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Naita flew out over the ocean, her soul still unsettled by Ebalia's story of the previous night. Such a story should be impossible, had to be impossible, and yet the scars and Ebalia's attitude made it sound true. Naita did not want to accept it.

So, in the early morning, before either Hiyuu or Ebalia had awoken, Naita had slipped off the ship and taken flight into the cold and featureless ocean dusk. In part, she was fishing for food – fresh fish was always a treat, and her own food source (let alone Ebalia's) was running low. In part, she was trying to put it all together and make sense of the horrors she had just heard.

She skimmed the placid ocean waves, the salty mist that rose from it and tickled her underbelly. Normally, she would revel in it, that feeling of power that came from soaring over something so innately immense and so constantly windy. But today, not even it could bouey her mood from the darkness she had been mired in.

Well, now she knew about Ebalia's horrible, unbelievable, truly awful past. What would she do about it? She wasn't going to blab it to everybody she met, obviously, Naita could do that much, but what else was she going to do? The girl had killed her own mother. Worse, her mother had deserved to be killed. Flames... the things that that woman had done in the story... Naita couldn't believe it. She just couldn't. If Naita ever had orakoi of her own – and that was a big and unlikely if – She'd never act that way. Not in a million years. If someone ever hurt her unlikely prospective future orakoi, she would kill them slowly and painfully. And that person, most of all, would never be her.

But what could she do? Could she handle being around someone who had had the unthinkable happen to them? Could she think of Ebalia in the same way ever again? Maybe. Naita didn't know. The last time something world-shattering had happened to her, the group that she had been with since she'd first broken her shell had fallen apart and dispersed, leaving her alone. Then, the event had been that the Stormwinds were mortal, that they could fail and, worse, die. Now, it was that something unthinkable was possible, and had happened to someone Naita considered her friend. Was there a difference? Could she consider there to be a difference?

Naita caught a glimpse of something slithering slimily beneath the waves and dove for it, heating her claws until they hissed in the wet air and glowed an emberous red. It was an Arboa, she could tell from the spines, and you did not try to catch those bare-clawed without some form of magical protection. She knew that from painful, suffering experience. She'd almost drowned, her first time catching an arboa, and would have if one of the Stormwinds hadn't rescued her. Naita wasn't planning on drowning today.

She plunged into the water, her claws flash-boiling the water and the Arboa's toxic slime as they gouged into its skin. It writhed, trying to escape and nearly gutting her with it's sharp spines, but she maneuvered it easily, slicing a cauterizing claw down its belly before stabbing it deep in its organs. It blubbed and deflated, falling limp before her. She was about to drag it to the surface when she saw another one, swimming nearby. With a surge of her magic, she set the water around it to flash-boil, cooking it alive. It writhed, and then was still, and she dragged her first one over to it, holding her breath all the while.

Why not have two when you could have one, right?

She grabbed them both securely and swam to the surface, gasping in a new breath as she treaded water and prepared for the very difficult task of returning to the sky from the water with two burdens... not that she hadn't done it before.

She flapped once, then twice, then three times and finally managed to, with a kick and a practiced wiggle, get herself just barely airborne. It took several more labored wingbeats to force herself into the air, and several more to drag the Arboa with her into flight. She circled up, earning her altitude, and it was only when she was stably in the air, prizes in hand, that she wondered what to do next.

She could go to an island, leave Ebalia and her terrible past and return to wandering. She had plenty of food and could find new adventures, new places to explore, new people to meet. That was an option, and she was sure there was some sort of island within flying distance. But then she would be alone, again, and Ebalia would be short staffed on the ship they were sailing.

Naita grunted and turned back towards their ship. Yeah, no. She wasn't going back to wandering alone. She flapped again, setting her course back to Ebalia and Hiyuu and their ship.

She would just have to suck it up and deal with how she felt about Ebalia's story, like a good pirate should.