Aethe’s goodbyes, such as they were, were short. She made sure her responsibilities were distributed among the remaining elves, saluted her commander, and that was that. It was shockingly brief.

“You don’t need more time?” Marco asked for the third time.

“I don’t. And they need to get to work. The meat from the crabs won’t last them forever. They need to also build a ship,” Aethe answered.

“Still…”

“It was a job, Marco. It could have been more than that, but it never progressed beyond a job. I’m okay.” She looked behind her one last time. “As okay as I can be. We can just leave.”

Marco’s ship, The Foolish Endeavor, had somehow survived the crabs. Either the crabs had avoided the ship on purpose or just emerged from the reef in different places, but there wasn’t as much as a scratch on it when they left the island.

“So that’s it? We get a couple of levels and leave?” Riv swung his club, frustrated. “I was expecting more.”

“We got food and water. So we won’t be starving or thirsty. That’s plenty,” Marco countered.

“It was someone else’s dungeon encounter.” Elisa shrugged. “We were lucky to get anything. Besides, I think Marco got more. He has that look.”

He had.

“I’m stronger, a couple of level ups. But the ship is better,” Marco answered. “I kind of wonder what it will be like when we get more rewards like these. Dozens of them. All stacked together, or replacing the worst of them with the best we find. What kind of ship will this be then?”

“Something special,” Elisa said. “Maybe very special, if the system really has taken notice of this little adventure. We’ll hit a limit at a certain point and have to choose between some upgrades, and then that’s where I step in. But for the moment, just keep adding the upgrades Marco. Let’s see what you can build.”

They untied the boat, then pushed it back into the water. Luckily, the reef was more fragile than the boat and took all the damage there was to take from the interaction. After a few minutes of raising sails and some basic paddling, they were underway.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the plan?” Aethe sat on the rail and looked in the direction of the ship’s travel. “Where were you headed when you found this place?”

“It’s a good question. Elisa?” Marco transferred the question to their navigator.

“Right now, we are just exploring. Any direction that doesn’t take us back into the dead sea doldrums is as good as any other. Unless you know of somewhere else.”

“Not me. This was our group’s first stop.” Aethe winced. “We didn’t have the best luck.”

“Well, then. Let’s get going. I say we go… that way.” Riv pointed. “Until we find something interesting.”

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Marcos followed his finger. It was pointing at nothing in particular. He couldn’t see anything special about it, but there could hardly be anything special to see. It just water and then water, and then a lot more water. They were rolling the dice again, hoping that a random choice somehow turned out to be the best one.

“Fine with me,” Marcos said. “I’ll get us there. Anyone who needs to rest should rest now. I’ll take a shift sleeping later. Who knows when we’ll be able to get a full night’s sleep next?”

—

Hours later, it was night again. Marco had just lowered the sail, letting the ship slow down as much as it could. It didn’t make sense to him to keep sailing when he couldn’t see, and what little moonlight he had hoped would make it possible to see distant islands had been obscured by clouds. It had been a long, long day. He was ready to sleep the last of it away.

“You look tired, commander.” Aethe came up from belowdecks, holding a small basket of crab meat and a few cups of water. “Eat before you sleep. You can’t rest on an empty stomach.”

“Thanks. And I think I told you about the commander thing. Please call me Marco. The others are asleep?” Marco asked.

“Almost immediately. I couldn’t fall asleep. As you know, I just got done with a longer nap than most ever take.”

“Ha. Yeah, I guess so.” Marco patted the rail. “Keep me company, then.”

“I will. I wanted to ask you about the others. How did you come together?” Aethe asked.

“That’s a long story. I’m kind of on the run from my people. My class is considered evil.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“They think there is. Which is all that matters, I find. I know Elisa from back home. We’ve been friends for a while. She caught up with me and wanted to come along. Riv was someone we came across. He was sort of an accident. I can’t take him home, so he had to come along.”

“He’s in good spirits, for all that.”

Marco nodded and took a big bite of the crab meat before gulping down some water. He was hungrier than he had thought he was, and someone had finally taken the time to salt down the crab meat properly. It was better than the last batch he had eaten.

“I think he was waiting for something like this. Some kind of big change. It’s certainly not because I’ve done a good job. He’s almost died several times,” Marco said as he looked at his rapier. After the crab fight, he had gone back to retrieve it. Despite its use in several battles, the blade was somehow as good as new. He liked that.

