The signature stench of the sea combated its timid temperature, and you‘d get as well trenched above or below the sea level with the heavy rain of the night. Thankfully there was the bitter-sweet beauty of the boardwalk was seen as a sight for sore eyes by Marcus Liu. It had been nearly ten years since he had set foot on Anaxi soil, or in this case planks.

Marcus leered at the horizon, hoping to spot the swashbucklers that shoved him into the sea. Previously, he had ventured with pirates, but their lifestyle lacked lure for a man like Marcus Liu. With no such luck finding him, Marcus turns his attention to an anonymous couple eyeing his strange exit from sea.

“Ayah,” he began, trying to keep a smooth voice, even though he shivered, “Whe-ere could I fi-ind the m-markets?” They gave him a grody gander, before directing him directly south. The direct directions remained oblivious other than ’south’ as he was distracted by their leering him. Was his soaked sportcoat really that ruined? Marcus knew he had to clean and patch up his clothes after soaking for seconds, swimming to the Waterfront.

It didn’t take long for Marcus to get lost. He hadn’t planned on ever returning to Old Rose, much less Anaxas itself. While he was here, he figured he might wake some of the skeletons in his closet. He was going to need some paper first off. He was never going to get anything done lost in the Cat’s Paw, though.

The day was like any other; it seemed the rain had been letting up a little lately, the whole Loshis month gone now. That didn't mean that the weather was clear and bright all the time, what with old rose being so close to the ocean. But it wasn't pouring too hard at the moment, in fact it looked almost sunny.

Aye sat doing what she usually could be found doing: eating a small fish by a fire she had started. There was a homemade fishing pole carelessly thrown onto the ground beside her, and her face had some grease on it. What? Shes a messy eater! She knew Captain Molly had food back at her house, or whatever that meeting place was, but Aye wandered Old Rose so often that walking all the way back there just for food seemed ridiculous. So, she caught her own fish. At least that gave her time to scope out some stalls to steal from, there was this nice looking one with some--

She squinted and tried to see around a man that had just wandered between her and the vendors stand, before forgetting the stand and gaping at how soaked this kov was. His hair looked a little dirty, and his clothes looked a little old. Altogether he looked like he'd maybe had a bad day. She raised an eyebrow at him, and took another bite out of her fish.

"'Ey, kov," She called out with her mouth full, "yeh walk a plank recently?" She grinned and giggled at her own joke; of course she couldn't help but throw in something about pirates

As the misdirected Marcus meandered by the merchants, he heard the voice of a greenness girl. He wasn’t sure if the child was talking to him or another around, but no one else seemed to reply, and she stared straight at him. The food in the mouth was hard to ignore, the man was a bit hungry himself.

“That obvious?” if anyone other than a child had mocked Marcus he might have had an aggravated attitude, “Could ju help xa out a bit, boch? I never expected to come back to Anaxas, but ju know ju can’t always choose where ju are when leaving a pirate’s company, can ju?” Marcus had always overused what Mugrobi words he knew in his Estuan, after all he spent some time in Mugroba while away from Anaxas. He hardly noticed himself including the words. “Ma'ralio, call me Marcus, what can I call you?”

The girl sat there blinking for a few moments, before resuming her chewing. She swallowed and then squinted up at the strange Marcus, man. She couldn't understand a little of what he was saying, but she could hear the word pirates pretty well.

"Ma-Ma' ralio?" She didn't know what the word meant, but it sounded nice and she didn't want to upset the man by not being nice back. "Junta, m'names Aye, so i guess yeh c'n call me Aye." She grinned.

She studied Marcus's appearance for a few moments. He looked hungry and tired and lost all at once. Not to mention how soaked he was. She glanced down at her little fire, and there just happened to be two more fish cooking. She smiled and grabbed one by its roasting stick, and held it up to offer it to the man.

"Hungry?"

