Scribble #103

Please don't leave me behind, Captain Azalea. Skylar. 
   I don't care about your past. You saved my life.
   Redemption should not mean abandoning the people you love, and who love you. I look at you now, up on deck, your long light, auburn hair burning in the sun, just barely brightening your sad smile. The calmest of blue skies are reflected in your eyes, long-held tears of pain hidden within. When will the dam burst, I wonder.
   I wonder a lot of things about you, my beautiful, self-sacrificing captain. You are a phoenix, rising from the ashes that still cling to you. You don't brush them off.
   As always when you're on duty, you have your right hand on the hilt of your sword, the Crescent Moon Sickle, in a wooden scabbard securely strapped and tied with silver rope around your waist: you are ready for anything. 
   For the ship Lynx Eye is your stage, and it is your job to perform more than anything else. Even survival.
   It wasn't your fault, I keep telling you. The bad things, the crimes you committed as the original terror of the skies, the fearsome Sky Pirate Queen of Skulls - it was because you were possessed by an evil, vengeful spirit. There are a lot of those in the sky. You never believe it, or you never allow yourself to.
   You are haunted by the horror of your memories, no matter how long you preserve a warm smile on your soft face. The hardness, the breaking, ravishing storm, the dark abyss, it all lurks inside. A destruction and rebuilding is happening, in a cycle, within you. Alone.
   Harper steers on ahead. She knows the routes by now, off by heart, and by how Skylar likes her ship to set its course. Gently and steadily she goes, like a swan in a river, but swift and sharp as a shiny eagle in the sun and clouds when necessary, and sneaky, bright eyed and observant as a mother owl at night. But the mission is always the same: set a course towards redemption. It is a never ending journey; peace and war swirling and chasing and fighting each other, but are forced to coexist, like Ying and Yang. Like a hurricane. The inner and outer turmoil of a captain, carried out by a brave, loyal crew.
   Redemption. That's where I was supposed to have come in.
   Skylar. My pirate queen. My suffering star. My glowing, wilting twilight flower.
   Please listen to me, Skylar. My Skylar. 
   Don't leave me.
   The port draws nearer.