The Sleeping Ship

Maya didn't know what to do.

That was the honest truth of it, standing on her own mattress with two fingers pressed against Bina's wrist and many pairs of eyes in the cabin looking at her for answers she didn't have.

Her healer's instincts were running through their checklist the way Soro had trained her to, pulse, temperature, color, breathing, and everything was coming back normal. Everything except the part where Bina would not wake up.

"Is she sick?" One of the girls asked, though she was less a 'girl' and more a woman. She had a particular edge in her voice of someone who was worried but didn't want to look worried.

"I don't know yet..." Maya said, which was the most honest answer available to her.

"Should we get someone?" Sera, this time around, asked, her fingers tightening slightly around her cross necklace, her rose pink hair catching the light coming through the porthole. It felt strange hearing concern from the usually detached girl.

"Yeah, that might be for the best..." Maya responded before turning her gaze back towards Bina. "Give me a moment."

She pressed her palm flat against Bina's forehead, the way she'd done a hundred times on Dolphin Island when someone had a fever or a chill or something she couldn't name. The faint warmth of her healing magic gathered in her fingertips, reaching outward the way it always did, feeling for what was wrong.

And it found... Nothing. Nothing obviously wrong. No fever burning beneath the surface, no infection, no injury. Just a heaviness that she couldn't locate or name, sitting over Bina like a second blanket, keeping her under.

Maya pulled her hand back slowly.

"I need to go to my brother..." She whispered to herself. The truth is, she was feeling a little scared, and wanted to be with him, but on top of that, she had to wonder if Mika noticed anything while he was on his little date with Bina yesterday.

Over at the port side cabins, Mika was already awake. He was always awake early now, thanks to Percy.

He sat slumped against the wall, listening to the older guys around him trade crude jokes about the women on board, such as which breasts were the biggest, whose hips swayed the most when they walked, and all the things they'd do if given five minutes alone with them.

It's not that Mika wasn't used to this kind of male bonding, heck, he did it sometimes with his pals back on Dolphin Island, but the guys in this room were simply not people he wanted to bond with.

One guy even bragged about getting his manhood sucked by a noblewoman back in port, until Mika's bunkmate, Percy, snorted and called him a liar. The cabin erupted in laughter, but Mika barely reacted, staring blankly at his spear as it leaned against the wall.

"...I feel like it's been a minute since I've trained." He thought to himself, feeling a little guilty. He knows he has to be on the top of this game if he wants to pass this Seeker Exam. He also didn't want to imagine Soro's face if he found out his beloved spear isn't being put to a good use.

Percy looked at him. "Come on, dude! Don't be such a wet rag. Join in on the fun!" The older boy wanted Mika to joke around a bit more with the rest of them, sensing he's been keeping to himself.

Before Mika could respond, however, there was a knock on the door.

"I'll get it!" Mika quickly jumped down from his bunk and yanked the door open, only to find Maya standing there, her face pale and fingers trembling against the doorframe.

"What happened?" He asked right away, reading her face before she'd said a word. The fact she came here, despite girls not being allowed too, was already a sign that something went wrong by itself.

"Bina... Bina won't wake up!" Maya spoke, her voice shaking. "I've checked everything I know how to check. There's nothing wrong with her that I can find, and yet—" She stopped. "Something is wrong. I can feel it but I can't see it."

The room went quiet.

Mika looked at her for a moment. "W-Won't wake up? What do you mean?"

"That's exactly what I mean! S-She's just not waking up!" Maya repeated.

"How many others? Are there any others in your room who are also like that?" Mika asked. Truth to be told, he had more questions, but he thought knowing how many people are not 'waking up' would be a good place to start.

Maya blinked, and then answered. "Just Bina. The others are fine, but I... I can't get her to wake up!"

"Come with me!" Mika spoke as he held her hand and pulled her away from the small cabin, his fingers tight around hers. He didn't wait for Percy's protests or the confused murmurs from the other boys, he just moved.

As they walked, Maya asked him the question she had on her mind.

"Mika, you were with Bina all day yesterday. Did you... Notice anything strange?" Maya asked as they hurried down the corridor, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Huh? No, nothing strange, as far as I can tell! She seemed... Loud. A little annoying. Same as usual!" Mika answered, though his grip on Maya’s wrist tightened unconsciously.

Truth to be told, his little 'date' with Bina yesterday, while wasn't much of a date in itself, was still enough time to make him care, care enough to feel upset by hearing she's not waking up, but on top of that, it also made him scared, scared that something, or someone, might have done something.

Back in Maya's cabin, Sera was touching Bina's face.

"Is she not waking up?" One of the women asked, looking nervous.

"It's just as Maya said. She appears well, but..." Sera trailed off, not finishing her sentence.

