"Alright, here we are." Southshore lead the two of them along the docks, away from the great banana-leaved boats they had become used to, and towards the other end, an area they were much less familiar with.

"I'm sure we can find somebody here who can speak to you bilge rats!"

This, they determined, was the gist of what he was saying anyway, if not the actual specific words. A month on board ship had helped with their language skills, but it was still all a bit rough around the edges, and rather too technical in places for conversations about things other than types of sail, shapes of hulls, and different flavours of cargo.

They walked together, the children looking around with curiosity, whilst Southshore looked straight ahead, a man on a mission, until all of a sudden, as if they had crossed an invisible threshold, there was a sense in the air of home.

Health felt themselves jerk, as the voices shouting from the vessels in the dock all at once had a familiar lilt, too far away for the words themselves to be understood, but it could have been the fieldhands back home, shouting from one terrace to another.

Was it still home? Health wondered, looking about with wide eyes. Even the colours seemed different, blues and yellows in shades they hadn't seen in a month, even on shore. The patterned cloth swinging in a doorway was eerily close to something they'd seen once, but couldn't place. Maybe on a dress for a summer dance, maybe from a curtain in somebody's kitchen.

After only a couple of months away, it all seemed strange and foreign, and they shuffled closer to Pearl, bumping shoulders with her.

She gave them a glance, and then went back to looking around, less perturbed than they were. Of course she wasn't phased, but she was keeping a wary eye out, as if one of their mothers might duck out of a shop without warning, or as if one of their fathers might come striding down the street, a bag of rice over each shoulder and a scowl on their face.

Health licked their dry lips, and kept in contact with her, worming one hand into hers, just in case.

Striding ahead of them, Southshore yammered something at a sailor. She, in return, accused him of something that neither of the children were supposed to know about quite yet, and carried on without stopping, shoving past him and heading back to her ship. Undaunted, their captain carried on, bothering and poking at people until finally somebody swung themselves off a ship and came over to see what all the fuss was about.

It was a small cargo shop, and the two watched on, discussing quietly between themselves whether it was a "junk" or a "sloop", unsure of what the difference was but reasonably sure there was one.

The sailor was dressed in much the same uniform as those under Southshore's command, but he held himself with a completely different air, uncaring of the fancy uniform, or whatever it was that usually made people defer to Southshore without thought. His hair was plaited into a long line and then slicked back with tar, and somebody in the past had taken a knife to his face, slicing a chunk out of his nostril, leaving a thin line down his cheek and claiming one earlobe as their own.

The two argued over the heads of the children for a minute, before the man finally mimed spitting beside himself, and focused his eyes down at them.

"Where did you run away from?", the question was delivered with no buildup and a scowl, and Health shrank behind Pearl a little, as much as it was possible to hide behind somebody two-thirds your size.

"Big man here wants to know where you ran from," he took a moment to sniff, rubbing his nose afterwards with the back of his hand. "And your names, I guess?"

Pearl looked up at him, shielding her eyes from the sun with one arm, "are you sure that's what he said?"

"Sure as bread", the sailor replied. This wasn't a phrase Health had heard before, but languages differed even from village to village, maybe it was a common saying elsewhere?

Pearl huffed a little and glanced up at Southshore, "We didn't run from nowhere. And-" she pointed at Health, "That's Health, I'm Pearl. He knows that."

The sailor looked down at them for a moment, as if waiting for something else, and when nothing else was forthcoming, his expression turned to confusion, "Gimme proper names, those're just words!"

Pearl considered this, and then shook her head. "Our village was weird. These are the only names we've ever had."

The sailor scratched his arse at this, seemingly stumped, before rattling off something to Southshore, much too fast for the children to follow. A bit of back-and-forth, and with a shrug, he turned and walked away. Health and Pearl eyed each other, unsure of what had just happened.

"Think he's coming back?" Health muttered, and Pearl shook her head.

Unperturbed, Southshore clapped his hands together, "Well," he exclaimed, "that went pretty well!"

