juno palmer /4

She'd been born on a galleon, a family heirloom that stayed docked, its days of travel long over. The ship had stayed still for so long that it had begun to grow roots made of seaweed along its anchor. The wooden plank that connected it to Four's docks had been nailed down, a quiet ball and chain to the land.

Juno slept below deck, her room quite small with a single porthole to the outside world. It was still better than sharing the main room with her brothers.

Her mornings were spent at the training centre, her afternoons in the warehouse beside their home. Her father needed their help to build Four's ships, to patch them and fix them when needed. Juno started carving stories into the masts when she was ten, the fishermen joked, called it their good luck charms to get back home.

She always knew she was going to take over her father's business just as he had taken it from her grandmother before her, she just didn't know when.

Juno built her first sailboat four months ago, a little thing just a bit larger than a dinghy to give her room to lay down below. The storm on her first venture out came out of nowhere, the waves taller than they'd been all year.

Her brothers sail out daily for a sign of their missing sister, the lack of wreckage and her skill on the water giving them hope.

They keep a lantern lit on the deck of the Palmer Galleon to guide her home at night.