Rescue

Kieran:

"Oyato!" It was faint, but I stopped as I heard the voice out on the sea, holding my breath as I listened for more.

Seconds ticked by painstakingly slowly.

"Solarion!" There it was again- slightly more clearly now. I looked out toward it, hearing once again, "Oyato!"

I searched out over the sea, searching for any sign of life as I shouted back, "Hello!? Can you hear me?!"

Footsteps came toward me, but I held up a hand, snapping, "Quiet. I hear someone."

No response came, but I could hear splashing- floundering. Knowing that the water was freezing, I begged the gods to let me see them in the darkness, and after heartbreakingly long moment, my gaze fell to a flash of silver on the water beside the glimmer of light reflecting on water toward me.

I didn't hesitate, but dove straight over the side of the ship, swimming as hard as I could toward what I'd seen as the voices of the crewmen shouted out to me about being insane. I ignored them, knowing only that someone was in danger and needed help.

Feeling the lapping of disturbed water, I dove down, feeling around blindly in the darkness until my hands met something cold and smooth. I grabbed hold and pulled, striking up toward the surface of the water and dragging the head of a pale girl to the surface.

She was as cold as the water, her eyes closed, her hair silver as the foam, and she wasn't breathing. The ship was coming closer now, steered toward us since I'd jumped overboard, and I shouted, "Help! There's a girl here!"

They lowered a flat board used to haul items up onto the ship, and I hoisted the girl onto the board before I jumped on myself, "Pull us up."

As they did, I laid her on her back, pressing down against her chest to force water from her slight body. It took several pumps, I could feel the strain of her ribs against my hands, and then water and bile spewed from her body as I turned her onto her side, letting her cough it up and inhale shakily.

"Holy shit," Gavyn wondered, as the board came up to the side of the ship, "How did she get all the way out here?"

I handed her off to him, panting, "No idea… God it's cold though."

In the light of the ship, I got my first good glimpse at the girl. She was smaller than I'd originally thought- of course she'd been weighted down by water- and young. Younger than my 22 years, certainly. Her hair was silver, like white gold, and fanned out around her body in wet ringlets. She was pale as snow, even a bit blue in the dim light, and she wore a white tunic that had gone very transparent, and a pair of light blue breeches that clung to her slender frame.

"Let's get you both to the infirmary," Darren said quickly.

Gavyn lifted her off the ground, wincing, "She's heavy."

"Too weak to carry a little girl?" Darren teased, commanding one of the deckhands to gather extra blankets for the two freezing people.

The doc looked stunned, as anyone would be upon seeing a new person on a ship out at sea, but he recovered quickly, "Set her down there. Get us hot water and dry clothes for both of them." He started a teakettle on his small stove as well.

People hurried to obey and he hurried to take the girl's vitals, pressing a stethoscope to her chest to listen for a heartbeat and then moving on to check for injuries, "Any idea how she got out here? Is there another ship nearby?"

"Not at all." I replied.

"Was she stowing away on our ship?" The doc asked.

I shook my head, "I doubt that. She was fairly far out there."

The deckhand returned with a bucket of hot water and some fresh clothes, and the doc tossed me some as he stripped the girl out of her clothes to replace them with some that were certainly baggy on such a small girl. The tea kettle started screaming, and he poured a mug of tea for each of us, "Here, drink this. Warm up." He wrapped a blanket around me, "Here, hold her up. She needs to drink something warm, too."

I did as he told me, propping her up and helping to force her to drink a bit as he prepared hot water bottles for us. He surrounded her with heat beneath a pile of blankets and did the same to me, "Keep holding her. Body heat is the best remedy for these things. Hopefully she'll wake up soon and be able to tell us what happened."

Shivering against her cool skin, I hugged her tightly. She was small enough to be a child, like my little brother, and it frightened me that she was still icy cold. Slowly, as the doc continued checking on both of us, exhaustion settled over me, and I drifted off into sleep until-

Small hands shoved me with a force that would have startled me even if I hadn't been asleep, but it was the sounds of clattering and breaking glass and metal that really startled me as I hit the ground. A feminine voice spoke quickly in a language I didn't understand and only caught a few syllables from.

I looked up at the girl, who was awake, looking over the room with bright red eyes that glowed like embers against her pale skin. I realized very abruptly that she wasn't human- though of course she wasn't. What human girl would be out in the middle of the sea in the middle of the night? … or had silver hair?

She held a scalpel between us, her back against the wall as her fiery gaze flicked over us warily. She was beautiful, in a way that a little girl holding a knife could be. Her features were soft and feminine, though clearly also wild, and she bore fangs like a feral cat at us.

I held up my hands in mock surrender, slowly standing as the doc asked, "Are you okay, Kieran?"

"Fine," I answered, "I think we have other concerns right now."

She spoke again, a lot of vowels that sounded unlike anything I'd ever heard before.

"Do you know what she's speaking?" I wondered.

"Not a clue." He replied, but he kept his voice calm and gentle as he told her, "It's alright. No one here will hurt you."

She seemed at least to understand that we meant her no harm, as she lowered the weapon, though she kept it firmly in her grasp as she spoke more slowly, "Devae noi?"

I imagined that what she was asking was where we were, who we were, and how she'd gotten here… Or some variation of that. So I tried to answer, "We found you out at sea. You were drowning. I saved you."

She didn't understand, I was sure, but her eyes met mine, and she relaxed the slightest bit before she turned away from us, startling both of us by sprinting down the hall. I cursed under my breath and followed her, certain that she would be far more frightened realizing she was on a ship surrounded by soldiers than she had been in the infirmary.