The 17 years old girl looked out of the porthole, her rose pink hair catching the morning light as she frowned. She couldn't help but feel like a storm was coming.

...

It turned out not to be just Bina.

They found this out gradually, the way you find out most bad things, in pieces, each one small enough to dismiss until there were too many of them.

A candidate on the port side corridor who hadn't come to breakfast and couldn't be roused.

A woman two cabins down from Maya who was the same, her cabinmates standing in the doorway looking uncertain.

Then another, from a cabin near the stern. Then two more reported from the deck where someone had apparently fallen asleep against the railing during the night watch and wouldn't come back.

By midmorning the number stood at 11. By early afternoon it was 17, a whole 17 people who refused to wake up.

Nobody was panicking. Not yet. But the ship had taken on the particular atmosphere of a place where everyone is very carefully not panicking, which was in some ways worse, because it meant everyone knew there was something to panic about.

"Seasickness, it must be!" Someone said, in the meal hall at lunch, loudly enough that it was clearly meant to be reassuring. "The sea does strange things to people who aren't used to it."

"Is it? 17 people don't just fall into a coma from seasickness..." Someone else replied, less loudly.

The meal hall was quieter than usual after that.

Mika sat across from Maya and said nothing for a while, turning his cup in his hands. Mika wanted to remain close to his sister, just in case, while Percy, who attached himself to them, was keeping himself close, though it wasn't out of care.

"So let me get this straight... You went on a date with Bina yesterday?! And you didn't tell me?! You traitor!" Percy's gold eyes glared at Mika, his usual laid-back demeanor gone as he leaned across the table.

"Get over it! Now isn't the time! And she's the one who asked ME out!" Mika snapped back, ignoring Percy's wounded expression.

Maya remembered how Percy was trying to hit on Bina when they first came onto this ship.

"I guess he might have liked her...?" She thought to herself, only to blush a little when Percy's gold eyes looked into hers. "H-Hello!" She greeted, feeling happy to finally get to talk to him. She had wanted to do so for a while.

"Hello indeed!" Percy purred, leaning closer until Maya could count the flecks of gold in his eyes. His grin widened when she instinctively leaned back. "Funny how the prettiest ones always have the most annoying brothers—OW!" Mika's knuckles cracked against Percy's skull with satisfying precision.

If there was one thing Mika disliked about his beloved sister, it was her taste in men. First Ryota, and now Percy? All that told him is that he can't take her eyes off of her.

"Don't get too close to her! And anyway, Percy, have you ever seen anything like this before?" Mika asked, rubbing his knuckles while Percy rubbed his head.

Percy was quiet for a moment, which was unusual enough that both twins looked at him.

"Hmmm, no." He said simply after giving it a thought. "I haven't. Whatever the cause behind those people being unable to wake up, it's freaky, that's for sure."

The three of them sat with that. No one knew what to say. If, perhaps, no one they directly knew was one of those unable to wake up, this might have been easier to ignore, but the fact is, Bina was Maya's roommate, and the girl who went on a date with Mika.

It was impossible to ignore it. They simply felt too close to the situation.

"I'm... I'm going to go back to my room. I wanna check on her. Who knows, maybe... she woke up?" Maya stood abruptly, and before her brother could suggest coming with her, she was already on her way out. The meal hall chatter faded behind her as she moved through the corridors.

Back inside her cabin, it was just as Maya suspected. Bina had not woken up.

Maya stood in the doorway of the cabin for a moment, looking at the still shape in the top bunk, at the slow rise and fall of her chest, at the auburn hair splayed across the pillow. Then she came in quietly and sat on her own bunk below, drawing her knees to her chest.

The cabin was mostly empty. The other girls had gone to the meal hall or elsewhere. Only Sera remained, sitting in her usual spot, bible open, cross in hand, lips moving without sound as she prayed.

Maya watched her for a moment. She couldn't help but wonder what was going on inside Sera's mind. She hadn't spoken beyond what was necessary so far, so it was really hard to get a read on her. Maya didn't push. She'd learned that likely isn't going to go anywhere in the near four days she spent with the older girl.

Instead, Maya pulled out her sewing kit, more out of habit than any real purpose, and sat with it in her lap without actually doing anything with it. The ship groaned around them. The porthole let in grey afternoon light. Outside, somewhere above them, she could hear the low murmur of candidates gathering on deck, trading theories, stoking each other's worry.

"...Sera, did you hear? It's 17 people now." Maya said quietly, after a while. She wasn't sure why she said it to Sera specifically. Maybe just because Sera was the only one there. "All of them... They aren't waking up. It's so... Strange."

Sera's hand stilled briefly against her page.

"I heard." She said.

