I don't see three ships a-sailing, a-sailing out to sea.

[Vega]

19th Cylus, 719

There was something about being outside which made the sound of the fiddle so much better, Vega considered. Here, on the cliff, it was like being in a music hall. She had been tuning the fiddle by ear for a while now and somehow, it was always the same note which she got wrong, the same string which was just one tone out. Because it was always the same, Vega could easily compensate, but that wasn't the point to the feisty and somewhat stubborn redhead. She wanted to hear it properly and she knew that she had to deal with this. So, she went outside. That was where sound was the most clear and pure to her and so she had tuned the fiddle out here. And then, in doing that, she had realised where the issue was for her, in the stillness of Cylus and outdoors, she wasn't hearing the distortion and she tuned it without mistake. "It's a slippery little thing, you know. Not as easy as it looks." Grinning at him, Vega glanced out over the darkness of the sky. "I don't know 'ow I feel about Cylus, really. I mean." Shrugging, ever so slightly, she glanced at him. "It always makes me a bit nostalgic, like, you know? All I need is some weird-lookin' Naerikk with a crush on you an' some high heel shoes, an' I'd be gettin' my hey nonny nonny on."

With a slight, almost relaxed smile, Vega leaned against him. "She did, shurrup," whether he'd argued about Asari's crush or not, she responded. "It were right obvious. She was all flutterin' eyelashes an' helpless maiden with a heavin' bosom." Without pause, thought or consideration, Vega thumped him companionably (hard) on the shoulder. "What is it about you an' heavily made-up women with big knockers?" Motioning to herself she shook her head. "You do not 'ave a type, Arlo Creede." She dipped her head, then, apparently looking at the fiddle, but he knew her better. "Or you do, an' they weren't it. Imagine that, husband."

There was no more to say on that, but she shot him a grin that was mischief in and of itself.

"So, apparently," Vega said, lowering the fiddle she had just been playing and looking at him. "Three ships 'ave gone missin'?" Frowning slightly, she considered it. "Papa says that there's mumblin's among the biqaj round 'ere an' there's a superstition that they've gone through some bad water." She said those two words like they were significant and then glanced at him and realised that he might not know what she was talking about.

"There are areas of water what have got a bad reputation. Like a haunted woods, or a spooky house, I suppose. There are some places that are just.. unlucky. They say that there's a few o'those around this way." She shrugged then and glanced at him. "Superstitious lot, biqaj, but you know I've seen enough weirdness that it seems to me there migh' be somethin' goin' on. What do you think?" She fussed around with the fiddle, putting it back in it's case with care and almost reverence, her fingers trailing over the antique thing with a gentle touch. "An' so they'll be reluctant to go lookin', cos there's danger an' they might end up in Immortals-knows what sort of trouble an' stuff." Lifting her eyes, Vega grinned.

"Wanna go for a looksie?"

[Arlo Creede]

"Well there's a chance that that one string is just more contrary than the rest," Arlo teased her when Vega complained that it wasn't easy. He didn't doubt it. Now and then when he pulled out his gittern, there was the process of tuning the thing. He'd developed a pretty good ear for it, but still it didn't come as naturally to him as it did to Vega. He had mixed feelings about Cylus too. He missed the sunrises and the warmth of the sun beating down on them. On the other hand, so long as it wasn't cloudy, that meant that the view of the stars was spectacular. Especially out on the water.

That's what he'd been doing, laying sprawled on his back while Vega played, gazing at a vast canopy of stars. Thanks to U'frek's blessing, the multi-colored auro surrounding him seemed to glow brighter during Cylus, and Lyova was basking in it, perched on the brim of his hat. "She never had a chance and she knew it," he said, grinning aside at her when she reminded him of the girl in the ridiculous shoes. "I only saw you." He sat up, and Vega leaned against him. "I've seen better," he teased, bumping gently against her and grinning when she raised the prospect of heaving bosoms. "Like bees to honey, that's me. You're my type. Wife."