“But he’s stronger for it.” Aethe nibbled on her own fish and stared out into the dark. “You rarely see a Sturdy that combat-oriented. He’s as good as a Knight in some ways, if not as armored.”

“Sure. Hopefully that will be enough to keep him safe.”

“And Elisa? You and she are… involved?”

“Elisa and me? No.” Marco shook his head. “We get asked that a lot, though. It drove my foster father crazy. He’d bother me about it at least once per dinnertime.”

“I’m not surprised. You seem very…” Aethe looked for the words, then held her hands out palm up, as if to show she didn’t find any and was apologetic about the lack. “Close, I supposed.”

“Oh, we are close. She’s always been there. But I think she’d tell you the same thing I would.”

“Which is?”

“That we are close. That we always have been. Just not like that.” Marco tapped his fingers on the rail casually and tried to remember when it had become like that. Exact moments failed him. If anything, he and she had decided it together over a dozen years, subtly realizing that what seemed so obvious to other people was obviously false to them. “What about you? Is there some nice elf man back home?”

Aethe’s face hadn’t revealed every single expression it could make to Marco yet, but so far, all of them that he had seen had been various flavors of controlled, almost military looks. She was cool and precise about everything, including how much of herself she showed other people. That was why the face she made now shocked him so much. When he mentioned other elvish men in a romantic sense, all her features fell, and the controlled look she had a moment before was replaced with one of frustrated, exaggerated disgust. He doubted he could have gotten more of a reaction out of her if he had suggested that she marry a frog.

“No. Absolutely not.” Aethe paused and saw the look on Marco’s face. She regained her composure, but no longer kept the absolute military-looks she used to. “Do you know how elves decide on marriage, Marcos? Do you?”

“I actually don’t. How could I?”

“It’s based on their power sets. Their class. If two classes are considered an especially good fit for each other, arrangements begin. That way, the couple can stay and work together wherever they are needed, with no trouble at all.”

“That can’t work out very often. What about personality differences?” Marco asked.

“What personality differences, Marco? These are elves. They are either like everyone else and almost the same as each other anyway, or like me and trying desperately to pretend they are. I used to have a book, before some trainer found it and burned it. A human book. Something I found in a library by accident. The people in it were different from elves. Different from each other. That book was my best friend for three years before they burned it.”

“Wow.” Marco imagined what it would have taken to take that book away from someone like Aethe, and it wasn’t a pretty scene to contemplate. “That must have been terrible.”

“It was fine. I had memorized the entire book by then anyway, almost. In answer to your question, though, I would have married anybody in that book before I would have married another elf. Even the evil man who stole the young lady would have been better.”

The waves continued to lap against the boat in the dark for a bit and Marco felt the sleepiness slowly pull him down towards the below-decks area and his bunk like an inescapable tide. He stood and held his hand out for Aethe, who took it for balance as she rose to her own feet.

“You are finally going to sleep?” she asked.

“Yeah. The food took all the fight out of me. You?” Marco said.

“I’ll stay here for a bit,” Aethe said. “And get used to how the sea smells from a new ship.”

Marco nodded and ducked below decks. As the captain, he had the honor of the bunk closest to the door and furthest from the baskets of preserved food. With their grub being mostly preserved fish and crab meat, it was a heavy honor. He fell into it heavily, letting the force of the impact puff a sigh out of his lungs.

“Heard you talking,” Elisa said sleepily. “You told her we aren’t getting married?”

The playfulness of the question was old hat to Marco. Somehow, the job of explaining to people that they weren’t involved had almost always fallen to her.

“Yes. She seemed to believe me easier than most,” Marco said.

“Probably because it’s good news.”

Marco was too tired to decode girl-talk, just then.

“What? Tell me clearly, Elisa.” His head dug a little deeper into the pillow. He was half-asleep already. “And quick.”

“You’ll figure it out.” Elisa laughed lightly in the dark. “Soon enough.”

Marco thought about jumping out of bed, pulling Elisa out of hers, and dunking her head in a bucket of drinking water until she learned how to communicate better. By the time he finished the fantasy, the whole thought was so diluted by incoming dreams, it was like he had never had it at all.