Out For A Stroll (Alaya/open)

[Titus Cortez]

A wash of fear and anger flooded over his face. "Turn myself in?" he nearly choked on the words. "How is it that even you don't know what they'd do to me? They'd keel-haul me! Alaya, do you hear me? Keel-haul!" Titus shivered. "You don't even know what that is, do you?" he asked, almost accusingly, but he really wondered if she didn't. If she did she never would have even suggested turning in. His face was white.

"And I do too know about a pirates world." he hissed. "I know all that I need to know. They're vicious little devils, them Sirens. They destroyed our farm, took everything. They strut their little asses around town like they're high and mighty with their little gang. I fight them when they disrupt our town. I protect what was here long before they were."

He closed his eyes and sank to the floor of the nest. He didn't even open them to look at her. "I hope you're ready for a Pirate's World. You're just dancing around, dressing like a boy, like they'll never find you out! Like they'll never do anything to you." His voice was bitter. "God dammit, Alaya, get off your high horse. Take a good, long look at them. They may like you now, that you're one of the guys. But if they found you out, they'd do the same thing to you that they'd do to me. Keel-haul.

"But you're a woman," His eyes opened and he looked up at her in sudden realization. He grabbed her ankle and pulled her down so that she had to sit. He gave her back her bandanna and tied it tight around her head. "They wouldn't just keel-haul you straight off." He bobbed his head to the side, hoping she would understand. He shuddered. "A whole ship full of men alone at sea for months at a time. You don't know a man's mind, Alaya. You can dress like us all you want, but you can't bring yourself to think they way men think. You'd be like a toy to them. Not to mention women are bad luck on a ship. You're forbidden, and because of that, you'd be that much more arousing to them." He pointed a finger at her, probably the only rude thing he would ever do to her. "Don't you get yourself caught." he told her. "They'll rape you and they'll kill you. Keel-haul you."

Titus let his hand fall limply onto his lap, his head falling back against the wall. He looked away for a moment, staring blankly at the opposite side of the crow's nest. Then he turned back to her. "I'd never turn you in, Alaya." he said quietly, his gaze firm and unblinking. "By God, girl, don't you do it to me. I don't want to be keel-hauled."

[Alaya Seawitch]

It didn't take Alaya too long to come up with something to say. It was easier to get back at someone when they were enraged. "That's all. I could have sworn they would do more than that. Oh well" Alaya knew what the punishment meant. It was harsh to be thrown off the ship with a rope attached to you for you to be dragged under the ship. Some survived it, not many but some. "You are still looking at this world through a land dwellers eyes. I don't expect you to truly understand. Yes the Sirens are disgraceful bunch, but they are just another group of pirates" Sometime she didn't quite understand humans even if she did have human blood. It could just be that the first seven years of her life she lived in the sea with the other true Sirens. "You are making a huge guess here also about what they would do with me. If they ever do find out I have ways of making them forget. And really, I have some help in that matter, no one will lay a finger on me unless I allow it. You don't quite understand the world out here, the creatures and wonders of the sea. If you did then you might understand what I am trying to say" It was so hard to explain to Titus that she couldn't be hurt by humans without a fight and the sea on her side without outright saying that she wasn't entirely human. She wasn't really going to turn him in but still it wasn't safe for him either way.

[Titus Cortez]

"Do more? Oh well?" Titus stared at her blankly. Keel-hauled. More? She wanted more? Oh well? He couldn't believe what she was saying.

"Land dweller?" He glared at her. "Don't you call me that. I'm not a land dweller anymore. I'm on a ship, ain't I? Why do you think I'm here? I did it to impress-" he broke off. Angry. Some impression he had made. Land dweller, Titus.

"A guess? Alaya, I know exactly what they'd do to you. I'm a man and you're not. Don't tell me I'm the one guessing. A man..." he looked away from her, embarrassed. "A man without morals, I should say, would..." he spat on the ground. He wasn't going to paint her a picture. "You're a woman. They're men. One drop of rain in a battalion of thirsty soldiers. Alaya... you're the last bottle of rum in the city if they ever found you out. They would kill each other over you."

"You have ways? Gonna make them forget? No one's gonna touch you unless you allow it? And I'm the one who doesn't understand..." He threw his hands in the air.

