I woke up ten hours later, according to the clock in my room, feeling like I wasn’t going to collapse, which was good. What’s more, I could actually feel the relief that came with it, and it felt beautiful. The Befuddled was puttering along like it normally did, and I could feel the faint rocking that came with its usual operation. Rolling out of bed I dressed myself and headed back onto deck.

There, I found that I’d slept through most of the day and only part of the night. The too heavy stars glowed in their usual positions, the big white X that marked the oceans apparent double milky way seemed to almost rotate slowly in the sky, as if they were rings around the earth, though I could never catch any actual movement when I looked directly at it.

Hawthorn was sitting in his usual position, his fireflies spread out across the ship, casting a faint light over the deck. First Mate was there, too. She had a long pole in her hands and was leaning over the guard rails around the ship. They both turned to me, and I saw that the long pole was some sort of flat headed rake, dripping with the Bitrex paste that First Mate was apparently scraping off the ship.

“You’re the first one up.” First Mate said. The bags under her eyes had deepened, and her curly brown had fallen down around her face which, for First Mate, was a surprising display of slovenliness. “Take over for me, will you? I need a break.”

I took the rake from First Mate, who leaned against the railings and yawned again.

“Have you slept?” I asked her, knowing the answer.

She grinned at me,

“I will soon. As soon as more of you are up and about. I’m the First Mate. I can’t sleep while you bunch are half incapacitated from booze, hang overs and exhaustion, and then I can’t let the ship go untended while more than half of the ship is asleep.

I blinked.

“Wait, so you’ve been up since the party? No. It would have been before that. Since that morning? That was, what? Two days ago?”

She shrugged.

“I’ll sleep soon. Don’t worry.”

I glanced back at Hawthorn, whose eyes were closed, but didn’t seem to be asleep. The Fireflies all around the ship were drifting this way and that, like little sentries. I wondered how far they could see. I looked back at First Mate, and almost asked her why she pretended like she wasn’t the captain. But she was rocking back and forth on her feet, like I could push her over with a finger had I the mind to. Instead I went to work scraping the paste off the side of the ship. The water all around us was pitch black, and seemed utterly still which was strange, especially since still water should have reflected the riot of colors hanging above us in the sky, but it did not. Now and again, I saw faint lights far, far in the deep. Dull, flickering purples and reds shooting in different directions.

“Don’t worry about it.” First Mate said, “I don’t know what's down there, but they’ve never bothered us before.”

“You’d never run into one of those ugly frog things before either.”

“Fair.” She said, and then shrugged, realizing that some of her hair had escaped its bindings and tucking it back into its bun. “But sometimes you just have to let go of the fear and trust things will go right.”

I snorted.

“Or you can be on edge all the time.”

“Expect the worst and you’ll only be pleasantly surprised.” I said,

“Really? You think so? I’ve found expecting the worst doesn’t let you enjoy much at all, even when things go right. Is that from one of your holy books?”

“Personal philosophy.” I said, and wondered if she was trying to get a rise out of me or just making conversation. It was hard to tell with First Mate. With Elma, Melody, Lucas and the others I thought I had a grasp on their personalities, at least on the surface, but First Mate was an enigma. Not because she was hiding anything, I just wasn’t sure who she was or what she wanted.

"Thanks for your hard work earlier today." She said,

"Oh. No problem." I said, caught off guard by the sudden change in topic, "If I hadn't helped I would have died with everyone else."

"Still." She said, “Everyone is happy to have you on board.”

“You don’t need to give me platitudes.” I said, shaking the rake, Bitrex coming off of it in clumps and falling into the water. Something deep and dark and red spread far below in the still water, like heat lightning, but making no sound audible of the rumble of the ship's engines.

“It’s not a platitude. Quiver likes you, and the rest of them want to like you. My advice is to let them. Maybe you’ll figure out a reason not to die once your job is over.”

“I don’t want to die. I never said that.”

“Hey. I didn’t say you did. But you also told me you don’t have any plans once you toss that ring. The future has storm clouds on the horizon right now, seems to me. I’m not going to say what you should do but if you ever need help, you can ask. I’ve been in tight spots myself once or twice. I’ve never gotten out of them without a little help.”

“What? You’re offering to help me?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“We collect the valuable things the ocean throws at us. Some of it we sell, some of it we get where it needs to go, and some of it we keep. It’s not a job where profit margins and time tables are particularly important to us. We go where life takes us, and my crew is full of big hearted idiots. They won’t strand someone who comes to them and genuinely asks for help.”

I grunted, and kept scraping.

First Mate looked like she was going to say something, when the door below decks was kicked open and Elma came tearing through it, laughing.

“That stupid engine is off!” She said, shattering the quiet on the deck. I winced, irrationally afraid that whatever was making those lights, far below the ship, would surface in retaliation, but though another burst of purple bloomed deep below us, nothing else happened.

