Seafarers

Moons and stars can never predict the fate of those it cast away.

…

"Hey mom look, I got another one!"

A young boy, around the age of ten surfaced from the water and climbed onto the raft. He had black hair, black eyes and a big fish in one of his hands. 

"Great job Shinra, you've done well for the orphanage."

Yes, he was an orphan and the person that he called mom wasn't actually his mom but just his caretaker. 

The orphanage was located on sea and housed ten kids all around his age.

In this world, where land was scarce, only established households could live on land. 

For the poor, they could only live on the ocean as seafarers, hunting for sea creatures and foraging for anything that was useful. 

They built their houses on large rafts which were anchored to the ocean floor called rafting villages, having their own unique communities and institutions.

Days on the raft were slow and weary, the dangers present, seemingly not too bad... but of course its only because they had never truly seen the dangers of the deep. 

"Alright, clean yourself up and we'll start heading back to the orphanage." 

Shinra quickly dried himself off and started paddling along with his caretaker.

In just a few minutes, they arrived at a large mass of floating wood with multiple other houses made out of scrap and driftwood, some covered in sea foliage. 

After tying the raft to a seaweed covered dock, they made their way to an above average size building with ten expectant children. 

This was the orphanage, a damp, single-room house with cracks in the walls and holes in the roof. To any land dweller, these were unimaginable living conditions, but to seafarers, it was quite alright.

As the caretaker and Shinra got closer, the other orphans had their eyes wide open when they saw the fish that would be dinner today. 

The catch was particularly good today, consisting of more than enough fish to feed all twelve people living in the orphanage. 

Certain sea creatures that were desirable due to their looks or taste could be sold to land dwellers for a pretty penny, however most fish caught by seafarers were just the common bubbler.

Bubblers consisted of most of a seafarers diet. They are fat, slow and stupid. Not only that, they made bubbles wherever they went, making it easy for even beginner divers to locate them. Somehow they have not gone extinct. 

They were not very tasty, but a few could feed a whole family, thus being ideal for most seafarers who wanted to sell the more desirable fish for money.

Every month, seafarers needed to pay 50 coppers of tax. 50 coppers wasn't a lot for many seafarers, but it served as a way for land dwellers to keep seafarers at sea. 

For experienced divers, the tax was negligible, but for those that could only live hunting bubblers, it seemed like an insurmountable wall, thus they resorted towards thievery as there were effectively no laws regarding seafarers.

Life on the rafts was miserable for most. People were not starving, but no one was safe, no one felt safe. Everyone was wet and storms often devastated homes.

However, throughout all the toil, young seafarers had aspirations. 

Shinra sat around a makeshift fire in the orphanage and ate away at the fatty bubbler. 

"I'll definitely become a real diver." 

Everyone knew Shinra was the best diver amongst the young seafarers, however he was not considered a real diver in the eyes of land dwellers.

From the beginning of the human race until now, the ocean has been a great mystery, containing creatures that no humans could face. 

Humans were not the king of this blue planet, but instead, it was dominated by sea beasts. 

To oppose this threat, humans looked to the stars. 

By using seastones and different astral debris found in the ocean, humans gained the ability to form a direct link with the myriad stars in the great expanse above, granting them the power to face off against the leviathans of the sea. 

Every year, there is an aptitude test hosted on land for all people, even seafarers and it was almost time for the aptitude test this year and it was going to be Shinra's tenth birthday.

Kids his age would never attend the test due to their fear of hunting sea beats, however Shinra was a talented diver and perhaps too mature for his age, due to the responsibilities he carried regarding the orphanage.

He was ready, or at least he believed so.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Days passed normally like any day. Wakeup, hunt, eat, sleep. That was his life, monotonous and repetitive. 

one week before the aptitude test

"One of the kids is sick Shinra, so I won't be able to go hunting with you. There's enough preserved food for us..."

...

"you know you don't have to work so hard."

"Don't worry mom, I know what I'm doing, and I'll be careful."

Running to the dock, Shinra undocked a small fishing raft and set off, energetically as always.

A few hundred meters away from the main raft the ocean was clear, turquoise and quite shallow, consisting of almost no danger and a perfect spot for safe hunting. 

The ocean floor was littered with sea foliage, stone arches and vibrant, red colored coral. 

Small schools of fish swam all around Shinra, the sun beams reflecting off their iridescent scales.

How beautiful life was, Shinra thought, away from the destitution of rafts, the crime, the suffering, the oppressive land dwellers. And as he looked past the corals, the stone arches, and sea grass into the waters beyond the reef, he swallowed.

Hundreds, maybe even thousands of meters away, the reef sharply sloped down into an entirely new environment.

The Great Abyss.

Or that's what the real divers called it. 

The water there was not crystal clear, instead it was dark. Dark as any starless night and teeming with a sense of ominousness that sent a chill down Shinra's spine every time he looked that way.

Occasionally, a stray sea beast would come out of the Great Abyss and wreak havoc on the reef and sometimes even the village. Although this danger was very real, the combined efforts of many seafarers usually resulted in the beast fleeing, or even dying. These occasional threats were dangerous, but very manageable for one entire village of seafarers. 

However, whatever lurked beyond the preliminary borders of the Great Abyss, a common seafarer wouldn't know. That was information reserved for real divers, perhaps for the better. 

Shinra had always wanted to become a real diver.

As long as he could remember, he was swimming, diving and hunting fish, always coexisting alongside the salty water.

To see every corner of the big blue had become one of his goals.

When he first glimpsed the magnitude of the deep, he was scared. Yet, that fear filled him with excitement, igniting his desire to become a diver.

As Shinra was daydreaming, he spotted a small set of bubbles that appeared on the water's surface. 

He immediately dove down and spotted the fat bubbler. With a medium sized hunting knife, the length of his forearm, he snuck up on the bubbler. Holding his breath, he struck down on its head, piercing its skull and killing it in one shot. 

Shinra dragged its body up back to its raft and put it in a large sac filled with some water.

He continued to look around again and was quite lucky to encounter another one. Following the same procedure, he snuck up behind the bubbler and brought his knife down on it. 

The knife went through.

Again and again. Almost ten fish later, did he realize it was getting late. 

He started to head back.

Arriving at the dock, he sat there and started dissecting the fish. His knife cleanly sliced through the bubblers, and that was when he saw something in the distance. It was a black mass with a frilled fin.

Most of its body was underwater, but even from a distance he could tell that it was giant and heading straight towards the village.