He frowned though when she mentioned the missing ships, thought on it a trill and then nodded. "I've heard men talking a little about it round town and on the docks. I remember reading once when I was studying about navigation...There's places way out to sea with no land in sight where currents from four directions seem to meet in the same place. Creates a dead calm place where seaweed, driftwood and even rubbish thrown from the land or from ships gathers. There were mentions of ships being stranded there for ten trials and longer." They hadn't sunk or disappeared however. Didn't exactly qualify under the bad water definition, which Arlo suspected just meant...'we don't know what it is, but it's bad'. Haunted, unlucky...Those kinds of things? They mostly belonged to the Biqaj.

"My mother used to spit every time she saw a black cat. No matter where she was, indoors, outdoors, no matter who she was with." He'd thought she was the only one, and that maybe his own mother had gone soft in the head. That was until he'd seen an old woman on the streets of Rharne do it too. Superstition was a funny old thing. "I'm sure there's something going on. Superstitions don't usually come out of nowhere. It's usually because of something that can't be explained."

"But," he added with another grin when she suggested they go have a look. "I'm not superstitious and there's nothing I like better than sticking a nose in where it's probably ill advised." What sort of Cassion son would he be, if it wasn't the case? Standing up, he brushed himself off and looked out to see. "I'm game. Just you and me, sailing the high seas and looking for trouble."

[Vega]

19th Cylus, 719

"If there's one string what's more contrary, I'm callin' it the Arlo string, an' that's that." She grinned at him as she said it, but that turned to a loud bark of laughter as he talked about big-knockered women being drawn to him like bees to honey. But when he said that he had a type, and she was it, Vega thumped him. It was a gesture of pure love and they both knew it. She even told him it in no uncertain terms, when she said quite clearly, "Yeah, shurrup you dweeb." With a smile, though, she looked down at the fiddle in her hands and she spoke in a softer voice. "I'm right glad we did it, you know. It were the right thing to do. Papa's well tickled, he is, an' Mr Creede seems happy too. You know where they're goin' next, don't you?" Vega rolled her eyes and shook her head. "An' they can jog on. That ain't happenin' an' I'll fight anyone who suggests it. Even your Papa." She wouldn't, of course, he knew her better. Vega's respect for Jonas Creede was immense.

As he spoke about water where nothing moved, Vega rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but if the cap'n weren't prepared for that then they've got no business bein' on the water." She looked at him and grinned. "Biqaj 'ave got the sea runnin' in their veins, Eva. Can you feel it?" She shook her head slightly and frowned. "It's funny, you know. I mean, my blood's silver an' my eyes change colour. I've even got the pointy ears goin' on, and workin' for me. But I've never got it." There was a time when she'd have sounded bitter or upset about that ~ now, though, it simply was what it was and that was that. "An' here I am, sittin' on rocks with my 'uman husband who's U'frek marked. Life's a righ' series of ironies, innit?" She shrugged and clambered up with him.

"Spittin'?" Vega looked at him and a wide grin broke onto her face. "I can't imagine Missus Creede doin' that. Funny things, superstitions, aren't they?" He was right, though, they were often born from something, even if it was something minor and strange. "A'right, that sounds good. Me, you, the open sea an' a mysterious trio o' missin' ships? What could possibly go wrong?"

They made their way to the ship, and started to get her ready to take out. Before they left, she moved over to the maps, where he did all his navigating stuff. "So, I've got where they were comin' from, an' when they were due to arrive. Can you make lines an' work out where we should go?" She was teasing, of course, Vega was an at least competent navigator, these trials, though he was much better at it. Still, between them they got a course and Vega was more than happy to take the ship out. Before they did, she checked everything in her usual, even she would have to admit, bossy manner and then she steered them slowly out of the harbour.

