He and his crewmates rushed through the town in a whirlwind, some getting locked up, others getting lost in the opulence of the place before burning their cash out and returning to the docks.

Lucius, just as the others ventured back, closer and closer to the docks as his sliver of wealth drained away faster than he could wish for and one night stopped at a tavern on the outskirts of the agricultural precinct.

On this fateful night, while Lucius was more than adequately drunk enough for his golden hair to fall over his light blue eyes in a mess as he hunched over the bar with his shirt half unbuttoned, an extremely wealthy estate owner dropped in to conduct a business meeting with another man on the other end if the bar.

It wasn't so much the business conversation that kept him eavesdropping but the daughter of the estate owner that caught his eyes and never let them rest.

Her long jet black locks that were braided so intricately, any of the famous artists of old would not be able to recreate them in ink.

Her eyes, big green and defiant emeralds that shone like the most precious jewels of the heavens.

Her lips akin to cherries in their fullness and her pretty little nose, pointed to add an effect of playful thoughtfulness that made Lucius warm inside.

Or maybe that was the rum.

Either way he was far too drunk to notice that he was staring for too long but not drunk enough to not notice that she stared back.

His eyes widened and his cheeks reddened as her pout lips curled on one side in a nervous smile.

He waved and smiled warmly back, causing her to blush and look away nervously.

From that moment Lucius forgot everything that seemed to matter to him before, the seed of her image planted itself deep inside of his psyche and its roots spread faster than a wildfire on a hay farm.

And he didn’t even know her name.

There was a brief interlude in which the estate owner and the businessman went to the smoking area and pulled out their cigars, filling the air with smoke and heat as they spoke business.

This was his chance, his maybe only opportunity, and so he slicked back his hair, put on his sailors hat, guzzled down his last half pint of liquid confidence and set off across the room.

Chest puffed out and wide eyed he approached her, his innards seeming to tighten every step closer he got.

She noticed him coming but averted her eyes in a sort of shy excitement.

Lucius was not deterred, he made it to her table and froze as she shone her brilliant bright eyes at him.

He had been with tavern wenches and pleasure bots, but in front of him was a woman, an entire person, a universe of ideas trapped within a beautiful cage. He was lost for words, his usual sleazy sailor talk would not get him anywhere with one such as this.

“May I speak to you?” Was all he could manage.

She giggled while he stared at her with a cheeky grin.

“Well what have we here? Are you lost? Sailor boy? You’re terribly far from the docks in this establishment.” She said playfully pointing to his hat, characteristic of the men who ploughed the raging nebula.

He took that as a yes and sat down.

“No miss I was but I think I have just been found, like a light beacon in a cosmic storm your beauty has shown me the way.” She laughed.

"You're funny."

“Tell me, I must know, I need to know. What is your name?” He asked.

“And what will you do with my name, my jolly sailor bold?” She said, again, that playfulness emanating from her voice.

“Nothing unsavoury.” He grinned back.

For the next little while they flirted and played those games that two do when the air is heavy with burgeoning love.

He found out her name was Avery and that she was the daughter of a wealthy baron, who spent her days on the large estate she grew up on with nothing to do and no one to do it with. Wistershire Estate it was called.

He told her of his adventures through the nebula, trying to impress her with exaggerated tales of grandeur but only managed to make her laugh.

Eventually Lucius was brave enough to put his hand over on top of hers, causing her to stiffen and blush, but just before anything further could develop, the father reappeared behind Lucius.

Although he was an aristocrat he had the chest and shoulders of a man who had worked the fields of his own farms his entire life.

The glint in his eye was a cross between dubious and murderous.

Lucius had not yet noticed the bearded dragon standing behind him and continued to talk sweetly to the girl in front of him.

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He felt an abrupt hand on his shoulder and out of instinct he rose in a flurry, swearing like the sailor he was.

“What The fu-” He remembered the face and went immediately silent.

Avery giggled slightly from behind him as he tried to smile and charm his way away.

One quick very one sided argument later and Lucis had been thrown out of the front door, his face buried in a disposal unit near the entrance.

The group stood to leave and Lucius watched as they exchanged pleasantries and walked to a hovercraft parked on the other side of the road.. His heart sank as she was the last to slip in through the hovercraft door, but wait.

She turned to him, smiled and batted her long eyelashes at him.

There was something in her eyes.

He got out of the disposal unit not deterred nor dismayed but in a state of whimsy as he watched the craft fly away.

