<div class="floatleft">(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c4/a2/eb/c4a2eb3622a5fd5f4149b8e094a22fa3.jpg)</div><strong>Name: </strong>Danae Vine-Lott<br/><strong>Location: </strong>The Charlotte, seeking a way out<br/><strong>Wearing: </strong>White cotton jodhpurs (unbuttoned), loose grey muslin riding shirt with collar open and sleeves rolled up, barefoot<br/><strong>Content: </strong>Rude awakening<br/><strong>Tagging: </strong>Hannah<br/><br/><hr/><br/>She had fallen into a state of languid stupor contemplating the shifting wood grain of the ceiling, with Hannah on top of her.  Such a slight thing, so warm and neatly coiffed and perfumed. Whatever aggression she had felt melded into a state of contented bliss. Her muscles went slack, her mind was clear, and she was free to revisit the memories of the things she had heard whispered in the cellar back in Mordent.  No, despite Hannah's protestations something was afoot.  Ezra's Garden was a fairy tale.  The world was a dark and shadowy place, and evil permeated it. It rumbled, groaned, and roared.  A loud, furious thing stirring in the bowels of her basement, amid the sacks of dried oats and the pipes of good port.  It grew, festering, whispered in the darkness to Polly the housemaid and to Jenny the kitchen help. They were<em>weak</em>, so they could not resist the siren song.  The thing roared, and the earth seemed to split and the girls were dancing, masked and naked, around a bonfire, their sorcery lifting them higher into the air.<br/><br/>A rush of water sluiced through the door of her cabin. It was a fever dream - she was certain of it. An almighty cracking echoed through the bowels of the hull and Danae pushed Hannah off her and rose from her bed, stepping into the rising tide of cold, dead seawater flowing into the cabin.  Indistinct cries of panic outside.<br/><br/>"Up, girl!" She shook Hannah, though her senses were still clouded by the anodyne. "You can swim, can you not?  I fear we my soon be shipwrecked."<br/><br/>She strode to the door of the cabin and saw the corridor already half-flooded, cold saltwater pooling at her feet and reaching to her knees.  "If you cannot, I must ask you to hold on to me."  She went and fetched her rapier and slung her sword-belt around her waist.  "I am no mariner, but I am certain that this ship will not last much longer."  Taking Hannah's hand, she led her out into the corridor.  She rapped on each door with the insistence of a constable on her night-watch, and when she received no answer, simply forced the door open to awaken any who would have slept through the ship's sundering.  Some of the cabins were already flooded and all around them the wood groaned and buckled. If she could help any others to safety she would, but with Hannah in her charge she also knew she could not linger long.  These were not women made for war or crisis.<br/><br/>"This was not meant to be - when we were on deck it was calm.  How could a storm have crept on us?"