“Take over for Sam and finish scraping off the Bitrex paste.” First Mate said,

“Oh. Uh. I just remembered I have to do… something… else…” Elma said, turning on her heel.

“Elma!” First Mate laughed. The Water Folk sighed theatrically and stalked over to me, snatching the rake out of my hands while I grinned at her.

Free of my burden, I looked out over the water again, to see the sun beginning to peak over the horizon. The dark and the movement of tired bodies reminded me of trips I used to take with my father, getting up before the sun, hopping in the car and driving across the country to whatever mad vacation he’d wanted to take us on that summer. This was all one big trip, I supposed.

Life returned to normal, more or less, before too long. The sun peaked over the horizon, and the night sky sank into the water, almost literally. This part of the Ocean was called ‘The Stillness’, apparently. The water pitch black during the night, when the sun rose the water remained black, but took on the stars and formations out of some night sky. Not the sky that hung above us at night, but a different one, as if the water was allowing us a view of the night sky we never saw thanks to the sun. Or perhaps it was a completely different sky. The X of the twin milky way’s were there, but what did I know about astronomy on the ocean? I could see the fish that followed the boat mingling amongst the stars, swimming around stars and planets, as if they were some sort of graceful celestial wanderers and not idiot fish eating the leftover Bitrex paste at the bottom of the boat. Even the tongues couldn’t eat that. Did fish even have taste buds? I wasn’t sure.

It was a little eerie, the black starry night opening up around us in every direction below a cloudless, sunny blue sky. But we’d just passed through a sea of carnivorous tongues, so I thought I could deal with this, even if I felt a thrill of terror whenever I looked down at the water, like we the entire ship was going to suddenly drop into a freefall as it realized that it couldn’t sail on the sky.

The rest of the crew rose from their slumber, obviously relieved to be through the Sea of Tongues. Elma made a ‘We didn’t die’ breakfast that consisted of her pristine hard boiled eggs, chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, orange juice, and a celebratory shot from her private bottle of Japanese Whiskey, though she and Melody were the only ones to drink that last. I did, however, have trouble staying awake during work that day. In the spirit of celebration I’d had eight pancakes, and my body wanted to sleep and digest.

It was two days later I caught my first sight of land in the Ocean. Not artificial islands like Adler’s Grave, but a real island, for whatever value of real mattered out here. It looked normal enough, sticking out of the daytime astral sea. A mountain shrouded in green forest dominated the island. A ring of black, I wasn’t sure if it was sand or some sort of volcanic rock, ringed the foliage like a black eye. Elma stood on the deck the entire time, staring out at the island and watching the water.

“Isn’t that Hawthorn's job?” I asked, coming up on deck. I glanced back at the man himself who was trying to use his gloved hands to carefully remove a cigarette from a newly opened pack. He obviously didn’t mind.

“Water Folk use that island as an outpost, sometimes.” She said, “When they want to raid ships tired from navigating the Sea of Tongues. There’s probably no one there, but if there is and they try and get on deck I might be able to talk them down.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Right. Water Folk raiders.” Exactly like in the pulp action stories I’d read as a kid. I wondered if they really fought naked with shark tooth clubs or if that was just sensationalist nonsense to spice up books.

I didn’t get to find out, because nobody approached the boat, and we passed the island without issue.

“Do we stop on these islands, ever?” I asked at dinner that night, over my plate of fish. Melody and Thatch had caught them while fishing off the back of the boat earlier today. They almost hadn’t caught enough, despite fishing for hours, and they’d needed to enlist Elma to dive into the water and spear a few for them. I didn’t think it would work, quite aside from expecting Elma to fall eternally into the nightscape that was the water, I had doubted she’d be able to catch anything in the open ocean. Watching her was dizzying, like watching someone swim through the sky. She didn’t seem to break the water, it just looked as if she was swimming higher and higher, or, lower and lower, towards the stars. But despite my misgivings she’d crawled back onto the ship wet, alive and with three large Bass-like fish stuck on her spear.

“Sometimes. When we know they’re safe.” First Mate said,

“Or when we’re feeling adventurous.” Melody said,

“I think we’re all adventured out, though, after that scare on the Sea of Tongues.” Thatch said, “We probably won’t stop at all. The faster we move the less chance the Ocean has to throw another Curveball at us.”

After the first, I began to see more and more islands off in the distance. It was hard to tell, but most of them seemed… normal, with a few exceptions. We purposefully steered clear of some of them, so it was hard to tell with perfect certainty, but far and away, off in the distance, I could have sworn I saw an island that glittered like it was entirely made of glass or metal, and later, another that was completely clouded in steam or fog or smoke rising hazily into the sky, and a third that I was certain hadn’t been there when I’d looked out twenty minutes ago.