Ace got up the next morning and found that the world was gone. Well, not actually gone, the world was still where it had always been, but it seemed that way due to the complete lack of visibility. Freezing fog had rolled up some time during the night, and the town was covered in a white blanket of nothingness. As Ace descended to the docks, he found that the few people who’d had the bravery to go outside today spent most of their time bumping into other people and going “Oh, sorry,” which was how Ace knew how to avoid them. 

Shapes appeared in the mist, mumbling apologies to anyone who might become a future bumpee, and it took Ace longer than usual to arrive at the Siren Song. The usual activity and work that was being done on the ship, which was going very well, thank you very much, was a lot slower-going than it had been the previous night. The fog hadn’t only obscured everyone’s vision, but it seemed to muffle sounds, as well, making the world feel very small and really making the whole “blanket of nothingness” metaphor feel really apt, even if I do say so myself. 

They met Tall Tom, who was trying very hard to have his voice and usual sunny disposition cascade and shine through the thick mist, but he was having a really rough time of it. Ace felt a little sorry for the big man, who seemed to thrive on being present, which was hard to do when, as soon as you took three steps back, the rest of the world immediately became simple past. 

Tom looked at them with a smile that felt a bit more forced than usual, but it quickly reached his eyes when he recognized the young addition to the crew. “Ace! Good to see you!” 

Now, when someone in a workplace says it is good to see you, one, or both, of two things can be true. It is entirely possible that the person greeting you is genuinely happy to see you. This is completely possible, but rare and not heard of quite often. The kind of colleague who is genuinely happy to see you and who is also chipper is usually the worst kind of colleague and not to be trifled with. There are exceptions to this -- like Tom, who was well liked as a member of the crew -- but if someone tell you they are happy to see you in a work environment, it is because the following is much more likely: The person who has just addressed you with a big smile is smiling, not because they’ve seen you and are intent on greeting you like an old friend, but because they have a difficult task that they were really not looking forward to doing and now suddenly found someone else to do. If someone at work ever tells you they’re happy to see you, find an excuse and leave.

Ace had never heard this advice, and was simply glad that Tom seemed genuinely happy for them to be there, right up until Tom led them forward with a hand on his shoulder, looking up with feigned thoughtfulness and concern.

“Ace, we’re in a bit of trouble. Y’see, we’ve been having some trouble getting the mainsail strung up correctly in this fog, and that’s three times we’ve had to have someone go up there and fix the last dog’s mistake.”

First, I’d like to say that the word Tall Tom used was not ‘dog’ but a rather more colourful one that made Ace feel like an adult should have covered their ears to keep them from hearing it. Second, Tom was so obvious that nearby sailors rolled their eyes, but Ace was completely oblivious to what was happening, like a fly slowly being walked by the hand into a spider’s web. 

“See, the problem is that I’m running out of people I trust to go up there and get things sorted properly.”

By the time Ace realized what had happened, Tom had already given them the end of a rope and a big smile to go with it. Sadly, without the required sunlight, it didn’t dazzle like usual, but that wasn’t stopping him. Anyone else would have sighed with resignation and made their way up the Jacobs ladder, but Ace wasn’t anyone else. Ace was Ace, and determined to make a good impression after falling down the mast the day before, not considering the fact that going up there again, in the freezing sea air with the kind of visibility you expect on the inside of a mattress, would increase the likelihood of repeating a similar tumble.

But Ace didn’t consider this because Ace wanted to do good. So they took the roll of rope, slung it over their shoulder, and began to climb. The Jacobs ladder was cold and covered in frozen morning dew, making it painful to hold and slippery. But very carefully they made their way up to the top of the mainsail and began to carefully tie the rope. Now, I’m no sailor myself, but I must again assure the reader that what they were doing was a difficult task on any given day, let alone in freezing temperatures on a foggy morning. It was also incredibly dangerous, and if they weren’t careful, the possibility of, hypothetically, slipping due to an event outside of their control and falling down the length of the sail onto the main deck was very likely to be something they wouldn’t walk away from. Ace was very aware of this, and tried not to repeat this hypothetical continuously in their head.

They tried to focus on the determination they’d felt only minutes earlier, and ignore the voice in the back of their head that said “Isn’t it interesting how the deck is so far away we can’t see it? What do you think it would be to suddenly see it get very close out of the fog. How interesting would that be!” Ace did what they could not to pay the voice any mind, and there  came a welcome distraction from the other side of the mast, where another poor soul had gotten roped -- pun, to my great dismay, intended -- into fixing the mast on the other side. Ace was about to call out to the person when a sudden gust of wind swung one of the untethered topsails. 

