Sun’s Height 11th
Hours after setting sail from the bay of Dawnstar, Leif found Sevine leaning over the railing, emptying her guts out into the sea. Propping his elbows up on the wooden railing beside her, he reached out to comfort his ill friend, rubbing the midst of her back with a tender touch. When she lifted her head to gaze at him, Leif forced himself to stifle a chuckle, her face was the color of her eyes, figuratively speaking of course. With a shaking hand, Sevine wiped away the spittle from the corner of her mouth, and grimaced, trying to find the strength to smile. As Leif tried to recall, he couldn’t remember any mention from Sevine of ever sailing before, and if she did, there was a good reason why she never mentioned it in the first place.
“I thought about asking how you were holding up, but…” he gestured with a wave of his hand at her current state, “obviously, the sea is not your favorite place, eh?” She lurched over the railing, dry-heaving as she had emptied the contents of her morning’s breakfast long ago. Sinking to her knees, Sevine clung to the wooden posts, and rested her cheek against them.
“I hate it.” She gasped, trying to catch her breath. “I didn’t think it would be this bad. The sailing, I mean.” As she spoke, a tremble rolled through her body, causing beads of sweat to roll down the tip of her nose.
“First time?”
“Aye. It’s the… moving. Of the ship.”
“Ah, motion sickness then.” Leif realized, understanding that the moving of the ship across the surface of the water made many first time sailor’s sick, even on clear, pleasant days like today. “C’mon, let’s get you something to drink.” Extending his hand out towards her to take, Sevine grasped it, and found herself on her feet, leaning into Leif as he slipped an arm around her shoulder to steady her more.
Guiding Sevine to a long-table set out on the main deck, he pulled out a chair for her, and made certain she sat before fetching the water skein off his belt, and poured it into a nearby tankard. Taking the seat next to her, Leif pressed the tankard into her hands, and watched as she sipped on the liquid with a caution, unsure if her stomach would reject it as well. Her crimson locks were slick with sweat, and clung to the side of her head like bloodied tendrils. His eyes wandered over her, studying her like a newborn babe, he watched as her lips parted to drink from the tin cup, and suddenly looked away, a flush of bright red spread across his cheeks. He had found himself thinking of Sevine as more than a friend, as he often did. Yet, being so close to her in proximity, and having the opportunity to gaze at her uninterrupted, there was a part of him that felt shamed. Perhaps it was how she first treated him after his failed attempt at wooing her. After all, she nearly broke his nose. But now, seeing her in a weakened state, evoked a protective response from him. There was nothing more that he wished to do, than to lie her down on a proper bed, and ensure her well-being during the course of the voyage. However, Leif knew that Sevine would not allow someone to mother like a hen over its chicks. So, he stilled his natural urges to fawn over her, and reserved himself to pushing water into her body. When she set the now empty tankard on the table, her eyes flickered over to him, offering a weakened smile.
“Th-thank you. I feel better.” She mustered.
“Let’s get you into a bed, at least. It won’t do you any good to be staring at the sea while we’re sailing, ‘twill only make you sicker than you are now. I’ll come and check on you throughout the night, you need to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration.” Once below deck, Leif unrolled her padded bedroll, and laid it over a pile of straw. Putting her in a hammock would only make her motion-sickness worse. As she crawled inside her bedroll, pulling the woolen cover up to her chin, Leif brought over a bucket, and sat it beside her, in case she didn’t make it topside. Her eyelids fluttered, threatening to overcome her with sleep. He remained sitting alongside her, and waited until she fell asleep, which was only in a matter of minutes. With a soft smile, Leif knelt over her, and placed a gentle kiss upon her brow.
Returning topside, Leif set himself to work by aiding with the rigging, falling into his old work patterns for when he sailed on
The Courtesan all those years ago. By the time the evening meal was brought upon deck, Leif ventured below to check on Sevine, and found her fast asleep. He returned once more topside, and found himself sitting alongside a remarkable Breton mage, by the name of Ariane. She asked more questions about his life, than she answered about hers. She mentioned where she had gone for schooling in magick, something about the College of Whispers, which to Leif, sounded as secretive as its name suggested. He was soon drawn away by Halvar and Bjorn, who coaxed him into playing a round of songs upon a lute, telling him that they hadn’t the luxury of a decent singer since he left. Halvar and Bjorn attempted to convince what women onboard they could into dancing along to the sea-shanty that Leif’s husky voice provided as his fingers plucked the chords as tenderly as he would hold a lover in his arms. In the end, the two ruffians found themselves dancing alone.