"Right, then, you," she said, glancing at him. "As an U'frek marked show-off, I expect you to be on th'lookout for funny clouds, or areas o' the sky which don't look righ'." It was Cylus, so it was dark and the stars twinkled above them, but there were patterns in the ocean and they reflected in the sky. Grinning at him, she shrugged. "An' my granny's dead, so I'll be teachin' you to suck eggs, too, a'right?" It was quiet out on the water, too quiet, so Vega decided that the best thing to do was to sing. Her voice lifted in a song, he'd no doubt heard it more than once.

What she sings

Well, he were a lad in a fishing town
His papa said, "Now, see
You can spend your life, your jolly life
Sailing on the sea.
You can search the world for pretty girls
Til your eyes grow weak and dim,
But don't go fishing for a mermaid, son
If you don't know how to swim"

'Cause her hair was green as seaweed
Her skin was blue and pale
He loved that girl with all 'is heart
He only liked the upper part
He did not like the tail

So he signed aboard of a whaling ship
And that very firs' trial at sea
There he spied in the waves,
Reaching out for he
"Come live with me in the sea said she,
Down on the ocean floor
And I'll show you many's a wonderous thing
That you've never seen before"

So over he jumped and she pulled 'im down,
Down to her seaweed bed
A pillow made of tortoise-shell
She placed beneath his head
She fed him shrimp and caviar
Upon a silver dish
From her head to her waist was just to his taste
But the rest of her was a fish

Then one day, she swam away
So he sang to the clams and the whales
"Oh, how he miss'd her seagreen hair
And the silvery shine of her scales
Then her sister, she swam by
And set his heart awhirl
From her head to her waist were an ugly fish
But the rest of her was a girl!

'Cause her hair was green as seaweed
Her skin was blue and pale
He loved that girl with all his heart
He jus' didn't like the upper part
(sea shanty by J. Parsons)

There were, as always, a selection. Some more risky than others, but most more funny than anything. However, after a little while, Vega frowned. Glancing around, trying to get her bearings, she looked back at him. "Arlo?" There was a frown on her face. "Where are we? I lost the shoreline?"

[Arlo Creede]

A violin string named after him? In all apparent seriousness, Arlo gazed at the stars and appeared to be deep in thought. He wasn't, of course, and Vega would know it. Then he'd shrugged as he sat up. "Bold, daring, apart from the crowd. Sounds like a string after my own heart." She knew as well as he did, as well, that she'd rather lop her own foot off than cross words with Jonas Creede.

Not that Jonas was a temperamental, argumentative or unyielding man. In fact, the contrary was true and his traits worked in his favor. It was genius really, on his part. Arlo couldn't remember a time that he'd overstepped with his stepfather, though he'd been much more concerned about earning the man's disapproval or disappointing him, than he'd been worried about anything else.

"It's the same for us, married or no," he agreed. "But for them," Jo'qan and Jonas, "an offiicial marriage cinches it all. They'll be on to grandchildren next." It probably didn't need to be said. They both knew it to be true already. "Even experts get careless sometimes," Arlo argued when Vega spoke about who had any business on the open water and who didn't. "Familiarity if you're not careful can breed ego, which can lead to a lack of mindfulness, thinking you're better than all the dangers and mysterious pitfalls out there, laying in wait." He couldn't say that it was what happened to the ships that had gone missing. One ship gone might've sunk in a squall. But three ships in a short span of time, independent of each other? Something strange was behind that to be sure. Or just a very large coincidence, on the other hand.

"Lots," he declared then with another grin when she agreed they should sail out, and stood to brush himself off. So while Vega prepared the boat for travel, Arlo regarded his charts. By considering the ships' points of origin and looking at the expected time of arrival, within a reasonable block of time that allowed for any number of variables, he could surmise almost exactly the route they would have traveled. And assuming calm seas that wouldn't have knocked them off course, or other problems that might have delayed them, he might even be able to pin down at what time they'd have been at any point along the route.