-

Word seemed to have spread after that among the local sailors, and they put themselves out of Southshore's each after that, ships pulling up the gangplanks as they approached and shops emptying. Not one to give up under difficult circumstances though, Southshore persevered, and an hour later the three of them were sitting in a small cafe, somewhat further inland.

It wasn't entirely like home, they had adopted benches in the local style rather than the cushions of home, and the decor was off somehow.

Still, it was close enough for most, and Pearl glared down into her bowl of food, unsure if she wanted to eat any of it. They had escaped, they had gotten away, and she wanted to eat things other than rice and vegetables and hardtack, to see how they did things in other places.

The food in front of her did not react to her glare, and with a sigh, she took a mouthful. It was spiced differently from what she had expected, and that gave her a little relief. If it had tasted like her mothers cooking, she would have gone and thrown it into the sea.

At the end of the table, Southshore was definitely doing what her mother would have called "flirtin'", with the man who owned the place. It wasn't something her mother would have approved of at all, in any fashion, but maybe that was why the man was here, and not back home.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

With a laugh, the owner batted him with the cloth he'd been using to wipe down a counter and turned his attention to the two kids. "So," he started, "bloke here wants to know where you two ran away from. You've drifted a long way!"

Pearl considered how to answer this, and Health looked to her to answer. This was something they'd both discussed whilst they were onboard the ship, she was just better at talking, they were better at…

She considered for a moment what Health was better at. Being cool, for one. They were the coolest, most defiant person she knew. Nobody else in the village would have been her friend, nobody else for sure would have run away with her. Nobody else would have dared do some of the things they'd done to upset their parents.

She admired them a lot.

"We got lost." Was her final answer. When the man looked at her with raised eyebrows, waiting for more, she relented and elaborated, slightly. "Home was bad, so we left, then," she hummed to herself, looking for the right wording, "we got lost."

Next to her on the bench, Health nodded resolutely, a mouth full of noodles, which Pearl was wishing she had also ordered. She had panicked when presented with the menu, having never been to a place like this before.

"You kids are," the man hesitated, eyeing them up, "way too young to have come that distance. You've got mid-country accents, but no way you've come all the way from the homeland." He looked at them for a moment, appraisingly. He had a nice face, and the air around him was harmonious, clear and clean of internal tension, and Pearl liked him, despite her wariness.

"You're too green to have come from anywhere else though, which is odd." He hummed to himself, thinking it over, and behind them, a bell above the door rang, as another customer entered the shop.

There was a break of a couple of minutes, while he and Southshore chatted between themselves and the new customer got themselves settled. Pearl suspected the chatter might be about them, but she wasn't inclined to listen in, finishing up her food and letting him whisk the plates away, looking around the shop as he clattered around behind the counter somewhere.

It was strange, to be waited on like this. It wasn't something either of them had experienced at home, or on board the ship, and she wasn't sure how she felt about it. Back home, she had always had to clean up after herself, for as long as she'd been allowed her own plate. Before that, she struggled to think back that far, it had been food mostly wrapped in leaves or moulded into shapes, and eaten in the hands and outdoors.

Then the owner was back, wiping damp hands on his front, shifting his apron and perching on the end of the bench, leaning against the table with one elbow. "My language skills aren't the best, but I can tell your story to the man, if you want to tell me."

-

It took a while for the two of them to tell their tale, as short as it was. There were frequent interruptions as other customers came and went, and Health was grateful for those, as it gave them time to speak between themselves.

Southshore had been good to them, and their greatest worry was that he might think they were cursed in some way. But Health had watched the captain whilst they were on board the ship and trusted him not to abandon them now. The man seemed unflappable, to an extent was almost concerning, and Health suspected he was either a little mad, or extremely stupid. They hadn't decided on which yet.

At some point, tea was bought out, and the smell of it made their stomach twist. Back home, they had only had this on special days, their village was too high up in the mountains for traders, and excursions to the places it was sold were rare. The cafe owner watched their face as the tea was poured, but said nothing.

It would have been drunk after the harvests were done, a canister or two always came along with the workers, and that would have been shared amongst the village as good luck for the new season.

