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Dead men don’t sleep.

Well…they don’t. Everyone says “I’ll sleep when I’m dead!” But they don’t.

This is especially true for the reliving dead. They do not have the lactic acids that build up to cause fatigue. They cannot dream because they cannot sleep.

Sinsario can sleep.

Well not really…he calls it sleeping but he’s not.

Seeing as he is the type of reliving with freedom and thoughts. He’s practically human; he can think and feel and eat…
But he cannot sleep.
His blood pressure won’t drop, his breathing won’t slow, he cannot regain energy and no hormones will be released during “sleep”. The process of REM will never happen again after death.

So what does he do? Nothing.

He can think and feel and eat and not sleep because he will never stop thinking and he will never stop feeling because muscles will never relax.
This is a problem. Sinsario sometimes needs to find a nice place to hide for several years. But if he cannot sleep then he’ll feel hungry and feel and think and it will annoy him because he has to hide. He tried once before knowing how to “sleep” and it was the worst experience he ever felt; lasted about 5 months before he practically lost his mind and became a drone who worked on only instinct. (To eat human flesh and that’s what the mindless reliving do. That’s all they do.)

After regaining his mentality Sinsario had to find a way to hide while not suffering.
And he did; he found a way.

He calls it sleeping but it isn’t sleeping, he shuts most of his mind off. He stops feeling, he stops thinking, and he stops the need to feed. When he “wakes” up it’s like he never feel “asleep” at all.
But he keeps a piece of his mind open; the part that will tell him “time to get up now.” Like a regular human it takes him a little while to open his mind completely and get himself to work again, so he will end up flailing and moving around until he is fully awake.
When he first learned how to “sleep” he followed what any hibernating animal did; ate his fill and hid away until it was time to get up. He only did this every several years because he was always afraid he would end up never waking up. Sure; being dead for good would be nice…but he wouldn’t be dead, he’d be asleep. His soul would never be free again because it will be inside a mind, inside a body; “sleeping.”

Eventually though, he experimented with sleeping for just a few months, a few weeks, a few days, until he reached the ability to sleep for a few hours.
He’s never going to be dependent on sleep though, because he doesn’t need it. When he sleeps for a few hours or days; it is not for him, but for someone else.
These times are now. Sinsario doesn’t want to be a nuisance (and he is) so he sleeps; just for Penn. If she needs him he’ll know, but if she doesn’t, he won’t.

And so he lays in the Charon's cabin; asleep.

It had been a rather bothersome quest in getting the Capella ready for travel, but Petite had managed to get set for sail once again. Alone, yes, the task took some time, but ultimately, all it took was one individual. It was, after a small ship.

Petite stood where most captains would: at the wheel. Strangely, she never found any other part of the ship more relaxing than the tedious task of navigation. Her attention, of course, was on the skies around her, and the ever persistant rain landing around her. Petite perched a perculiar umbrella above her and pulled her goggles down around her eyes in order to keep the little droplettes at bay.

The Capella was small, to be sure, capable of comfortable housing four individuals. Eight, if comfort is forgotten, and only two in it's current condition, what with supplies and crates taking up most of the ship. She had painted no name on the side, nor symbols on the flag. What made the Capella what it was was it's smallness. Lacking anything other than itself, much like a singer singing unaccompanied. A capela.

Or, perhaps, it was due to the odd sounds that emulated from the tree that crept its way around her ship like a forest of vines. Dark wood, bright purple and pink flowers. It often sounded like a flute when the wind picked up. A low note, pressing on and unwavering until the wind died down. The rain prevented the tree from "singing" this morning.

So early in the morning. It smelled clean, crisp, as most living creatures do when waking up. A remarkable similarity. Yet, the rain made the air heavy and Petite felt little more than anticipation and curiosity as she approached ever closer to the mysterious skies where so many had vanished. In her hand rested her compass, and in the other, her pocket watch. A warmth surrounded them, eminating a calming aura that Petite knew was what people felt when they were truly home, though few could even understand the significance of these relics.

Moments earlier, she had seen another ship in the distance. Perhaps they, too, were investigating. As far off as they were, Petite made no efforts to secure herself. Should trouble fall, she would be quick to defend, yet this...she felt no danger for the time being. The Capella crept on.