“
O’ my bonny lass,
Where she may be,
I know in the port of ol’ Solitude,
She’ll wait for me.
With hair bright as the sun,
And eyes as blue as the sky,
Her lips painted red with rouge.
In the soft embrace o’ my bonny lass,
Where she’ll kiss me from dusk to dawn,
Till I leave port come next morn.
A woman so true,
Full o’ love, as she waits for me.
O’ my bonny lass,
She knows not where my true heart lies;
‘Tis under the open sky,
With the wind of Kyne,
Filling our sails.
She’ll carry me away from home,
And I shan’t return anytime soon.
O’ my bonny lass,
Where she may be,
I know in the port of ol’ Solitude,
She’ll wait for me. ”
Sun’s Height 14th
Over the course of the next three days to come, sailing was smooth with a pleasant breeze on the 12th. By the early morn of the 13th, the wind worsened into a blustery gale, with the seas becoming turbulent. Sevine fared no better on the voyage than she did at the start, but Leif kept a close eye on her, making sure she pushed the fluids to avoid the troubles of dehydration. On the 12th, she managed to eat a morsel or two of bread, and it was here that Leif inspected her leg, after she grimaced climbing the stairwell to the main deck. He sat her down on deck, and cleaned the wound; the stitches were removed, and Leif used his knowledge of healing to finish closing the laceration up. Now, only a red mark remained from where the spearhead nipped her calf. By the 13th, despite the fouling weather, Sevine felt considerably better than she had at the start of the voyage two days prior, though the continuous rocking of the ship did nothing for the pounding headache she suffered from. Perhaps it was the fact that she had had little to eat since setting sail that her stomach could simply not upchuck. She stuck to keeping below deck, and found herself sleeping more than usual, awoken by the nervous whinnies of Asper, who could sense the danger of the storm; he pawed at the floorboards, and poked his head out of the stall, nickering in earnest to Sevine. She could do naught for him, and let him remain. Leif kept himself busy by taking a seat in the fighting top, a wooden barrel-like platform situated halfway up the main mast, to give visual aid to captain Atgeir who stuck to the wheel like a boulder. Kyne had turned the sea into a mess of rising and falling waves. Water sloshed across the deck of
The Courtesan making it dangerous for those that knew not on how to traverse wet decks. Halvar, Orvar, Bjorn, and the other sailors aboard were set to work, fastening ropes, and ties that were ripped free in the violent gusts of wind.
On the 14th of Sun’s Height, by mid-afternoon the clouds cleared, and the winds lessened, giving the sailors on deck a chance to rest. Though Atgeir remained uneasy, grumbling beneath his breath that Kyne was only playing tricks on them; it was when the other ships in tow pulled alongside one another did he voice his concerns. The swarthy captain pointed out that there was no proper place to moor the ships, for the beaches were littered with rubble, nor were there any safe coves to anchor in. While they made their decisions on how to handle anchoring the ships, Leif could see the destruction that had befallen Winterhold as he had remained in the fighting top, in fact the town no longer remained as was mentioned on the 11th before they had set sail. Rubble filled the shorelines, and broken shards of wood that were once the homes and other buildings of Winterhold floated out to sea, the bridge that connected the small village of Winterhold to the college filled the gulley it once spanned, and the water level had risen considerably than he had remembered from previous times of sailing past Winterhold. Even more curious, a fire kindled further down the beaches. Did someone survive the collapse? He would mention it to Atgeir, perhaps they would sail down yonder and investigate once the dinghies departed. When he descended from the fighting top to help in readying the dinghies, Leif’s clothes were drenched with rain and sea water. He spotted several members of the company were gathered on the main deck, deciding who would go, and who would stay. There, he saw Sevine, wearing a red tunic, and leather trousers; the choice to forgo her armor worried him, but he did not doubt her, as he saw her war axe stationed at her hip. If the dinghy capsized, which he prayed to Talos it wouldn’t, she wouldn’t be bogged down with the extra weight of her leather armor.
“Are you going?” Leif asked, sidling up next to her.
She nodded in affirmation, “Aye. There aren’t many that can go, what with the supplies and all. I figured that I could be of some help. Might be best for me to get the feeling of land beneath my feet.” Sevine had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t identify. Was it the lack of food? Or her nerves?
“Watch yourself, the waves are tricky. If you capsize, kick your boots off.” He returned, motioning with a nod of his head to her boots. With the fear of something awful happening to her while he lingered behind, Leif embraced her quickly, and squeezed her shoulder affectionately before pushing her towards the dinghy. She only offered a wave of her hand as the boat was soon lowered into the waters below.
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