Nose in the mug, breathing in the steam, Health wondered how the harvest had gone. If the weather which had sunk Southshore's ship and ravaged the coasts had hit back home too.

Probably not, but it would have been hard on everyone if it had. Quietly they sipped their tea and tried not to think about what had been left behind. They hoped everything had gone ok.

They wouldn't go back, even if Genie appeared here now and offered, but, it had been their life, even if it was already growing fuzzy with distance, time working its magic, rounding off the corners of the memories.

"So," the man finally placed his folded cloth on the table and sat back on a bench, leaning against the wall, his hands on his sides in disbelief, "and I need to get this straight. You're telling me somebody magicked you a million lengths, across the sea, and instead of leaving you somewhere sensible, they decided to strand you on an island in the middle of nowhere to die?"

Pearl and Health nodded together, and somewhere under the table, the dog stirred, but didn't wake up, content to be scratched by otherwise idle feet.

Health wasn't sure when it had settled down there, but nobody had said anything, so they assumed it belonged to the shop.

He- they had learnt that the owner's name was Leaknoise, a former sailor who had travelled the world for a while as a cook, before he earnt enough to settle here and open their shop. Leaknoise shook his head at their story but had passed it on truthfully, as far as they could tell, speaking with slow and careful words, so they could somewhat follow along.

Health watched his face as they spoke, but as they had expected, although Pearl had been more sceptical, he took it all in his stride, nodding as if this was entirely a usual thing, and not a tale straight out of myth, or from a story told on dark winter nights to scare children who had yet to go to bed.

Then, when that was all over, there was the question of what would happen to them next. Southshore didn't have a ship, and not having been able to acquire one, had been planning to disband his crew and head inland to visit his family. He wasn't partnered, they learnt, but he had parents and siblings.

If he found a ship, of course, he was willing to hire them on as a cabin-kid and apprentice-growth mage, but what to do in the meantime was a puzzle.

There was another mug of tea drunk while this worked over, talk of schools and lodging houses, until suddenly, it wasn't a problem anymore.

With a clap of his hands, Southshore declared, "Well! I'll just tell your mother that you're my get, she can't complain about that, and she always wanted grandchildren."

This was met with stares from the three of them, until Leaknoise hesitantly translated, confusion in his tone. It wasn't unusual for kids to look different to their parents, especially with one as talented as Pearl around, but there was generally some sort of family resemblance. On top of that, there was normally a common language, too, and the children were usually younger.

A nod, "Yes, yes, that'll work fine", then he frowned slightly, the most negative emotion Health had ever seen cross his face, "My mother is a bit of an old broadsword, but she likes children," a final hesitation, and then he seemed to cheer up, "probably!"

There was a little more conversation after that, mostly clearing up strange things about language that neither of the two children had understood, and repeated insistence that their names were just words, yes.

"Well." Exclaimed Leaknoise, after they had insisted on this for the third time and given a little explanation of their reasoning, "you kids, you've got no records here or nothin', why not just change your names? It worked for me!"

Neither of them… Neither of them had even considered this! It was true that they were free now, to call themselves by whatever names they wanted, and it inspired a startled glance between them. Pearl was thoughtful, and Health, devastated. Not in a sad way, but in the way a victim of a landslide might be, coming back from a day in the city to discover their whole mountain changed and moved, and their home, previously placed at the very top, now sitting neatly at the bottom, almost untouched.

It was a sudden, heady revelation of freedom, and the possibilities were endless. What they could choose, with no parents to stop them. It was revelatory, and they couldn't even imagine where to start.

Completely overwhelmed, the three of them left the shop, Health taking a moment to shoo the dog back inside after it tried to leave with them, which it seemed nonplussed by, but they gave it a scratch behind the ears, and stayed behind, watching them go.

Hand in hand with Pearl, still homeless, now potentially nameless, and somewhat adrift, they headed back towards the boarding house with their new... Parent? Tomorrow Southshore would book transport, and the three of them would head inland.