Penn had redressed herself in dryer clothes, stepping out onto the deck with an open umbrella. While heating her own body would simply dry said clothes, it would also make them shrink. And she only had so many spares...

Drying off the clear black panel on the wooden pedastal, the ship's holographic wheel and map whirred back to life. Immediately it showed a map of the area, a yellow blip showing her current progress inside.

That's normal, Penn thought. What's not normal is how there are two other blips. One is of a slightly larger size, and the other is of a... larger size. So, umbrella in her left hand, gliding and touching screens with the right, Penn is thinking of two things.

One: pirates. Plain and simple, they've come to ambush her and Sin and take whatever they can find.

Two: NOT pirates. They could be travelers, thrill-seekers, it could even be a prison ship! Just not pirates.

She turned the Charon so it didn't crash into the steep curve, and here was where a lot more ships could be seen, all of them with smashed bows. Head-on collisions are the worst. Many of the ships below were larger ones; only the smaller ships were seen either at corners or at the narrower pathways.

Penn dragged a few screens away and brought to the center a radio transmitter window. It was searching for signals, a way to contact these ships. Hopefully they were friendly. After a few seconds of the AI searching various channels, it finally finds two, both belonging to the nearby ships. From here, she connects to the station and makes contact.

"This is Seraphim, do you read, please state your reason for being here, over."

Unfortunately, Penn's knowledge on radio jargon was low. She really needed to pick up a book after all this was over.

A second or two, and a reply reaches radio. It sounds a little crackly, could be due to the rain. She could make out two words, though: Kinetic Hawk. She's not one to judge.

"Horrible weather, yeah, it'll only get worse as the day goes, over." Recon mission?

Penn opened a window on the holographic screen showing news feeds while moving the radio screen to the side, and after a bit of fiddling she finds the feed from Port Denia. Looks like they got a charge on this Captain since his ship disappeared. Five hundred grand if you find him and/or his crew. Sweet.

Charon took another turn, and this time lying on the bottom were smaller airships and the boards of sky surfers, their vines either old and withered or tangled and growing over the ships. She hoped that a denizen wouldn't be around if only for the money. Because when a Denizen meets a pirate, things get nasty. Real nasty, real fast.

Beatrice moved the Hawk closer to the larger vessel below while glancing at a small monitor showing a mediocre 3D map of the vast canyon below. Didn't look like much to her. Might be more than what reached the eye, of course. And most certainly more than what reached this ancient radar. A few oddly shaped animations among the passages might be shipwrecks, she figured. At least it would be logical to assume so. Then the radio buzzed again, and Seraphim's response came through, this time almost without any severe static. Almost.

"I'll be damned if it doesn't", Beatrice chuckled in response. "Hey, you're operating that big one cruiser down there, are you? Over."

"Well! You hold me intrigued now! What else would possibly be down there? And, if I may enquire, you have spotted that other vessel above, now have you?"

Not waiting for a reply, Beatrice moved the Hawk into the canyon itself, dangerously close to one of the cliff walls. Not that closing in like this would help much; the radar still didn't show an overly detailed replication of the environment, and the rain prevented Beatrice herself from seeing clearly through the small window of the cabin. Another sip of brandy.

"Oh, eh, over."

To the Kinetic Hawk: "I'm looking for... a good friend of mine; taken by pirates presumably. If he's dead I want his corpse. If he's alive I want my revenge... over." Thunder boomed overhead, a flash of bright lightning preceding it. The rain poured with even more mercilessness, and lightning became more frequent. Penn hoped this would all go away soon.

Current Time: 6:15 a.m.
Current Weather: Rain with thunderstorms; skies clearing up later in the day

The Charon was still at a crawl, but the captain noticed that a few of the wrecked ships didn't appear as old as the others. It seems they might have been lived in. Some airship wreck survivors stay in the ship if it crashed on land, making use of the remaining food rations and fresh water while using the ship as a shelter of sorts. They were always found dead either due to poisoning, suicide, dying of their previous wounds, or other such unfortunate consequences.

Penn left the ship on autopilot and went down to the deck. A small puddle or two formed, but she would clean those later. The demon tried to wake up Sinsario, mainly by shaking him. "You awake?" she asked.