"Dammit, girl!" he hissed. "Get off your high horse! Look at you." he squeezed her arm. "Hardly any muscle. You could never fight us off. We're on a bloody ship! You've got no place to run. What do you think you are?! Magic?!" Titus threw his head back, praying for some way to explain it to her. He thrust one hand behind her head, the other grabbed the side of her hip and he dragged her close to him. It was a flash. A snap. Like a leopard dragging meat up the tree. And he hovered over top of her. "And I suppose you're going to tell me that you allowed me to do that?" he asked, looking down into her eyes before he backed off of her.

Titus crawled to the other side of the nest and looked across at her apologetically. He would have never done something like that. Ever. But he had to scare her. Because she had to be scared. She should be scared. He had to teach her that she wasn't as powerful as she thought. He had to put the fear of men into her, so that she wouldn't get hurt. "I'm so sorry." he whispered, his voice now quiet in the morning air. He couldn't look at her. He knew he had to go. The sun was almost here. "I'll... I'll be in the hull, if you're going to turn me in." he said softly. But he didn't move.

[Alaya Seawitch]

Alaya was shocked when he grabbed her but she really didn't mind the feeling. She knew he was trying to prove a point. She knew that and for any other person it would be true. "Magic, yeah I guess you could call it that. When you were mad at me before when I told you to go home your feet would not obey, correct. Do you really think any normal person could do something like that. Even then I wasn't trying" She said it before she knew what she was saying. He needed to not worry, but it was so hard to say it.

Her voice was raised slightly with an edge to it. She took a deep breath to calm down. "I have a pretty good idea what goes on in these men's heads. I had to deal with drunk and just plain cruel men before I became a member of this crew. So don't say I don't know what goes though their heads" She said. Being a wench she had a good understanding.

"You said that women were unlucky right. Want to know what is worst? Taking someone of the sea, torturing them then killing them and then throwing them back to the sea. Every good sailor knows that you should never anger the sea, that would be worst for you then if you had a women on board" She was confident of what would happen if she was caught. If they did do something to her she would make sure that the rest of their lives would be fearful of the sea. "Besides I was never taught to fear men, but pity them"

[Titus Cortez]

His head was a whirl of confusion and frustration, and fear. He had just forced her under him, and she reacted like he hadn't done a thing. That wasn't how she was supposed to act. She was supposed to be afraid. She was supposed to be scared. Fearful. Frightened. Enraged. And those emotions were supposed to teach her to be careful. But no. She was unaffected by everything. He couldn't understand.

Titus shook his head. "You don't know unless you're a man. You can guess all you want, Alaya. But you don't know." He could do nothing but stare at her now. He felt sick with emotion. With stress and fear and confusion and frustration, and that ever-drawing feeling, like she had his heart on a string, tugging him along. And he wanted to be that teddy bear on a leash, tumbled and tossed and banged against the roads she drug him through. His head hurt him.

"What are you trying to say?" he asked her. He had run out of things to stuff her ears with. Had run out of warnings and bewares and cautions. Had run out of energy.

[Alaya Seawitch]

He was right, Alaya didn't know exactly what was going on in the mind of men but she had an idea. She just watched him trying to figure out why she was the way she was. True she wasn't like most but she wasn't very different from her own kind. But now she wasn't sure what that was. It would be so much easier if she was born with a tail.

"Lets see how I can explain how I am not fearful of men. My name is Alaya. That is the name given to me by my father. The name given to me by my mother and her family, the name I went by for the first seven years of my life is Seawitch. Maybe that will help" She didn't know what else to do. Where she was from it was a honor to have sea in their name and to also have witch meant she was strong. She had no reason to fear.

[Titus Cortez]

"What does your name have to do with anything?" he asked, laying his head down on the floor, defeated. Now he could only listen, tired and exhausted and confused.

He felt something soft under his fingers and picked it up. One of the rose petals had fallen from the flower. Titus smoothed it gently, fixing the wrinkles. He looked at it, his eyes soft and kind towards that simple petal, almost with respect. Probably because of whom it belonged. He brought it to his lips slowly, and kissed it. Then, reluctantly, as if not wanting to let go of the little scarlet plant, held it out to Alaya and pressed it into her palm.