So while she steered them away from the harbor, Arlo took up a place at the bow, keeping a lookout for anything unusual ahead, above or around them. With his U'frek given aura swirling around him, he felt a little like a headlamp at the nose of the ship. "I've never been under any illusions that you're not a taskmaster," he flung back over his shoulder, teasing her about having handed him down his orders. Lyova meanwhile, was perched on the brim of his hat. Vega's singing voice without fail had a knack for soothing the savage beast, if there was one to be found. But out on the water it was particularly appealing. Arlo smiled, but it didn't distract him from what he ought to be doing, and he'd developed a knack for knowing just where they were on the water, even without referring to his charts.

Which was why it took him by surprise when Vega wondered about the shoreline. That was impossible, and Arlo looked to the side and behind them. Sure enough...Nothing. "We haven't gone far or fast enough to have left it behind," he said, frowning deeply as he pulled out his spyglass to have a closer look. Still, nothing. And then turning back to look ahead of them, he lowered the glass and then raised it again, this time angling the lens lower towards the water. "Do you see that?" he said. "The sparks on the water, far as the eye can see. It's not the reflection of the stars...It's something more. Or different."

Naturally the stars above them were reflecting on the water and as they always did, they created a particular pattern that sailors grew familiar with. And the seas were relatively calm, which meant that the patterns weren't particularly churning ones. But there were pinpoint like flickers with hazy borders, dotting all the spaces between the stars' reflections. Moving on their own, in and out of those usual patterns, apparently at random...Or maybe not. There were thousands of them, as far as the eye can see.

"I remember back on Scalvoris, the night that Cassion marked me for the first time...I was up in the crow's nest and a manatee swam up below me. But not your usual sort...He was covered in stars. I'd heard about them but not seen them before. And then when Cassion came for me again, thanks to U'frek we witnessed an enormous whale like creature covered in stars. A leviathon." Could either of those things explain what they were seeing on the water, he wondered? Then again, that would mean that groupings of those mysterious lights would be moving together. Instead, each point of light seemed to have a mind of it's own, while also seeming to be part of a larger, mysterious....something or other.

[Vega]

"They can be on to it," she said, of the push for grandchildren. "It's not happenin' an' that's that." When he went into a whole spiel about familiarity leading to complacency, though, Vega nodded apparently seriously. "Like you, with me, you mean? How you obviously take me for granted, take advantage of my meek an' gentle nature? That kind 'f thing? Yeah. Makes sense." Her grin was mischief and Vega simply continued with what she was doing. When he responded to her with one word - lots - that grin widened, but for the moment she said no more.

He never minded her singing, though Vega really wasn't of the opinion that it was a good noise. Still, the open waters carried her voice and, these trials, she was less concerned about such. Faldrun's daughter she might be, but Jo'qan was her father in all the ways which mattered and, in discovering her mortalborn status, Vega had begun to act in some ways which were just slightly different. Her father knew there was something odd with his daughter ~ Jo'qan knew Eva as well as any father could, and Vega was a cantankerous woman at the best of times. This was not, it had to be said, the best of times for the young red head. Yet, there was a sense of almost assurance to her which had developed over the trials since Faldrun had cursed her.

"It were a right good punch, weren't it?" Vega said, from nowhere it seemed. In truth though, over the trials since Faldrun had cursed her, every now and then she spoke about it. When she was ready and able and not at any other time. That was how she needed it to be and, in fairness, Arlo was fantastic in just letting her be, and do, as she needed. "Thanks." It was all he was getting and, frankly, he could be happy with it or not. She was bossy, not least in an attempt to overcome the feeling of discomfort she had and then, suddenly, she lost the horizon.

"I know that, but it's not there, is it?" Vega's expression was dark as he lifted a spyglass to his eyes to see. "I told you, didn't I? But no, no. You jus' double check in case I blinked an' missed the damn horizon. It's not there, Arlo Creede." She was about to launch into a full on rant and then he pointed out the pinpricks of light on the water and Vega turned and looked. She was quiet for a moment, and then she spoke. "When I were a right little girl, my Papa was in a clan meetin' an' there was another biqaj there. He stank of tobacco, he did, an' he was missin' most of his teeth. He scared me a bit." Vega glanced at him and grinned, then shrugged. "So, I went an' sat with him. " Of course she did, that shrug said. What else would she ever do? "He were a storyteller. Not a great one, but it was atmospheric an' stuff. An' he told about places like this."