"Do you think it's going to keep happening?" Maya asked, threading her needle absently. The question hung between them, heavy as the silence that followed.

Sera was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that Maya thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she said, in that same flat tone that somehow landed differently in the quiet of the cabin: "Things that start on their own don't usually stop on their own."

Maya looked at her. Sera was still looking at her bible.

"That's not very comforting..." Was all Maya said. She's not sure why she even expected Sera to try and comfort her. She felt slightly foolish.

"No." Sera agreed. "It isn't. I'm sorry."

Maya blinked at the unexpected apology, needle slipping through her fingers and onto the bunk.

Some time later, once Maya finished checking on Bina, she made her way towards the deck, wanting some fresh air. It was just as misty as it was yesterday, if not a little more.

On the deck, none other than Drav spotted her.

She was alone, which she immediately recognized as a mistake the moment she saw him walking toward her with the directness of someone who had been waiting for exactly this window.

The deck wasn't empty, sailors moved through their routines, a few candidates stood in small groups, but none of them were close enough to matter.

He stopped beside her at the railing and leaned against it with his forearms resting on the wood, looking out at the water, like a man making casual conversation.

"You, girl... Are you a healer by any chance?" Drav asked, though it was less a question and more a statement.

"Huh? Well, yes, I am. How do you know...?" Maya asked a question of her own.

"Oh, I just saw you with a staff when you and that loud brother of yours first came onto the Ironbell, so I suspected as much." Drav smirked.

"And what is it to you?" Maya didn't like that smirk, to say the least.

"Mm." He was quiet for a moment. The mist sat against the hull below them, thicker than it had been that morning. "People are saying you've been the checking on the ones who won't wake. Looking at them properly."

"W-Well someone had to. It doesn't seem this ship has any other people who can use healing magic, so it fell down to me." Maya answered, unconsciously taking half a step back.

"And? What did you find?"

Maya looked at him sideways. There was nothing overtly threatening about the question. His voice was pleasant, his posture relaxed, his eyes on the water. And yet the skin along her arms had gone cold in a way that had nothing to do with the sea air.

"Nothing conclusive" She said. "I can't find out what's wrong with them, or what's the cause behind it even is."

"Nothing at all?" Drav's fingers drummed against the damp wood.

"I said nothing conclusive." Maya repeated herself, unsure why she's still even talking with this guy.

He's not even her type for her to be doing all this.

Drav smiled at that, still looking at the water. It was that same perfectly reasonable smile. The smile that was fine. It was everything behind the smile that wasn't.

He turned his head and looked at her then, directly, for the first time. His brown eyes moved across her face slowly, taking their time.

"You're so... Radiant." He said. Conversationally. Like noting the weather.

Maya held his gaze and said nothing. She wasn't sure what to say to that.

"For a girl so young..." He continued, his voice dropping slightly, taking on a quality that felt almost intimate in a way that made her stomach turn. "You carry something quite remarkable. I imagine most people can't feel it at all." He tilted his head. "Can you feel it yourself?"

The cold along her arms spread to her chest.

"I don't know what you're talking about..." She spoke, her voice quiet said.

Drav looked back at the water. "Of course not!" He said pleasantly. "Enjoy your dinner."

He pushed off the railing and walked away without hurrying, hands easy at his sides, entirely unbothered by the world and everything in it.

Maya stood at the railing and did not move for a long moment, her hands tight around the wood, watching the mist curl along the surface of the water below. The iron bell hung still and silent at the prow.

Day 5 arrived with the mist already visible before sunrise.

It was thicker. Not dramatically so, it hadn't rolled in overnight the way the fogs sometimes swallowed Dolphin Island whole, but it sat against the hull more heavily, and it had climbed higher, threading through the lower rigging and pooling in the corridors below deck in a way the previous days' haze hadn't managed.

The number of people who aren't waking up now has reached 26. Someone had written it on the lower corridor wall in chalk and had been updating it every few hours.

Mika and Maya were on the deck.

"The people sure are looking more nervous today..." Mika murmured, watching a guy clutch his charm necklace tighter as he passed them. "Not that I can blame them. Something VERY strange is going on."

Mika couldn't help but feel frustrated. He felt as if he was some kind of sitting duck, waiting for something bad to happen, which was simply not his style.

Maya nodded absently. Her focus was less on her beloved brother's words, and more on the air around her. Something was wrong with the air on this ship. It felt both different, yet familiar.

She didn't know what it meant, she didn't know enough yet, and but she was sure there was no mistaking it now. This was someone's magic.

"Mika... I think the mist is alive." Maya whispered, her fingers brushing against the damp air as though testing its pulse. The droplets clung to her skin with, shimmering faintly under the dim morning light before dissolving into nothing.