Without his arrogance, without his pride, without his constant need to charm and impress, he was just Titus, lying on the boards of the ship. He let his mind wander, his eyes glazed over with thought. He didn't move. Didn't really look at anything around him. He just took the moment for thought.

When he finished with his quick pondering, he shifted his head, looking up at Alaya. Titus took a breath. "You ever feel like you're falling, and you don't really care?" he asked her simply. "Whenever you're around somebody? Like you can't just get your balance?" Or like you can't really move your feet.

[Alaya Seawitch]

"Humans just never understand. Once in a state of mind they can never escape" Alaya mumbled under her breath. She had given so many hints as to what she was but he understood none of them. Her name was the biggest giveaway since only non-humans would have a name like Seawitch. "How can you fear a group of people that fear you more?" She said slightly louder but still to herself. Most men sailors feared for their life when going anywhere near Clearwater Lagoon.

Alaya looked at the rose petal in her hand. Somehow it resembled a scale in shape to her. Oh how she wished at times she was born with a tail and not legs, this would be so much easier to explain. She slightly liked the silence that drifted upon them. It was nice, at least no one was really angry.

"What are you talking about?" She asked. What did he mean by falling, and loosing your balance when someone was around? Maybe this was one of those things that only humans could really experience or maybe the sensation was different for other species. She really couldn't say she knew what he was talking about.

[Titus Cortez]

"You know." he said quietly, still looking at her. "When someone's around, you feel like you're falling. But you're sitting down. Or you become short of breath. But you don't care. Like your heart can't decide if it's going to jump out of your chest or sink into your belly." Titus watched her, waiting for some kind of response. "Haven't you ever felt that way? Like the world could end, and you wouldn't really care." He saw the first golden hue, far, far away on the horizon. They probably had less than an hour before the sun would come up. But he only shrugged.

[Alaya Seawitch]

Now she was really confused. What was he talking about? It was all nonsense. Then an image entered her mind when she was cleaning the deck and Caesar came out singing and acting all strange but he was in love. Was that what he was talking about? "You mean have I ever felt the way humans do when they are in love with someone? If that is it then no, never" It was true, she really had no idea what love felt like. She loved the sea and the Sirens but not a human, she didn't really care for her father. "Why do you ask?"

[Titus Cortez]

"Oh." he said, and his eyes shot down and away from her. But he couldn't hide his disappointment. "I was just wondering. That's all." It wasn't all. But Titus wouldn't say it. He was hiding it from her now, where before he had been so obvious. Damn, the way she made him act.

"Humans?" he questioned. There was that word again. "Why do you keep referring like that?" Titus asked her, obviously changing the subject.

[Alaya Seawitch]

Alaya shrugged off the topic since she really didn't know what he was trying to say. She almost laughed when he ask her why she said humans. This entire time she had been trying to tell him. "If I was aloud to tell you then I would have said something long before this conversation began" Alaya could feel the suns rays on her skin. Soon very soon the sun would be up and Titus needed to hid. An idea hit her and she wondered why she didn't say anything.

[Titus Cortez]

Titus looked up at her and laughed only slightly. "You really are an Angel, aren't you?" he asked. He knew there were other races. But the majority were human, and she looked human to him. He thought for a moment. He had never actually seen an angel before. Nothing was to say she couldn't be. "Or an animagus? What? Just tell me." he said, rolling over onto his stomach. "I won't tell anyone." He moved his ear in, ready for a secret.

[Alaya Seawitch]

Alaya shook her head. "Neither of those, and I am still bound to not telling" She stated simply. "By the way I think I have an idea to make you part of the crew if you don't mind being the chefs assistant" She wondered if the idea would work. It should but there might be some complications. Either way it was worth the shot.

[Titus Cortez]

"You noticed that last night, huh?" he asked, smiling to himself. "Didn't hear your chef complaining about me cutting it neither. Didn't hear him say nothing." Titus shook his head. "I don't think so. I don't want to risk it." But then he thought a moment and looked at her, "You think they'd keep me just 'cause I can cut and cook?" he asked. Titus peered out over the nest. No one seemed to be awake yet.