They were travelling by sea for the third time since she had awoken on this weird planet, which, for all Linda was concerned, still might end up being the setting of a way too creative dream-sequence. The first time she had travelled the Alaian oceans, she had been unconscious for parts of it and told to hide out below deck for the other half. The second time, she had been hiding and trying to evade anybody looking like they could be hailing from the Fringes, in case they recognised her or Wint as one of the last people to see their “Big sister” Marina Ariah alive… So all in all - Alaian sea travel was 2 out of 5 stars in Linda’s book at best.

This time, however, they were on a shamanic medical ship, with only Brother Ma’ala, a handful of his trusted Disciples of Eni and their own clandestine group of misfits. This time was the first Linda had dared to feel even remotely safe.

Of course, they still had to keep the hoods of their cloaks up during the day and make sure his Royal Pain-in-the-Ass was properly supervised, but that, she thought, was a small price to pay to be able to walk around and look at the shining seas splashing against the ship’s side. And that was precisely what she had been doing ever since they departed from the Recreation Isles. She had even grown accustomed already to the Day star, which was at least a few times brighter than the sun she was used to back home. She loved marveling at the way its powerful rays reflected against the surface of the ocean and each evening, she would stare in awe at the sunset which left trails of copper and gold that seemed to tie the water and skies together in a passionate dance that ended only when it disappeared completely over the horizon.

Speaking of copper and gold, the shamans had done wonders cleaning up his Royal Annoyance. His hair now shone in all its strawberry blonde glory, his skin had all the sud and grime washed off of it to reveal its pale perfection and the new robes he had been given, despite perhaps not being fit for someone of his elite background, wrapped around his slender frame quite well. Linda had barely exchanged more than a few words with him since they boarded Brother Ma’ala’s ship and anytime she had tried to, Wint would glare daggers at her and hastily make some excuse to drag the prince away, or send him running back to his quarters in horror with one of her typical sexist remarks.

Linda was still unsure how to feel about all this. On the one hand - it wasn’t as if she had anything in particular she wanted to discuss with him. He had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he was little more than an entitled, arrogant prick. And yet there seemed to be some invisible force inside her which was consistently pulling her towards him. So much so, that at times, she had caught herself staring at a few stray locks of his hair that had escaped the hood, instead of looking at her beloved sunsets.

Was it because, in a sense, she felt a twisted sort of kinship between the two of them? After all, weren’t they both just tiny little pawns on this enormous chess board, called Aliah? The two of them had been dragged around this huge planet, kicking and screaming, so far away from anything remotely resembling their comfort zones.

Linda huffed out in frustration and plopped down on the tiny bed in her cabin. Damn, what an ego trip, right? To have the conceit to believe you have something in common with royalty…

Knock-knock.

She bolted to a sitting position. Had she imagined it or was there someone at the door of her cabin just now?

Knock-knock.

Was that Wint? But what could she want at this late hour? Was she drunk again?

Then again, if it were Wint, she wouldn’t have knocked even once, instead opting for her trademark dramatic entrance, bashing the door in on its poor hinges and bellowing out a drunken song about naked virgin boys and the Goddess blessing women with two powerful thighs - one for each delectable male to sit upon.

Knock-knock.

Was it brother Ma’ala? But he had been ignoring her ever since they boarded his missionary vessel. All the shaman seemed to have eyes for these days had been his Royal Ass-pain, as he had been following the young boy around the whole ship, desperate to catch him alone and ultimately facing the same impenetrable wall Linda herself had ran up against whenever she had briefly attempted to speak to the prince. A great big wall of powerful muscle and piercing catlike green eyes, called Tempayah Wint.

Knock-knock.

“Alright, already!”, Linda cried out, exasperated, as she finally reached the door and swung it open.

She felt her annoyance instantly dissipate as her dark eyes met pools of golden brown.

“Your Highness?!”

“Please, call me Fye”, the boy lowered his gaze suddenly, no trace of the holier-than-thou attitude he had been giving her before. “ Please, may I come in… Pearce?”

“Linda”, she corrected, perhaps more startled than anything, yet her voice came off terse and she stepped aside to indicate to his deflated form that he could come in.

“Ah, yes, Linda. Apologies, own names do not often come first on Alaiah”, he muttered under his breath, still staring at the floor.

“Yeah, so I’ve noticed… Fye”, she ground out the name with some effort, in an attempt to make him feel welcome.

He finally gathered enough courage to lift his eyes to hers. There was something in those pools of darkened gold that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Was he afraid? Worried?

“I apologise for the late hour”, he shuffled around the constricted space of the cabin, as if looking for more smalltalk options, but seemingly found none and instead opted to just sit gingerly on the very edge of the small bed. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Linda had to laugh at that, but cut it out as soon as he saw his gaze drift back to the floor.

“Oh, haha, sorry, not laughing at you, I promise, Your… Fyeness. It’s just… ever since I woke up on this bizarre planet, I’ve spent most of my time dragged around, beaten unconscious and asleep, so a small part of me envies your condition, in a funny little way.”

He didn’t look back up, but the edges of his lips twitched upwards ever so slightly.

“Ah, so you’re a Warden in training, then?”

“A Warden in training?”, Linda turned the thought around her head for a bit and then plopped on the bed as well, as far away from him as the small mattress could afford.”Hm, I guess you could say that… I mean…”

He looked up again. She knew she had to keep her damned mouth shut, Wint had been telling her off for not doing so repeatedly, and yet… She felt something electric behind that stare of his, something that triggered a familiar impulse in her and for a moment, she felt herself transported back to one of her first days on Alaiah, in the Ruling over Sea’s throne room.