It was a biqaj superstition, Vega said. "Xiur's folly." Stars which weren't stars reflecting in water which was not water. She couldn't quite help but to wrap her arms around herself a little tighter. "They lure unsuspectin' sailors to a place where the siren song pulls them into their wat'ry grave." Vega glanced at him. "So if any beautiful half-fish women start singin' clap yer hands over yer ears, quick smart, alright?" By all accounts, she said, Sirens were there to lure weak willed men-folk in. They didn't work on women, Vega was quick to point out, but she grinned as she said it.

But, weird superstition and lost shorelines, sparkling bits on the water or not, Vega said, there was a bottom line. They needed to find those ships. "Wanna clamber up into the crows nest an' see what's about?" If he did that, he could let her know if there was a direction in which she should head.

[Arlo Creede]

"Yeah, that's you. Meek, pliable. A regular shrinking violet," Arlo teased Vega right back. There was no chance of anyone taking her for granted. Most particularly him. He got it though, where her mortal father and his were concerned. Blood didn't matter so much as the family connection. That was their legacy, Joq'an's and Jonas, and with Vega and Arlo being their only children, he reminded Vega, neither man wanted to see that legacy end with them. "Children are a way of achieving immortality." Not that it prompted him to want to hurry things alone, or suddenly produce a pint sized legion of children. But he understood the older men's fixation on the idea.

He knew that Jo'qan had sensed something had changed, and sooner or later, Arlo thought, he was going to start asking questions. But Vega's situation regarding her Immortal father was different than his own. Arlo had believed he knew how Jonas would react, and the man who'd raised him, hadn't disappointed. "It was," he said, regarding the roundhouse blow that she'd planted on Faldrun's face. "What's more impressive is that we're both still here to tell the tale."

But of course he looked, Arlo argued when he lowered his scope and put it back in his pocket. It wasn't that he hadn't believed her. He could easily have taken her word for it and did. "There's things you've got to see, or not see from your own perspective." As if she wouldn't have looked if she was in his place, was the implication. "Like sirens?" he said when she talked about the story she'd been told as a child, and he peered again, more closely and lingering, at the pinpricks of light on the water. They definitely weren't just the reflections of stars. He'd heard something about Xiur's Folly, but mostly it was just the term he'd heard some arcs ago, and he'd been focused more on traveling by foot through the forests back then.

"None of their voices would be as appealing as yours," he reassured Vega when she told him to clap his hands over his ears. "And they'd never come close to matching your beauty." It was both teasing, and truth from Arlo's perspective, and she'd know it all too well. Warning noted though. He wasn't eager to go rushing to a watery death, not even at the hands of a beautiful woman with a songbird's voice. But up to the crow's nest he went, quick as could be. He'd spent as much time up there as he'd spent climbing trees when he was younger, and tended to make very swift work of getting there. Looking down on the water, all those points of light was even more of a marvel than it had been before, when he'd been standing at the rail.

"I can pick out a pattern to them now. They're not just random, either alone or in groups," he called down to Vega. "They're sort of moving in a circular, spiral pattern...Like a whirlpool." And the lights were more populated and closer together as they moved towards the center, off in the distance. And then, "They look to be blinking out, out there, like there's a dark void or something at the center. There," he said, pointing off towards the west, some distance away. Assuming of course that Vega wanted to sail straight into what, from a higher perspective, looked like it could be a swirling black hole in the ocean. And a very deep one at that.

From up where he was, there was something he was curious about that might would be better judged, down where Vega was. "What are you feeling regarding the current?" Meaning, slight as their movement might be at the moment, did she feel that the ship was being pulled by the current in a relatively straight line, or more in a circular pattern, considering what he'd observed while looking at the lights and the way they were arranging themselves overall. It would be interesting to learn if they were somehow being naturally pulled in that direction, were it not for Vega steering the ship.

