When at mounting urging the balcony doors opened onto a vista of the Sea of Sorrows, in it swept like a fierce winter's snow. It became so dense that Camille need only step out onto the shallow balcony to lose all definition and become a haunting shape, a shadow behind paper.<br/>"Jacqueline, would you bring your fan?"<br/>"Let us bottle a bit of it for Corinne's study, while it's so unusual," Zoe said.<br/>"Scarcely can I make out the rungs before my eyes." Camille stepped out, and was the first to climb. "The futue renders it slippery, pray I do not fall."<br/>"The stairs will avail you then, surely."<br/>"What a bother, to dress and face the crew. You will catch me if I falter, Zoe."<br/><br/>She was bewitched by the emptiness of the mist, Zoe, eyes a shine in the diffuse moonlight, devoid of color. No sooner had the brassy hum of skin strumming the lovely rungs paused than she was up behind, pressing a hurry to Camille's bottom. "Here I am."<br/><br/>What remained of the women of Saint Ezra would not abandon their sister to this peril. Eloise paused to set palms into the arm of Aloisa Kriechjagd's chair, and broach a delicate subject.<br/>"What if there is something out there?"<br/>She was an autumn, and favored the color red, to bring out a slight color in hair. Even in that state of undress, scant roses remained pinned in the single column she gathered down one breast to render her neck thin and elegant. So late into the evening, her roses sagged, soon to fall.<br/><br/>"The moon is nowhere to be seen," said Hannah, but ventured only as far as the windows and lantern light.<br/>"Above us, high," the voice of Camille filtered down from abovedeck. "Buck moon is a witching moon, and a sight to behold so far from the city's smother. Come out and bear witness."<br/>"Whatever would you know of witchcraft," said Zoe.<br/>"I met one, once. She read my fortune with a deck of cards. Doubtless the island savages hold some superstition for it. Look, it is yellow and red, both."<br/>"I see no such color."<br/>Hannah ventured out at last, and scaled the ladder. "Let there be no more talk of such things when we bring word of Saint Ezra to them. The Witch is unclean."<br/><br/>Up on the highest deck the four of them settled, making room for more. The upset of the crew below, the colossal creaking of masts in search of wind lent a danger to the moment Hannah Rodes-Taving nearly could not take. She fidgeted endlessly with her robin's egg juliet chemise sleeves and on with the ropes encircling the rail. "I've had such trouble sleeping, on the sea. What of you?"