Pirate

I never planned to stay on a ship that long. The sea doesn’t care what you were before. It only cares if you can keep your footing when the deck tries to throw you off. I learned that the hard way more than once—rope burns, salt crusting in my feathers, the way the Black Seraph rolls under your boots until your body stops fighting it and just moves with her. I signed the articles in black ink with a smirk I wasn’t sure I meant. Captain Vesper watched me do it. Owl. Quiet. Feathers preened like he belonged to a different world than the rest of us. Something about him made me want to prove I belonged here too. Sparks was the one who brought me in. Fox. Easy grin. The first person who looked at the glow in my eyes and the broken halo and didn’t immediately call me witch. He still noticed more than he let on. There was no blood at first. Just the threat of it. Jax and his mouth. The way the crew muttered when they thought I couldn’t hear. Glowing eyes. Fallen halo. Goddess talk. I told them I pull my own weight and more. Gravel listened. The quartermaster’s the kind of badger who decides whether you stay useful or become a story told on shore. I kept my arms crossed and my distance and tried not to make any of them feel like I was looking for a fight. I climbed the ratlines that first morning with Sparks and saw the whole ship from the nest. Wind in my feathers. Horizon stretching out forever. For a second I believed this was the thing I’d been looking for when I left the farm and never looked back. The joy was real. I carried it down with me like something fragile. Bristle taught me powder after that. Hot, close magazine that smelled like sulfur and the promise of something violent. I measured cartridges with careful paws and admitted I’d never fired a handcannon. He didn’t laugh at me for saying it. Said the fear was the right starting place. Said I’d probably run powder when the real fighting started. I told him I could be careful. I meant it. I kept a knife in my boot and a softer thing in my chest that I tried very hard not to let anyone see. The crew still noticed. Pirates notice everything eventually. The superstition got louder the longer I stayed. Whispers turned into open stares. A few of them started crossing themselves or making signs when I walked past. Jax kept feeding it. Even the ones who didn’t hate me started looking at me like I was a bad omen waiting to happen. Sparks tried to stand between me and it for a while. It cost him. I saw it in the way the others pulled away from him too. Captain Vesper called me to the quarterdeck on a clear morning when the wind was steady and the sails were full. He didn’t raise his voice. He never needed to. He said the crew had made their feelings plain. A ship lives or dies on trust, and too many of them had decided I was something else. He gave me a fair severance—more coin than the articles strictly required—and told me the next time we made port I would leave with it. No hard words. Just the decision, already made. I took the pouch. Thanked him. Walked away before the softer thing in my chest could make me say something I couldn’t take back. Some nights the horizon looked like it was on fire. Some nights it just looked empty. Both versions felt honest. I don’t talk much about how it ended. Only that when I stepped off the Black Seraph for the last time, the dream of the moonflower was already waiting for me somewhere ahead—quiet, glowing, and mine.