A sigh soared from Marcus’s mouth. “Epa'ma, Aye, I don’t want to take what ju have worked for without any compensation.” He looked at the child, and the confusion on her face when he said his hetero hearsays. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?” He said, as shapely and solid as he could hoping not to let Mugrobi words slip from his tongue. “Epa’m-- bhe,” Marcus began to slow down his words more, trying to catch himself, just as his stomach grumbled, upset itself. This thrusted a thought into his head, “I’m sorry, I’m letting foreign words out of mouth. I can make a deal with you, if I teach you the little Mugrobi I know, would you mind if I share a small portion of your fish?”

Marcus minded his margin seeking something to sit on. He eventually found a crate that didn’t seem to be doing anyone else any good, and made use of it as a stool. “I don’t really know that much, just the hellos, goodbyes, and pleasantries, sound good?”

Aye laughed and nodded at the poor soaked guy, and offered the fish again. She for one wanted to see if anyone besides her would like her cooking, she never had the chance to see.

"Mugrobi?" She asked. "I'd like that, kov. Got a mug woman who'd be surprised if i said hesta to 'er in mugrobi." She giggled just thinking about it.

"So, what means 'hello' in mugrobi?" She took another large bite from her fish, and patiently waited while he ate.

(( short reply is short ))

The fish’s flavor felt fascinating, for the first find that wasn’t burnt or raw since his scene on sea. It wasn’t the best he’d ever eaten, but he wasn’t bound to complain. “This first one should be easy for ju, Aye,” he began, already getting lessons underway, “hello is merely an extension to your name; Ayah!” Marcus repeated the word again, slower, dragging out the vowels. Something he would hope was a good teaching method.

He paused to take another bite out of his portion of fish, “Ma’ralio, ju got experience saying that,” he had a lone laugh before continuing, “nice to meet ju, is the relative meaning of ma’ralio” Marcus makes another bite, “A real simple word for ju is ea, that’s yes. And no is yaka.”

“Wika, that’s what you are, a wick, right? I would be a dura, human.” He stopped to think of what else he should teach the girl. Marcus really never taught anything in his life, he wasn’t sure where to go next. “I’m not going to fast for ju, am xa?”

Aye listened to the man speak, saying the words slowly after he did. She wanted to remember them, and made sure to think them a few times just to make sure.



The girl smiled and nodded. "Oe-- I mean, ea, I’m a wika!" She giggled.



The girl laughed at this; of course he wasn’t going too fast! Her memory was just a little slow...

"Ne- Yaka, not too fast." She tore another chunk from her fish and took a moment to chew, before speaking again. "I'll have teh remember all o' that." She nodded and sat quietly for a few seconds.

"Is that all th'mugrobi yeh know?" The girl already had a mischievous plan to surprise people with her newly learned mugrobi, and oh would it be fun. Just thinking about it made her grin.

(( sorry, this is a little fail i was having trouble writing something ))

“there are some other words I know, Aye, like the pronouns. Ju probably figured that xa is me, ju is you, and xai is we,” he stopped to make sure his young new friend was keeping up, “Ra, in mug, is the ocean, the sea. Ra and ju together are esera. My esera ended with me overboard” Marcus laughed off his comment, and sat silent.

The man finished his portion of fish, “Domea for the fish, boch.” He wiped the remains off his mouth with his patched sleeve. “Can you guess what domea is?”

(( Sorry about the shortness and the lateness, school has crunched me down sorry! ))

She listened closely as he spoke, trying to remember all these new words as well as the old ones. Odds are she was going to forget most of it anyway, but at least she would remember some of it.

She giggled a little at his laughter, and then fell silent as he did. She bit the last chunk of fish off her stick, and sat chewing while he was silent.



Her eyes brightened as she thought she recognized the word as a thank you. It would only make sense, after all, "thanks for the fish" was a lot better than "that fish was awful for the fish". She grinned.

"Does it mean mujo ma?" She looked hopeful. She grew curious while waiting for his answer, and decided to ask a question. "Why did you end up overboard?"

(( Yes, I know it takes me forever, I'm sorry! ))

“Ah, ju catch on fast” Marcus replied, when Aye answered the question. Marcus made himself think for a second before answering. It wasn’t even hours ago that he had hopped into the ocean. “Why I was thrown over?