Ace immediately flattened themselves against the beam they were on top of so as to avoid the fate they’d been daydreaming of ever since they got up here, but the sailor on the other side had seen the overhead beam much too late. It hit them in the chest and only monkey-brain reflexes meant that they didn’t immediately tumble to a gooey end. They swung an entire arc across the ship in absolute silence, the wind knocked out of them. When the beam had made a full half circle, it immediately stopped due to a caught line being pulled taut, and the man was catapulted off the beam, slammed into the mainsail’s beam and limply bounced off the sail and off the side of the ship. This high up, their impact on the water’s surface was extremely muffled, and Ace wondered if anyone had even heard it. A shout that was unmistakably Tall Tom’s assured him they had, but immediate arguing made them worry. The few words Ace picked up were “freezing” and “can’t see.” 

On the deck, Tall Tom was threatening to bang skulls together until someone volunteered to go over the side of the deck to go fish whoever had just hit the water out of it, but a sleek shape flashed past his peripheral vision, and he knew instantly who had just jumped off the mainsail in a perfect dive. Ace hit the water with barely a splash. 

Ace was extremely resistant to cold water. It simply didn’t bother them. However, Ace was also a human, and humans have something called a ‘heart’ and ‘lungs’ and both of those things hate suddenly being very cold. The shock of the cold water temporarily stunned Ace, and they hung in the water in shock for half a second, before the slowly descending shape of the sailor before them dragged them out of their icy reverie. 

The water at the end of the pier got quite deep, and Ace knew that, if they lost sight of the sinking man, he’d be lost to the water. They swam as fast as they could, the cold water hurting their skin. That, they didn’t mind so much, but it stung their eyes and they were finding it hard to see. Small black spots darted around their vision, and they knew they didn’t have a lot of time before the cold made it too hard to move their muscles, so they made their way to the unconscious man as quickly as they could.

Grabbing his collar in one hand, they immediately began to turn around, kicking against the water. Slowly, it started to feel like the water was getting thicker and thicker, like they were trying to swim in honey. It didn’t help that there was a dark shape that moved across their vision. Whether it was unconsciousness slowly tugging at their brain, or, as they feared more strongly, an overly large dogfish keen on taking a chunk out of slowly freezing prey, neither were good options. 

They kicked their legs harder, but their strength was fading. The surface suddenly felt infinitely far, and they considered briefly letting go of the sailor. Letting someone drown was abhorrent to them, but on the other hand, two people drowning was definitely worse than just the one. The dark shape quickly proved itself to not be a hallucination, as it turned around and began to approach very rapidly. 

However, what they’d thought had been a shark, the tell-tale vertical tailfin swinging swishing left and right energetically, proved to be only… half so. The front half was that of a young woman, with big, dark eyes and a curious smile that had a little too many teeth for immediate comfort. A hallucination then, Ace thought as the girl stopped in front of them. All things considered, it would have been a good hallucination. The girl was pretty, in a smooth, rubbery sort of way, and her smile, although pointy, was definitely endearing. Her hair hung weightlessly in the water and through its gentle swaying Ace could occasionally see two sets of gills. There was also a visible dorsal fin that Ace could see as she swayed left and right. She cocked her head and looked at them, and then at the man. 

Suddenly, she lunged forward, grabbed the unconscious sailor by the scruff of his neck, and Ace by their collar, and she dragged them both upwards with strength they wouldn’t have expected. They broke the surface of the water and Ace took a big gulp of air that was entirely too cold. 

“There! There they are!” they heard Tom shout from the edge of the ship, though he was only a silhouette against a larger, more wooden silhouette. Ace looked around but saw no more signs of the sharky girl that had approached them, and they didn’t have the time to look around, keeping the sailor’s head above water. As they were dragged on top of the deck, the sailors immediately ran to cover them in blankets and dragged them belowdecks to heat up. Ace received praise from their fellow sailors, and experienced, for possibly the first time in their life, what it was to be not only appreciated, but wanted. It was a good feeling. 

As they sat in front of the fire, the other sailor being treated by the ship’s doctor, their hands slowly unclenched themselves, cramped as they’d been from the cold, and they discovered that, in their left hand, they held a small, gold pearl.