Skyrun

Chapter 10; Strange lands.

When the darkness finally receded and Liam cracked his eyes open, his skull did not hesitate to begin pounding like a war drum and he groaned from the feel of it. 

Numbly, he felt a cold cloth pressed to his forehead and upon further inspection with the tips of his fingers, he found that the skin on his temple that had been previously hit by the wooden crate was now sloppily stitched up.

Sitting upright-- and immediately regretting it a moment later-- Liam found himself in the captain's quarters, his body bare but for his underclothes and a woolen blanket, his other garments drying on the windowsill.

To his right, sitting in a wooden chair was Sinclair, a bucket of cool water by his side no doubt meant for the rag on Liam's head.

Upon hearing him stir, Sinclair looked up from the book he had been reading and glanced at Liam with little more than boredom on his handsome face.

"Ah, you're awake. Good; I was worried we had lost you for a moment."

"Why am I in the captain's room?" Liam moaned, clutching his aching head.

"I'm sure many a young lad has asked that question."

"Sinclair!"

The silver-haired pirate sighed, "Well, after you were so unceremoniously bashed in your stupid head, Valentine ordered me to take you to her quarters-- seeing as they were the safest-- while she made the landing."

Liam looked up, startled, and that was when he realized... the usual sound of the airship's engines were gone, and the perpetual sway of the floor was replaced with stillness. Odd, but not uncomfortable.

"Thus," Sinclair continued, "I dragged you down here, stripped off your wet clothes so you wouldn't die of pneumonia--"

Liam groaned again, hiding his head in his hands; wonderful. Sinclair had seen him in his smallclothes.

He almost wished he had gone overboard now.

"-- and I have kept an eye on you since then." he stopped for a moment, eyeing the boy with an odd look on his face. "You're more trouble than you're worth, you know that don't you?"

"Believe me, my father made sure I knew."

Liam then ran a finger over the stiches on his temple then. It would leave a scar, no doubt, but it was not as though he was that handsome to begin with. In fact, it might make him look dangerous and fierce.

Or like an absolute twit, but he would take what he could get.

Slipping out from between the sheets, he quickly dressed while asking, "So we crash landed then? Where?"

"That's precisely what we are trying to figure out; the sailing master says it's not on any of our maps and the navigator agrees with him. So either we're in uncharted skies or they're both stupid."

Pulling his shirt over his head, Liam did up the buttons and put his leather flying coat over it. He gave Sinclair a look, "And what do you think?"

The other pirate snorted, "It doesn't matter what I think, I'm the quarter master. My job is the safety of the crew and being a Second to the captain. What do I know of matters such as maps and navigation?"

"But you do, don't you?"

"Aye, and though I know not where we are, I have a feeling that we may be on one of the Lost Isles."

Lost Isles. Liam had heard of them; mostly from tales told by Archer or Pip when they would come to visit. 

Supposedly, there were a group of islands floating about in the ocean and many a desperate airship had landed on them in the midst of a storm, only to never be seen again.