[Vega]

Vega sighed slightly, ignoring his quip about her being meek and mild, and she looked out to sea as she spoke. "He'll love me, no matter what. An' he'll be my Papa, always. That's not what's botherin' me, an' it's not what'll bother him. " Sometimes, not often, but more than most people would imagine, Vega was a thoughtful and reflective woman. "Imagine what it'll do to him, findin' out what he did to my Mama, Arlo. If you'd lost me, an' raised our baby an' loved me all them arcs. To find that out? It'd be the worst thing an' as much as I know I should tell him, I jus' don't know if I can." She frowned, irritated at the horizon it seemed, but he knew her better. "I really hate that hot-arsed useless fire-brained loser you know. An' I hate that I think I might be like him. But I'm not. But I'm like him enough that..... I'm the reason there's been so much fire, aren't I? An' that's not gonna stop. Oh, you irritate me you do, Arlo Creede." Looking at him, her eyes were swirling a mass of different colours. Her expression, however, told the truth of the predominant one. "Don't know why I married you, I don't. Yer well irksome." She smiled at him and sighed. "An' stop goin' on. I'll tell him."

Of course, though, when she told him that the horizon had gone, he had to look for himself. And then, try to justify it? Vega shook her head. "Shurrup," was her response, her grin genuine. "You an' yer arguments. What in the name of Pier'n'Pre's pink parts is goin' on?" But yes, like Sirens she said and watched him as his interest grew. When he said that none would match her voice or her beauty, though? Vega chuckled. "I'd like to say that they'd surpass it. But apparently, you even see Edasha as lookin' like me, so maybe they'll ignore you as obviously crazy." He saw, he wanted, he needed no one but her and Vega knew that. Somewhere along the line, he'd shown it enough times. Still, she was going to torment him about it. Anything else just wasn't enough.

As much as she'd like to have spent her time watching him climb up to the crow's nest - and she did to an extent - Vega kept her focus on steering the ship. Arlo talked about a sort of swirling and Vega nodded. "She wants to be turnin' that way, that's for sure," she said, motioning to the same place, same direction and pull that he was seeing. "So. We've got two options, Creede. Maybe three. Go with it, or go against it. I can go with it in the swirly, twirly kinda slow way that the current would take us in," at least at the moment.

Vega looked up at him then, perched up there in the Crows Nest, and she grinned. "Or, I can steer us right into it. Straight on an' knickers to the consequences, lets ride them out?" She knew which one she'd choose, and she was mostly sure she knew which one he would too. But, she had to check first. And then? Depending on what he said, she'd do - but her expectation was very much that she'd be turning and sailing straight into the anomaly.

Because this was them. What else would they ever do?

[Arlo Creede]

Vega was right. The situation as it related to her Immortal father, and his, her mother and his, was a very different one. If his mother hadn't really had the time to genuinely fall in love with Cassion, or maybe she had, Jonas at least had always known that she'd cared for the then mystery man. And that Arlo hadn't been a product of rape. For Vega and Joq'an however it was very different, and Arlo didn't need to acknowledge as much out loud. She knew, and he knew this was more about her saying it as a way to sort it out in her own mind. Not so much him needing to respond as if he were trying to confirm it. So he'd just smiled and nodded, "Yep, I'm a pill. But you're stuck with me now."

More so, when she claimed not to be at all like her Immortal father, Arlo knew when silence was the better course of action. Temperamental, stubborn, hotheaded? Noooo. Not like him at all. So, if the ship was to be allowed to simply drift without Vega's guiding hand, it would bob along with those many points of light in a circular, spiral pattern until, presumably, it reached the middle. At the rate those things were going, it would take a great deal of time to get there. So should they be in a hurry or go there at all? It wasn't like either of them to simply turn around and go back.

