*A collab between TNY & Peik*

Hata'i watched as the captain's wounds started to close themselves. His gaze was lost in the mess made by shades of moving red and white. Unknown hands were grafting muscles and intestines back inside the wound, drips of blood sliding themselves back into the hole like retreating snakes. It all ended when two flaps of skin miraculously sewed themselves back over the tissue, and a moment later, the wound was all gone. It wasn't the impossibility of the event that caused Hata'i to lose himself in it, though - rather, it was the flow of color and matter. When you removed the context, the event itself looked quite aesthetic. Aesthetic indeed.

"Well, that's something you don't see everyday."

Hata'i paused. After a few seconds, he decided to reply.

''Would you believe me if I said I've seen this more than a few times?''

Allana folded her arms in front of her chest, her straight black hair waving around her smiling features. She let out an incredulous puff of air. This man seemed to be different than the others some how. Perhaps, Allana considered, she was wrong about him. She considered his clothing, his face, the texture of his hands, and his sweet, solemn eyes. 

"I suppose I would," she answered, amused. "You have the look of a man who knows all sorts of things men shouldn't know. I imagine it gets you into some trouble." The captain, held by several men, was whisked by as she spoke. She didn't give him or the men who carried him a second glance. He would be fine, Allana knew that clearly. He had an ancient blessing on him, something done and undone with the most esoteric of magics. Funny thing is, nothing he, the Harbinger, or any of the men around could have done would have changed the outcome. Emillio Cicatrise, as far as Allana was concerned, was destined for this adventure.
 
And, perhaps most scarily, Allana thought as she looked at the people around her, and finally at Ahmed, their destiny was intertwined with his. Of course, all this could mean only one thing; those behind Emillio's actions, and those on the recieving end of them, were playing a sort of tug-of-war with the delicate fabric of time. Emillio, like so many other men before him, was only a tool for the enegmatic entities who played marionettists with Gods and Kings. It was all a smoke and mirror show, Allana knew that, but like any other jaded member of an audience she had no means of identifying any one part of that trick from another. 

Trouble.

The words that came out of the witch's mouth echoed inside Hata'i's head - she was right, and despite the urge in him, he knew he could not deny that. His life was built around knowledge - learning it, enjoying it, or suffering from it. He was here because of it. His mind flashed into a trip in memory lane from the point he was right now - before he knew, he was once more fighting Qizilbash, running from Djinn, hunting abominations, or observing miracles. He was fifty six - at least thirty years of that was spent delving into matters man was not meant to know. He could've chosen a different, a much simpler life. He could've been living in a two-story house near the Hungarian neighborhood in Galata. Or he could've been a simple Mutafarriqa in service of a Pasha. But his pursuits had led him to the extremes, and here he was, hunting dragons. A blink of an eye, and there he was again, on the ship, next to a witch. But this path had rewarded him with the taste of truth. And that was infinitely more satisfying than anything else.

''Yes. Yes it does,'' Hata'i said with a slight smile on his face. As another Hata'i had said; ''I've a malady, yet I wouldn't trade it for a thousand cures.''

Allana took note of the smirk, the roguish connotations behind his reply. In some shape or form this man did not fit, he was a bit of an outcast, like herself. "Yes," she replied while unlatching strappings on her armor, allowing her to shed some of the heavier leather portions. "Well, I'm afraid you might already know, as I have learned, that you don't need to do much to get into trouble in this world. I figure, why try to avoid it?" She unstrapped bands along her arms which were magically imbued, they glowed with a faint aura before they were tucked into one of her belt pockets. "In some ways, you might be the same. A holy man with an expertise in magic. You had to know where that would lead you." she chuckled as she settled her pauldrens atop a crate behind her. 

She sat on the crate, and reached behind her, pulled out something wrapped in cloth. When she unfolded the cloth it revealed several small moist green balls. At a closer look, one may notice that they were made of some sort of leaf, wrapped around a rice-like substance. Allana plopped one into her mouth, chewed, and seemed to enjoy it. Indeed, it refreshed her, helped her calm, and provided a snack. She gestured her clothed hand to the man, offering a token of solidarity. Whatever it was [i]that[/i] was supposed to be worth. 

Hata'i watched as the witch unlatched parts of her armor and continued the conversation. She was right about avoiding trouble, Hata'i thought, though a part of his mind was stuck on her attire, as parts of her costume had a slight sheen to them. He was going to respond, but decided to wait for her to stop instead. Her comment about his profession leading him to things other people would avoid, he disagreed with - the thing that led him here was something completely different. It was not his profession, but rather, his boldness. He was the one to point out the elephant in the room, back in Istanbul. His profession was merely something that would amplify his opinion amongst the crowds - amongst the people of the East, a holy man was much more important than a well-read man. If he had kept silent about the problems and instead focused on trivial matters, Hata'i thought, he could even have been the Sheik-ul Islam. He turned his gaze towards the sea, and once more reaffirmed to himself that he liked this life better. ''You are right. Trouble can find you in this world. But it wasn't what I did that led me here - rather, it was who I am. I suppose you could say I was too bold.''

His gaze slid back to the witch when she offered him an odd, spherical object. Hata'i took it in his hand and watched the witch throw it inside her mouth. It was a rather odd piece of food, he thought to himself - though he remembered from an obscure Portuguese Jesuit travelogue that the people of Nifon ate such things. He sniffed it for a second and found the smell rather peculiar. ''What's in this?'' He asked, turning his head wholly to the witch.

Allana turned her head up to the man in cloths, furrowed her brow a little and allowed way for a tiny smirk before turning back to the ground. "I've found it's best not to ask that question." Allana said flatly before wrapping the food up again in it's magical bindings. They would stay fresh for days-- weeks, if she could find salamander tongue. 

She stood, the weightlessness offered by the removal of her armor was comforting. This came with other implications as well. She would have to trust that Emillio would not find fault in her and see that she had tried to help him. She hoped her trust placed in him was not misguided. As she thought of that she turned her head to the cabin, shiffered in the night air. "Perhaps we should check on the captain." Allana walked around the crates to get a better look at the door and the thin blood still left on the floor. "I wouldn't want us stranded at sea. Or worse, see what happens when this raft looses it's leader." She recoiled from her own implications and thought it best not to even consider them for much longer. She headed for the door, the skirted portion of her clothing, black long cloth, flittered behind her in the dampening wind. 

''Never eat what you don't know,'' Hata'i's father had taught him - he had taught a lot of other things too, but they hadn't stuck on for the last thirty-something years. But that one was good advice, admittedly. He had seen many people get sick and die of eating weird stuff, including a salamander which had hid itself in a grilled lamb to escape the flames of a campfire which had been fueled with log that was once its home. The man who had eaten the salamander was a very large fellow - and the bite he had taken from the lamb was also very large. They had went to sleep after the meal, and when Hata'i woke up, he had found him dead, with something wiggling in his throat. The fear he had felt after opening his mouth and seeing the black-orange creature try and pop out was still fresh.

The witch had left to check on the captain's status - it was a good time to get rid of the weird thing in his hands. ''Nope,'' Hata'i thought to himself, and let it fall into the sea, and watched as it made a bubbly ripple by the ship's hull. Suddenly, the bubbling increased and something black and yellow came out, sticking itself on the hull. Hata'i saw a likeness to the salamander which had been swallowed by the strongman years back on the creature, though it looked much more like a frog.

''Tawba astaghfirullah,'' he thought to himself. ''Tawba astaghfirullah.''