“I wasn’t really thrown over to be honest, xa jumped before they had the chance. I heard talk from the crew that they were tired of xa, xa’m not weak, no, but xa have a soft spot for all wika, xa can’t bring myself to cause them harm. Not very piraty, in their eyes. Last night, I packed my stuff as the pirates came toward old rose, here. They should have docked by now, stocking up and such, before they begin raiding and whatnot again.

“I even went as bold enough to smuggle out one of the higher pirate’s pistols, in case they confronted xa in the streets here. My forethought didn’t work out well, because being soaked, I’m sure the gunpowder is wet now, and wont fire,” From his jacket pocket, Marcus pulled out a simple pistol to show Aye, “I do need to restock on gunpowder and pellets to fire. On with the story, though; I had everything xa needed on my person, and this afternoon, while they prepared to dock, I dived into the water, hoping they would not notice, and I swam as far as I could. The end, here xa am.”

The girl squealed her happiness at getting the answer right; Now if she could only remember it all...

She sat for a while and considered his answer to her own question. He said he had a soft spot for all wicks? How many wicks did pirates go about killing? Was killing wicks the only thing a pirate did? She realized her imagination was running away from her; of course pirates didn’t only target wicks. As long as they didn’t bother the pirates and gave up the booty the raiders wanted, she couldn’t imagine why they would be harmed at all.

This train of thought brought her back to the fact that the man had a soft spot for wicks, which made her wonder why. She tilted her head to the right as she watched him; trying to find something on the man to give her some answers. She started to wonder why a man who easily runs from a mutiny had become a pirate at all.

Maybe yeh just don' know th'whole story... She sighed as the words of an old aunt went through her thoughts. Perhaps they were true, maybe he hadn’t wanted to be a pirate at all. Still, the wick thing still bothered her; after all, it had been what had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

"Wicks?" She asked before she could stop herself. "Why the soft spot for wicks?" Her question may have been strange, but as a wick, anything about other wicks made her curious, and that curiosity could be seen on her face.

“I’ve grown up with wika, my best friends from my childhood were wick,” he remembered his childhood with Nalini and Biora. For a moment, he smiled. Then Marcus remembered his late wife, Nalini’s fate, and slumped down. “I was born in Dorhaven, dura and wika children often played together in the streets. I always fit in better with the wika kids. Oh! I have been thinking of visiting my parents - if they are well. I haven’t spoken to them since xa ran away with Nalini more than twenty years ago.” Marcus had sighed, dreaming more of the days with the one he loved.

He hadn’t realized how much he had been running away from his past. It had been ten years of running now, shouldn’t he have confronted himself by now? He thought to himself, maybe he should visit his wife’s grave at Surwood before making his way to Dorhaven.

After another long silence, something Marcus seemed to often do, he spoke again, “Sorry, Aye, xa was in memorance of my past. Your juela and jara - mother and father - must be worried about ju!” He said, ignorant of who Aye was to him. The man stood up, and replaced the makeshift seat were it was. “Should xa help ju home?”

She sat still; the man's words going through her head. Her imagination was working, and she saw the man as a boy, a little human boy who ran and tumbled through the dirt along side colorful little wick children. To her it was a happy picture; a fond smile crossed her face. She found herself about ready to giggle softly; (oh how she missed her old friends) until Marcus mentioned her parents.

She sighed, preparing herself to again tell the story of her mother being dead, and her father missing. It passed her lips so often that it was starting to bore her, not only that but it was starting to make her feel just a little bit sad. Sure, she had had many aunts and uncles, people who said they were friends of her parents and that they would help raise her, but it was donning on her that aunts and uncles were not the same as parents.

She squinted as a hand formed a fist on the ground next to her, lips formed into a small frown. The girl stood and forced a cheerful smile onto her face, at the same time telling herself that she was happy and had a new job and didn’t need parents now if she hadn’t needed them before.

"Ne, they won' worry... M' daoa's died long ago, an' m' da didn’t care enough teh stay an' raise me." She pursed her lips, suddenly angry with this mysterious father she had never known.

She was silent for a moment, before laughter suddenly spilled out. "I haven' even got a home, really. Jus' stayin' with th' captain, Molly." She grinned at him, thinking of her soon to be pirate adventures.