#9.4.15

One with the Waves

The best idea to keep cool while enjoying the first of many Saturdays is to go to the beach. Which beach you might ask? Only the busiest beach in LA! That’s right. Santa Monica. Forgetting that everyone else and their entire family had the same idea as I did, we arrived at the beach only to find it cluttered with colorful beach towels, umbrellas and tanning bodies.

Thankfully the beach was much cooler than my non-air conditioned apartment so tanning wasn’t miserable. However, tanning only took place in 15 minute increments because it still WAS hot out. The water was warm but still cold enough to send goosebumps up and down my body when I first ran in. We found our favorite part of the beach was underneath the boardwalk. It was cool and breezy and mysterious. Pods of people with DSLRs were posing up against the support beams of the boardwalk having personal photoshoots. I brought my camera, too, but made her actually go into the water and away from the cliché iPhone style photos.

Those sailors who had rescued them at the port were from Valari and had been on a trading mission when they had seen the fires. While there were many on the ship there were more by far that they had left and they lived again the screaming for all the days of their voyage and some all their lives. The captain in particular haunted by the faces of those who threw themselves from the loading cranes and missed and fell to the water or found their mark and fell into the deck. All wondered if they might have taken more but they knew there was no room and in fact they wer overfull by half. The food even rationed was three days from running out and they were five from shore at best speed.

There were two sitting on the middle bar of the mainsail and they watched the ocean and the waves. The wind was light but steady and they could feel the press of it and how it carried them. One of them spoke and though there were none who could have heard them so high up he spoke quietly as he had for many days.

What will we do when we reach port?

Find someone who will take them. Valari ought, put them to Service or house them first and hold them to Service later.

Ia, think so?

It’s the way’s been done before in other wars and it’s worked long as I’ve heard it being done. Not the kindest way but one that’s fair. Leastways it gives them a place that’s safe for some time yet, have them out to build roads or somesuch thing.

Imagine some might go back to fight.

Ia, might. Still though the language might make it harder.

He nodded concession and looked down to the deck. They were letting the new refugees up in shifts to get them air and the newest group had come into the light and they stood blinking in the cloudless glare like newborns and did not move. The crew below urged them along so others too could surface.

Most never on a ship before, he said.

Ia. Suppose not many are, though there’s likely some. It’s an odd mix but there must be a sailor here or there that could fill us where we’re short.

He remembered suddenly the many that had been on leave and not come back and though the loss had already struck him once he felt it now again. There had been a crew of forty and they had lost thirteen and the captain had asked the service of any able but the word had yet to filter down through the whole of the ship and certainly it had not been translated yet into every language. Furthermore those who might ahve been otherwise able were still in shock or weak from hunger and they could not have safely held the posts of those they were replacing.

I miss Derron, the woman he was sitting with said.

Ai do you? I was never for him but he did have a wit that made some hard times easier.

He was good and quick on the sails and I miss that more than anything. Would mean less work for us.

He laughed. And here I thought you missed him for being dead.

It’s not a sure thing, him being dead.

Might’s well be.

Ia, think?

Ia. All dead, if I had to wager. All we left unless another ship was out there that we didn’t see.