and sky had calmed.She could still see pieces of driftwood around her and toward where the ship had finally disappeared, but no other survivors as far as she could see. Exhausted, she let her head drop onto one arm, slipping into unconsciousness almost willingly.