“I mean, I have no idea, ok?” , she just let the words flow out of her again, without any filters. “About a full rotation of your Air moon now, I just woke up in a cave somewhere in Northern AWA and since then I’ve been dragged here and dragged there, and beaten a bit, and training a bit, and I’ve seen someone kill someone else, as I was tied up, and I fucked that someone that did the killing the night before, when I wasn’t tied up yet, I think, and then Wint took me to an island full of brothels, where some random dude just grabbed me for a hug and told me he’s my dad… And, frankly, it’s just all…”

“Too much?”, his voice was barely above a whisper, yet it seemed to resonate with her whole being.

“Yeah… it’s all just too much…”

“I think I might know how that feels…”

“You do?”

“I…”, he started, then suddenly shook, lifted his legs up so he could wrap his arms around his knees and shook again. “I am without innocence.”

She stared at his hunched over form a moment, wondering if he was trying to make some bizarre joke. Without innocence? The look on his face was so … haunted… She lifted a hand to place on his shoulder, but he shrank even more into himself and then it suddenly clicked…

“Oh…”, was all she could muster. “Oh… I… I’m truly sorry.”

“You know, I was sorry too… For the longest time. In a way, I still am, but I keep thinking, you know… Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

He drew in a long, shaky breath.

“That it was my fault. That I was begging for it.”

The words felt like a slap across her face. How hadn’t she seen it before? In the cell, as he shrank away from her very presence, so scared and frail, on the upper levels, as the fake-Wardens circled around him like predators…

Linda had a friend back home who had been gang raped. The girl had gone completely mute for a month and then, each time her PTSD kicked in, she would start tearing her hair out and scream “don’t touch me, it’s not my fault” over and over again.

“Forget I said anything, this was a mistake”, Fye suddenly bolted upright and made for the door.

“No, wait, stop!” Linda grabbed the sleeve of his robe and dropped it again instantly, as if it were on fire. “I’m sorry, ok. Sorry I froze up, just… I knew someone else once who had a similar experience.”

“Was he taken before marriage as well?” Fye asked faintly, his back stiff, but he made no more moves to leave the cabin.

Linda’s brain kicked into high gear again. If she wanted to keep the focus on him and help out, she couldn’t in good conscience start explaining that where she came from, the “he” was usually the one doing the taking and not the other way around.

“Yes”, she finally muttered, ”yes, he was.”

“How did he…”, Fye’s voice trailed off, shaking like his shoulders.

He didn’t need to continue, of course, Linda knew exactly what he wanted to ask. She also knew he wasn’t necessarily asking about the other person in the abstract, as much as about himself, in the here and now.

Back on Earth, Linda’s friend had asked her the same thing, as the PTSD had worn her down to a bare husk of herself, so much so that she refused to leave her college dorm room. Linda hadn’t known how to respond at the time. All she could do was let all the overwhelming emotions of empathy with the other’s pain wash over her face, as she tried her best to take care of her broken friend.

Unfortunately, empathy doesn’t exist in the world of the tortured and broken. Their soul yearns for it, and despises it in the same breath. For the human face can only do so much to express a difference between care and pity. Destroyer of worlds, thy name is pity.

Maria. Was the name of Linda’s friend. She had been 19 years old. She had been a computer scientist with so much potential and so much great discoveries to make. She had killed herself, overdosing on sleeping pills and cheap vodka, soaked in her own piss and vomit, for the crime of challenging her male colleagues’ frail egos, prompting them to retaliate the only way their primitive brains knew how to.

At her funeral, Linda vowed to herself to never let silence hang after Maria’s final coherent question She would never let anyone go through that feeling like they were all alone. So what if that someone was a boy?

“Fye…” Linda cursed the creak of the mattress as she stood up and saw another shudder rake through the Prince’s shoulders. “I am going to come over to you, touch your shoulders and ask you to turn around and face me, is that ok? I’ll only do it if it’s ok.”

She strained her hearing, but all she heard was the slight rustling of his robes.

“I need you to tell me it’s ok to come closer, Fye” she wasn’t letting this go. Not this time. Never again.

“Yes…”

She made her touch as light as a feather as she turned him around, as if she were handling the most fragile piece of glass ever created. His eyes were already red and tear stained as he finally lifted them up to her again.

“You asked about my friend and how…” she trailed off, but forced herself to go on. “He didn’t. He never moved on, let the incident consume him until it turned into his whole world and one day it became too much. Do you understand?”

Fye stiffened in her grip, his eyes wide as saucers.

“I never forgave myself for that” Linda continued, not even bothering to catch her breath, letting her voice crack instead. “For never letting him know this one simple word - I’m going to say it to you now and you will repeat it, ok?”

He nodded.

“No!” Linda yelled in his face.

He hesitated and she was about to explain, but then …

“NO!”

“It’s not your fault!” She continued screaming.

“It’s not my fault!”

“No. One. Ever. Asks. For. Something. They. Don’t. Want!”

“NO ONE EVER ASKS FOR SOMETHING THEY DON’T WANT!!!”

They stared into each other’s faces, mouths agape with trying to breathe. And then they both started laughing hysterically.

“Linda, I…” finally catching his breath, he started again. “I hope you don’t take offence to me saying so, but I feel you are unlike other women I’ve met.”

Linda tried to imagine the other women in Fye’s life and shuddered at the memory of his mother’s bone-chilling face. Then she thought of Wint and her unapologetic sexism, even Wotar with her patronising attitude towards men, never viewing them more as frail things in distress to be saved and uplifted by those more powerful. She found that after the conversation they just had, none of these images agreed with her. She opened her mouth to thank Fye for the first honest compliment she had ever gotten from him, or anyone on this planet, really.

And then the impenetrable wall of muscle and catlike green eyes stormed into the small cabin, ironically sucking all the air out of it.

“Wha’ have I told ye about yelling yer guts out in the middle of the night as honest women be tryin’ to sleep, eh?”