“The Wistershire Estate aye?” He mumbled to himself as he walked off to find a map.

The very next night, nearing the strike of midnight on this artificially set day night cycle, Lucius snuck onto the The Estate.

Transferring skills he had learnt through his journeys from the cheap streets to the solar winds of the void, he easily made his way through the estate's security measures and dogs to finally climb to the window with white flowers growing around the outside.

He picked one and held it in his mouth as he knocked on the glass.

She opened the window at first in shock and surprise.

“What in the blooming hell are you doing here?! If my father finds out he will kill you! And me! And everything else alive within shooting distance!”

Lucius smiled sheepishly, offering the flower to Avery, who despite her fluster could not help but blush.

“I just had to see you Avery… truth is since we met I could not stop thinking of you, I just had to come and see you, no matter what. And…and… and if you want me to leave, just say so and I won’t ever bother you again… but-” He could not finish before Avery pulled him by his collar through the window and kissed him.

From that moment on Lucius was in love. Everything else had become irrelevant after. The ship, his crew, his captain, even the compass and his father seemed to have faded well into the background of his mind as Avery and her dazzling emerald eyes hypnotised him into a state of whimsey.

This first night they spoke, kissed, cuddled and set the night ablaze until the early hours of the morning. Lucius would then sneak his way back out and into the city, finding refuge somewhere cheap near the docks.

Often he would find somewhere more befitting to rats than humans, with raggedy old clothes for blankets and smells from the industrial area that seemed to bring with it visions of the underworld, but it was all he could afford.

He did not mind though, for in this state he could not be anything but happy so long as he was near his Avery all was well in his mind.

For a while this was how he would live, spending his days hustling the cheap streets around the docks and the nights he would sneak away to the estate to be with his beloved.

Some days she would be allowed out into the great big city and would take Lucius to wonderfully luxurious and ostentatiously amazing places. From the gravity defying royal mazes and Kings gardens, to the Amber sea where white sandy beaches patched the artificial ocean in an archipelago.

Together they danced, laughed, ate, drank and loved their merry way through the Opulent lands of Les royale.

He told her stories of his adventures in space as a sailor working on those galleys, he told her of his mother and the cheap streets and how one day he would find his father up there in the stars and join him.

She told him of her life on the Estate, how she was tired of all of the comfort and that she desperately wanted to escape the monotony of life as the daughter of an estatesman on Les Royale.

She cried to him of her fears of being stuck there forever once her father found her an adequate suitor.

Lucius nearly laughed, not knowing the intricacies of the aristocratic culture of the galaxy. He promised her freedom in the stars and she promised him eternal love.

They planned to elope and escape on a small vessel. Explore the galaxy as they hop from system to system in each other's loving embrace.

Although like most good things, it all had to come to an end.

On one bright and starry night, one of the maids of the Wistershire estate, whilst walking to her cottage away from the manor caught a glimpse of two shadows sneaking about. When she snuck closer to investigate from the courtyard below Avery’s room, she saw a man gracefully make his way down the wallside and ran off into the night.

With a gasp the maid took off to her cottage.

The next morning Avery’s father rampaged through the house into her room and spoke through gritted teeth, woeful statements to her ear.

“Pack your bags! I have found you a suitor in the elden system!” He said before slamming the door behind him, not even glancing behind to see his daughter sob, weep and plead after him before folding into a crying ball at the foot of her door.

That night, Lucius made his way to her window once again, a spring in his step, sure enough excited to see his love, but all he found was a note laying on her bed.

He opened the tear stained envelope and began to read how his beloved, his dear Avery was forced by her father to move entire parsecs away to be with some horrible rich business man.

She wrote how sorry she was and how dreadful it was and how he would always be in her heart.

Every word he read felt like a knife as cold as ice, forged in the abyss of the underworld was plunging deeper and deeper into his heart.

He crumpled to his knees and dropped his head as he quietly wept for Avery, for the only person that made him feel at home in this huge and now seemingly empty universe, was her.

Lost in his sorrows, Lucius did not notice the maid enter the room, both looked at each other in surprise.

The maid screamed out;

“GUARDS!” and locked the door, but before she knew it Lucius was already out the window and descending fast.

He made it to the ground just in time to break out into a sprint, narrowly escaping the hounds' razor sharp teeth and the guards running behind them.

He narrowly made an escape and found the quickest way into the industrial, multi levelled maze that was the docks.

It was there he descended into the depths of misery in the darkest, gloomiest hole on the planet, the emerald rats tavern.