Shella awoke to a sickening crunching noise and heavy rain rattling the windows of her cabin. "What tha hell?" Shella muttered to herself and she looked out the window. Fierce drops of rain slammed themselves against the glass panes, and Shella could hear the howling of the wind outside shake the panes of glass.
"What tha hell?!" Shella exclaimed, and threw the bed covers off herself. No time for clothes, the weather, for once, was interesting. She pattered to the door, large flipper-like feet flapping, her dark brown body exposed except for the tight pants she wore. Shella was something like a mermaid, in being that she had fish-like traits. However, those traits were kept to her webbed hands, fin-like ears, feet, and gills along her neck and ribs. She more looked like a tall curvaceous woman with a flat belly, dark bronze skin, and seaweed-like green hair.
Shella wrenched the door open, and howling winds slammed into her, nearly knocking her over and tearing the door off its hinges. Shella struggled to close the door and locked it, just as a precaution. This was weird.
Shella, for the last hundred or so years of her seemingly-immortal life, had been trapped in a bizarre alternate world that didn't have many features with a real life, such as pregnancy, illness, death, or bad weather. Strictly speaking, that bad weather part wasn't true, it's just that the weather had never changed. Shella had seen places that had bad weather, but her place, the Ocean, was always in good weather.
Shella tied back her hair with a bandanna and threw on a torn shirt that, with its one remaining button, functioned more like a bra for her. Normally, she'd also tie a tattered pirate flag around her waist, but the loose cloth would be caught in this hellish wind. Shella needed to see what was going on out there.
Going back to the door, Shella firmly grasped it, opened it just enough to let her squeeze past, and closed it before the wind decided to mount another attack on the door. The fierce wind bit into her skin, and the raindrops slammed against her. Shella looked up to see dark, angry clouds swirl with the wrath of gods. "What tha hell is goin' on?" she said to herself. The words were stolen on the wind.
Thunder cracked, and lightning flashed. In the brief light, Shella could see massive rocky trees of spikes rammed into one side of the ship. She peered upward, hands shielding her eyes. Shella couldn't see much, but she was pretty sure the sails were torn apart.
Shella pushed against the wind, trying to make her way to the spikes and assess the damage, when the wind snapped and twisted around. Shella was flung like a ragdoll across the deck and over the railing, splashing down into the cold water below.
It took a moment for Shella to realize what had happened. One moment, she was breathing air, the next, her gills had opened, and she was breathing water. Solid green eyes blinked as they grew accustomed to the darkness of the water around Shella. Not even a few feet from where she floated in the water, a gigantic spike of rock shot up.
Underwater was much less turbulent than above. Everything was eerily still and silent. Nothing moved under here, and that always unnerved Shella. There was a dark shape above her, touching a set of spikes. Shella's feet kicked off, sending her towards the shape like a rocket.
It was the Sea Lilith, Shella's ship, more affectionately known as Lily, and she was not looking good. Somehow, the storm had blown Lily onto the stone spikes, and now a few of them had ripped holes in the hull. The cavernous wounds made by the spikes were blacker than midnight. Shella wasn't sure if they had hit something vital.
Shella swam up the the surface and poked her head above the water. There was another crack of lightning, and Shella swore she saw something flying amongst the clouds. Something hit the water close to Shella. It was a rope ladder back up the ship. Shella could see a dark figure on the deck.
She clambered back up, and saw Lily hunched against the storm, a hand covering her stomach. Lily was the personification of the Sea Lilith, and she looked, for the most part, like a drowned young woman, with purple-tinted white skin, pale hair, and wooden ribs embedded in her skin beneath her breasts. She was wearing a torn dress that either clung to her or fluttered more than the sails of the ship and a set of knee-high boots. "You okay?" Shella yelled over the storm.
Lily weakly removed the hand covering her stomach. Even in the dark, Shella could see that a chunk was missing from her belly. "Come on, let's get back inside," Shella said.
They leaned on each other for support, Lily because of her wound, Shella to grab on to something more attuned to the deck than she was. The doors to Shella's cabin almost burst open, and after they had entered, Shella struggled to close them.
Lily was sitting on the edge of Shella's bed, holding her wound and grimacing. "Hey," Shella called out, "It'll be all right. The storm'll die down, and we can patch you up."
Lily tapped her ear with her free hand and then pointed to her lips as she mouthed something. "Huh?" Shella had no clue what Lily was motioning about. Shella had never heard Lily talk, ever. Best guess was that she was mute.
Lily repeated the same motion, but at the end, she pointed outside. Ear, mouth, storm... Well, ear probably meant hearing, Shella thought, and the mouth probably meant voice. "Did you hear someone speaking out in the storm?" Shella asked.
Lily tilted her head up, placed her hand to her throat, and repeated the mouthing motions. It was more like a choir singing action, Shella decided. "Singing, then. Well, I didn't hear anything," Shella said.
"C'mon, let's see the wound," Shella said, kneeling down next to Lily. Lily flinched, but lifted her hand off her stomach. There was a huge gash on the side of Lily's stomach, like the one on the ship proper. The wound's surface was a splintery mess of greyed wood, as if a hunk had been torn out. On a human, or any living being, the wound would be certainly fatal. Shella grimaced at the wound. There wasn't anything she could do for it; she just didn't know how.
"If there's someone behind this, I'll drag them aboard. Will you be all right?" Shella asked. Lily nodded.
"Is anything vital damaged?" Shella asked. Lily shook her head. That was good. There was a room filled with pearls, and that must not be touched. Shella didn't care who it was, but if someone else other than her or Lily was in it without her knowledge, there'd be hell to pay.
It was hours before the storm died down. Shrieking wind rattled the panes, sometimes for up to an hour. It was driving Shella mad. With Lily pinned and outside too chaotic to do anything about it, she and Lily were trapped.
When the storm finally did die down, it almost stopped abruptly. The entire sequence from storm clouds to a clear sky took under a minute. It was early morning, and the sun was just beginning to rise into the sky.
Shella creeped out, cautiously, and looked around. The grey, worn deck of Lily was absolutely soaked, but it didn't seem damaged. Shella looked up and cursed. The masts were a mess. If she or Lily knew there was going to be a storm, she'd have the sails furled. As it was now, the masts were twisted, one was snapped, and the sails were in great long shredded strips, tangled up in ropes that had snapped and flung themselves around.
