I blink wildly as the dark textured fabric pins my lashes to my face, and behind my back my knuckles whiten in protest. I tug at my arms but the fabric will not slack against the bones of my wrists. The air around me is damp as I breath it in, coating the back of my throat in a harsh wet kiss --sour and salty, the rot and decay pour into me like ocean water dripping down my throat and no mater how hard I breath, I cannot get it out.

"Free me!" I spit, stumbling forward a measly inch until the soft skin of my cheeks is met with the cool lick of metal bars. A beastly, growling laugh bellows out from a man --low and deep --who watches me. My hair trickles over my shoulders as I tug myself forward like a wave sweeping out to sea --wild and violent.

"Let me go." "Let me go!" I insist, and I wonder if the sound sounds intimidating caught behind the snarl of my teeth. I pant away and as the ship rocks, jolting me around until I flail to find my footing, a drowning fish, the voice speaks, and the mans footsteps pound toward me like a countdown. Step, step, step. I can feel his breath, taste it, warm on my skin.

"I'd save that energy, if I were you." His voice leaves a tremor in my gut as it floats around the air, coating me with a shiver of goosebumps.

"What do you want with me?" I ask him, calmer now, as if the shadow he casts has a hold on me I can't quite escape from.

"You'll find out." He says, and I feel the tickle of his voice brush against my throat, "Eventually."

My shoulders stiffen and I feel my head lower ever so slightly like the weight of that shadow is too much to bear, like his darkness is all consuming and I have been consumed. I press my fingernails deep into the soft flesh of my palm and feel it split around them. Little half moons full of salt and blood.

"Can you tell me where?" I say, firmer now, as I raise my face up and up to where that voice came from, that haunting sound --until I think I'm looking at him in where I think his eyes would be.

I feel the ache of my chest as I breathe in and out , such shallowness that my body seems afraid of the air and what is in it. Still and waiting, I make sure to keep my chin tall and proud as my heart thunders in expeditious beats. On my exhale, his arm blasts through a gap in the steel bars that trap me and his hand, calloused and rough grips at my hair, at my face, tracing at the parts of me I cannot see.

My breath catches and I do my best to not look afraid, meeting his eye as the fabric that imprisons mine begins to dampen.

"Sardinnlan." He breathes, Slavers bay."