My head breaks through the surface, finally allowing me to spit out the seawater and taking my first real breath of air in minutes. The sky is still dark, filled to the horizon with angry looking clouds. I can’t see my ship anymore, and my ears are filled with the sound of rain. Yet, the sea is calm enough that I don’t immediately get pushed back down under the waves.
Suddenly, I feel something clawing at your arms, you push it away with what little strength you have left. The beast squeaks as it is repelled, and you are only left to wonder what monstrous fish could possibly squeak. But the claw won’t let up, finally grabbing hold around my shoulder and pulling me back.
Resolving to my fate, my head dips into the briny depths, before being pulled up by strong hands. My entire body is ripped out of the clutches of the sea, and as my back lands on hard wooden boards, my eyes open to look into the feline eyes of a Fteran catfolk boy. He unhooks his crook from my shoulder and holds it back into the water, fishing out an oversized rat by its tail.
Fteran ratfarmers, catfolk who travel from ship to ship to buy spoiled food and sell meat. Sailors never pass up a chance to trade with them, eager to get rid of stale, roach-infested biscuits and get some fresh meat on ship. They domesticated shiprats as we did to wild hogs, and today, one of them saved my life.
“Thank you” I bring out between eshausted coughs.
“Don’t worry about it” the boy answers, rolling his r’s. And I don’t, too exhausted to think.
