Sea wind through the marsh reeds as thick as Effee Fur makes a whistling noise from the top of broken reeds. It's been used in local metaphor that even broken lives can make music. It's also the reason Amythra picked this pier, overgrown and surrounded by reeds, to sit and draw. She could not hear the rustling of lives at the near by docks and no one could here her talk to herself. Which means her brother, Marvate, was being exceptionally loud over the music of the marsh.
"AMY!" pronounced Am-Ee. Amythra rolled her eyes and jumped into the water below to hide beneath the dock. She didn't mind the hip high water. "AMY! FATHER WANTS YOU!"
"LET HIM WANT!" she answered, holding the papyrus she'd been drawing on above her and, more importantly, the water. Soon enough, the winded brother's foot-steps clomped on the wood above her.
"AMY!" He yelled. She could seen him searching left and right and back into the reeds. A soft sigh of relief. He hadn't thought to look under- "There you are." Marvate had sharp gray eyes, feeling more piercing because of his bronze skin. His teeth were crooked, but white "for the ladies" as he put it. She hated that smile, but later would come to miss it. "Father has a job for you."
"I already have a job." Amythra tried to kill her brother with her expressions, a practice that never worked. "I'm doing..." she glanced up at her drawing, "research."
"No one pays you. That's not work."
"Is too. Call it investment. Perhaps someone will want a catalog of ships."
Marvate took his turn rolling his eyes. "Come on, then." He held a hand out and pulled her out of the muck. "I bet that drawing I can beat you home."
"What do I get?"
"One of my dagger handles."
She sighed and shook her head. "You're on, then."
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