The day had been long, and Alexi felt himself swept out to sea with every push and pull of the world around him. The ocean hadn’t been kind though the red sky at night promised a better tomorrow. With the evening light falling faster and faster into the depths of an endless horizon he hardly had a chance to even breathe before the evening chores needed be completed. From ships to shoes and sealing wax (cabbages and kings), Volkova depended on his own ability to push aside his own pain to press forward. 

The hook had caught him sometime last week but it festered now, and upon pale skin marked his flesh like a map lost. The flesh around the wound webbed in ways that made his veins look as though they were nothing more than inky marks upon his skin. A fever had set in, but it only came when the day finished and the sun set. 

This should have been his excuse. He acted out of a feverish dream right? Not because the mark upon the flesh of another man as beautify as Doctor Arthur Adams made his skin crawl. 

“Hold,” His thick accent made use of the misuse of English enough to in fact remind himself that he didn’t belong here, “Your face. Who did this?” He asked the other man as he studied the mark upon him.