Chapter 1 - The Light

The night passes without any major incidents. The ektus ship doesn't show back up again. Most likely, they stayed in position to try and trick another ship. Cait also doesn't spot anything else in the night, no wild animals or other ships approaching or observing the Dawn as far as she can tell.Shaw gets to work on the engine and after some difficulties, manages to find and fix the damaged part of the Longjaw bite.Cait works on creating a composite or compound bow for herself and begins by preparing her raw materials, cutting the wood into shape. She works for some time but when she looks at the end result, she's not quite happy with it. Nothing is ruined but the woodwork just isn't up to her usual standards so far. But at this point, this is nothing that she can't fix in the future.With each crewmember busy with their own work, the morning comes faster than they expected. Once the sun has risen from behind the horizon again, it is time to pick a speed and to continue their journey once more.

Once the sun has risen again, the Fading Dawn continues its course towards the location of the settlement indicated on the chart they received. The journey goes without problem for multiple hours, though the crew does notice that the sky, already grey in the morning is slowly turning darker and darker over the course of the day. In the late afternoon, Cait, from her watchpost, spots a huge, black storm front to the northwest. It's not exactly in their path, which is to the west, but it seems to be approaching and will definitely intersect with their course at some point.
They could steer off to a course southwest, which would keep the Dawn out of the storm's path but would also result in a considerable deviation from their currently chartered course. Pushing through the storm would allow them to make a more direct and faster approach to their goal but will also put them in danger from the storm.

Shaw comes up from where he was working. Everything is fixed, granted it took my longer than I thought.

"Nice work!" Cait says with a grin she nods towards the horizon, "That doesn’t look good."

Her eyes have that weird far away look in them they get when she’s watching spirits and Shaw knows she’s looking at something very different from what he’s looking at.

"That looks bad, is how that looks." Elrenna's permafrown deepens as she looks at the building storm, shaking her head in displeasure. "Should we try and avoid it or just bull through and hope for the best to save time? I'd vote for going around, but it's my job to keep the ship safe so my opinions are always going to be colored by that." She shifts from foot to foot as she speaks unknowingly, with the antsy edge of an animal before a storm tinging her motions.

I say we go around, I just fixed the last problem we had. That storm looks bad enough to cause a lot more. Shaw says as he watches the clouds with the others.

Caitriona turns the wheel and maneuvers the Dawn around the storm. She continues to watch the spirits and elemental forces stretching and bursting forth from the storm wall with fascination. So much energy and destructive power focused into a single thing.

The Fading Dawn turns left, towards the southwest and away from the approaching storm. They stay on course as much as they can without getting caught up in the thrashing winds, lashing rain and flashing lightning but have to deviate from the charted route quite significantly.
Looking into the black storm, they see huge branches, easily larger than the Fading Dawn whip around in the air after being ripped off tree trunks. At some point, they even spot something that could be - but might not be - a ship or a tiny spit flying through the air. On a spectral level, to Cait, the storm is even more fascinating. It appears to her almost as if the storm itself was an angry spirit - or maybe hundreds of angry spirits - unleashing their rage upon the wildsea.

While this spectacular sight is close enough to observe and to make shivers run down the wildsailors' spines, the Fading Dawn is far enough away that it is safe from the winds and rains, though the power of the storm can be felt even at this distance. The spectacle of the storm continues on until late in the night, by which time it becomes impossible to see anything underneath the low rainclouds except the frequent thunderstrikes.

It seems that everyone and everything is just observing the storm as the seas appear peaceful for the rest of the day and deep into the night. No creatures, pirates, plants, not even features of the wildsea itself disturb the Dawn's travels.

Caitriona sits on the rail around the bridge watching the elemental fury of the storm in the distance, "You two get some rest, I’ll keep watch."

She pulls out her bow construction, looks at it and frowns before turning her attention towards the horizon and keeping watch. There had to be a clear path to fix what she’d done to the bow but it just wasn’t appearing in her brain. Perhaps a few hours of watching the horizon and letting her brain rest would help sort the problem. Besides this way she could watch the spirits vent their fury upon the sea. It was a lot of spirits in one spot, strong ones too, she’d heard stories about the Dream Fall, maybe this was what it was like.

Cait turns her attention back to the bow and resumes construction on it.

Elrenna decides to do a little scrounging while they have a moment of downtime, before she gets a bit of rest, checking the area around them for anything edible or useful that there might be while keeping the storm in her peripheral vision, it certainly is something, though there's something off about it she can't quite place, which makes her nervous... though the calmness of her companions keeps her from seeing it as an imminent threat, at least.

Elrenna perches at the edge of the ship's deck, searching the surrounding waves. As the Fading Dawn passes over the canopy, she at some point spots something bright red breaking the monotonous green surrounding the ship, some strange fruit growing on a vine reaching out above the tops of the trees, the size of apples but covered in long, pointy needles.Cait continues work on her bow, making better progress this time than the last. The materials still don't want to fully obey her but for every step of her work that doesn't go according to her plan, another falls into place exactly as she wishes and she ends up making a good bit of progress on her project.Elrenna also catches sight of an impressive sight in the far distance ahead of them. As the ship passes over a particularly high treetop, lifting them somewhat above the average sea level, she spots a huge scar in the wildsea, long and very narrow. It is angled towards them, one end of the line in the treetops pointing towards the Fading Dawn, less than a day's journey away now, the other fading out of view in the distance.
This must be where the tallshank fell and tore a huge scar into the sea itself that somehow hasn't fully healed back yet, as if the trees themselves were still mourning the loss.
She only sees it for a few seconds, though, before the ship's movement takes it down from its perch again and the scar is once again out of view.

Elrenna notices the bizarre spikey pears and rubs her chin thoughtfully before slipping out of her longcoat. With the coat draped over her shoulder she climbs along the vine, stopping before the odd fruits. Hanging by one hand, she uses the other to wrap her coat, resistant to puncture, around a few of the fruit and shakes the whole thing so that they bounce down into the arm, their spikes getting them wedged in place within the sturdy sleeve. She tucks the other loose arm into her belt and climbs back before shaking the pears out into a container, and going to clean any spikes that may have come loose out of the coat arm before putting it on. "I think these are consumable, but I have no idea if they are food or medicine."