She couldn't have been more than three or four years old. Possibly even five, but six was pushing it a bit. But then she'd been a little scrap of a thing when she was a child, thin and gangly like any newborn thing, still growing into her limbs, but also so bold and fearless that she sometimes forgot how small she was.

“Ye gots a body two sizes too small, eh boch?” Bloody Flack would say after snatching her out the rigging she was desperate to climb. And she would always remember him best by that deep rumbling laughter that would rattle his chest, and the feel of the old pirate's prickly grizzled beard as it scrapped across her forehead.

And she would giggle and laugh with him, nodding and promising not to do it again, only to turn around and get herself into even more trouble. The crow's nest, the bowsprit, the shrouds, all of the ship was hers, and the ocean her playground. And in those first few years of life, she could not recall a single day that was not full of blue sky and glittering sea...

None that is, save the one.

Memories are a funny thing. They can whitewash the past, leaving just the faintest of impressions, like the hollow shadows of footprints on wet sand and nearly impossible to see in the shifting of the shores. Other times, a moment, an hour, is left with perfect clarity; a jetsam of broken glass in the sands of memory.

The first thing she would remember is the smell. The sharp tang of sea and the coming storm, the wind carrying a faint hint of gunpowder. The soft subtle scent of her father's cotton shirt mingling with his spicy smell of sun and sweat. It was the most she could recall when she tried to remember him.

Something had been wrong, but in her child's mind she couldn't understand what was going on; she had just caught hold of the underlying fear of the crew in that instinctive way that children do. She remembered the sound of loud voices, no words, crying out orders and curses over the sound of the howling wind and the drumming of the icy rain. She was in someone's arms, clutching desperately to the rough cloth of his shirt as she was taken down into the galley.

It was no better down below. The kitchen was eerily empty, the muffled sounds of pounding feet and cannon fire, the shouts of the crew echoing strangely with the thunder.

“No place for a child,” she vaguely recalled a voice saying with a muffled curse, but no face to go with it... just a large looming shadow among the twisting shadows cast by the hanging lamp as it swung. The lamp creaked and clanged as it swayed violently with the ship with the sound of the beams groaning in concert to the rolling waves that tossed the vessel with ease.

But she remembered, with crystal clarity, the sound of the cannon ball as it screamed through the tortured air, loud even as far down as she was below deck. Her short scream choked in her throat as she buried her face in coarse linen, the ship shuddering and reeling sickeningly to the sound of sudden splinters.

Her caretaker, whoever that long shadow was, cursed fluently as he raised his head to the increased sound of shouting from the main deck, the booming voice of the captain barely heard bellowing orders from the bridge. Strong arms lifted her, carried her, and put her down... and suddenly she was shut up in the dark alone.

Nestled tightly among the barrels and bags that crowded the already jam-packed galley closet, there was barely any room for her to move at all. The air was stale and choked with dust shaken from the rafters and bags of barely and flower and so dark she could not tell if her eyes were closed or not. The scream sounded again, crashing into the hull and making the ship lurch to one side as she groaned deeply from the heart of her grainy wooden bows.

She was afraid! So horribly afraid. She tried to get out, but the door to the tiny closet had been barricaded somehow, whether by the man who had put her there or by the sliding of objects tossed by the violent swaying of the ship. She remembered pounding on the door until her hands were raw, sharp splinters sticking into her palms, and screaming in that oppressive dark until her voice was gone... only able to whimper in terror as the ship was battered and broken, falling to pieces around her.

The sound of gunfire never seemed to stop, and she could hardly tell which were the cannons and which were coming from the thunder. Boom, boom, boom, a shrieking wail and shuddering crack. A lurch and a surge, each more violent than the next, shaking the rafters. The tight clutter in the closet would crush her first to one side, then the next as it shifted around her, pinning her and trapping her every which way and all in that oppressive, eternal darkness.

Towards the end of the firefight, one of the final innumerable cannons crashed through the hull of the ship, smashing into the galley. She remembered screaming at the sudden crash, but no voice escaped her mouth as the walls splintered around her, flinging shards and large splinters with the devastating impact. She remembered being thrown back against the hard cupboard walls, her breath leaving her with a sudden, painful gasp as all the barrels and crates and bags piled up against her, and pinned her relentlessly. The sharp sting of the cut across her eye not felt for the burning ache of her chest and lungs, and the trickle of blood down her face lost among the tears she was helpless to stop.

It couldn't have been more than an hour that the battle raged about her, but it had felt like an eternity... and even in her memories she could not shake that horrible timeless feel...

They didn't find her until the broken ship of the late Bloody Flack was halfway into port.