Besides, something regarding their location had already changed, given they'd lost sight of the mainland. He'd taken his compass up with him and he'd already studied the stars and unusually, they weren't as helpful as he'd hoped for plotting their location. So he pulled the compass out of his pocket and gave it a look. "It's spinning," he said calmly, almost as if he wasn't surprised. It shouldn't have been. It should have been pointing due north. But instead it was spinning slowly in the same direction as the lights were.

So they seemed to have options, but Arlo wondered if they were only the details, while the outcome might otherwise be the same. But this was then, and snapping the compass shut, he grinned and called down. "Into the breach we go then...Plot a course straight ahead, I say."

[Vega]

"I can see you thinkin' you know," Vega shot at him with a half-grin. "An' for what it's worth, yer a lot like your biological father too." She said that, then left it there. He could take from it what he would - it was true, but it was also as far from an insult as it was possible to be. And as for herself? Hot headed, argumentative and more than a little fiery? She could own it. But those aspects of her personality had been shaped by her father - her real father - and Vega considered that in doing that he had given her the greatest gift he could have.

Not that she particularly used them, but there it was.

Right now, they had more important things to worry about and so, she steered the ship and Arlo clambered up into the Crow's Nest. From there, he spotted lots of things and Vega frowned as he explained about the swirling. But then, he made the right choice as far as Vega was concerned. "Straight ahead, aye aye!" She grinned at him, even as she steered them into the direct line of trouble. It was the way they always were, after all, the pair of them. Straight ahead and go at it. So that was what they did.

And it was odd. Nothing short of odd. The stars were behaving strangely, the ocean too - the horizon had gone walkabout and yet, the oddness didn't. "Arlo, this is well weird!" Vega's hair was whipping around her in the wind, yet where he was there was none. They seemed to pass through a sort of almost invisible wall, where the storms raged for a brief moment. Then, they were back on gentle waters and Vega looked around in, quite frankly, irritation. "This is gettin' bloody silly, now," she said, and of all things she sounded quite accusing to poor old Arlo.

Because there, in entirely the wrong place and far too far away, was the slight horizon of land. But much closer than that, were the three ships. Almost certainly the ones they were looking for, but there. Not too far away, the three ships sitting there. Not moving. Vega looked at Arlo and her eyebrow raised. "So the land is where the sea should be an' the sea isn't movin' an' there are three ships over there. How in the name of Ralaith's furry butt-cheeks did that 'appen?"

[Arlo Creede]

"Then you're witnessing brilliance in action," Arlo shot back, down from his perch in the crow's nest at Vega. He was teasing, of course, but seeing him thinking indeed. On the other hand, he couldn't exactly deny it when she said he was much like his Immortal father. It wasn't just some previously unknown familial connection that had drawn him to Cassion after all. In a way, he'd sensed a kindred soul. That of another being that tended to leave risk at the bottom of his list of things to consider.

Just like sailing into the heart of the unknown, just as they were doing right now. A place where presumably, three ships full of men might have disappeared forever. So straight ahead they went, without a thought to the contrary. And well weird, was right. He'd reached up to grab the brim of his hat to stop it being yanked off and spirited away on the wind. And then suddenly there was none. Not even the slightest of breezes. "It's like we've passed through some sort of wall...Some unseen barrier."

Did she hear anything, he asked her? "I don't mean anything unusual, but just the usual sounds," Arlo added with a curious frown. "Like gulls. The sails snapping in the breeze. The waves lapping against the hull." Because he didn't hear any of those things, and the utter silence was an eerie one. Then there was the land again, and the ships, all exactly where they shouldn't have been. "You recognize the shoreline?" he called down. "Any familiar landmarks" It was hard to say in the dark, but then there were the ships to consider.

"Ahoy there!" he shouted, knowing that out on the water, sound carried and he wondered, would anyone call back? "It's like a mirror, isn't it?" Arlo considered then tried to explain what he was thinking. "Like we passed through the surface of a mirror and ended up seeing a reversed image." It boggled the mind, if that was remotely the case. At any rate, "Shall we sail over and see if anyone's home?" The three ships, he meant.