Jaehwan dreamt of fire and fear, the world spinning around him as he was cast into water, drowning, pulled under by a force he wasn't strong enough to fight. It didn't stop him from trying, though, struggling against the current of his dreams and the hell that he fell into each time he slept. And yet this time, the thump of footsteps intruded, the sound shaking the image of water and the feeling of drowning away. 

Jaehwan groggily blinked his eyes open to find a sailor leaning down over him. "Hell o' a catch we got," he grumbled, poking into Jaehwan's side with his bare toes and making the other curl away from the touch. Not that he could go far, with his wrists chained to the thick post that stood in the middle of the hold.

The sailor's ugly face, with a nose broken far too many times and a large scar across his forehead, twisted as he grimaced at Jaehwan. He spat at the prisoner in disgust and moved away, muttering about worthless scrawny prisoners, and went back up the stairs. His departure left Jaehwan once again alone in the dank and dark room, with the stench of mildew filling his nostrils.

It was a ship that he was confined to, a ship that swayed constantly with the waves. At first Jaehwan had worried that the barrels and crates stacked against the sides of the room he was chained in would come crashing down on him due to the sea's swells. It wasn't until after the first storm that he realized that they were tied to the walls of the ship, secured so as not to spill their precious cargo, and he had been able to breathe a sigh of relief. At the very least, his fate wasn't to be squashed in the middle of a cargo hold on a slaver's ship.

Now if only that sailor had brought him something to drink. Just as that thought crossed his mind, his stomach grumbled pitifully, a small reminder that he had not eaten in several days. His captors had tried to feed him in the first few days after his capture, but his stomach - unused to the roiling sea - had been unable to keep it down. The constant scent of filth and rotting fish rising from below the floor that he sat on did nothing to help settle his stomach. The raiders had finally stopped trying to feed him solid food after the third time he heaved it up, and now only brought him either water or a bland broth. And never enough of either one.

Oh how he missed his home. Just the thought of the small village that he had grown up in was enough to bring tears of despair to his eyes. No, he would not shed them, he wouldn't give his captors the satisfaction, but the knowledge that he would never see his family again was heavy in his heart. He didn't even know if they had survived the raid in which he had been captured! All he knew was that something had happened to cause the sailors to be angry, and he was, oddly enough, the only captive they had taken. Their small village had suffered raids in the past, though the last one had been over a decade prior, but usually at least four villagers were hustled off to be sold as slaves in some other country.

And now Jaehwan was the only one.

He was actually happy that no one else would share this dreadful fate, but at the same time he almost wished that he had someone to talk to. Someone to confide in, to try and understand and cope with this new life he had been handed. He was a simple butcher's boy, the third child out of four, with a loving father and the promise of a business inheritance. They weren't big dreams, but they were dreams nonetheless, and they were ones that he had held onto firmly.

Yet now he would be sold, at some market in one of the far away lands that still accepted slaves. He didn't know a lot about the world, but he had learned to read at his mother's knee and he had studied what he could from the few books the mayor owned... and would let a precocious, often too-loud boy of ten borrow. He had learned that the country in which his little village lay was called Arisan, and that it was ruled by a King - which when he began working for his father's shop he learned all about taxes and calculations, even though the King's money was never gathered. And he knew from the books that Arisan did not allow slavery, but some country - whose name he could not remember - to the west not only allowed but encouraged it. So he was likely headed west, across the Teren Sea toward a life worse than death.

A glance down at his chest showed that his necklace was still there, though the simple design carved on a fish bone was surely not worth anything to anyone except him. He could be glad for that; besides his plain leather boots, once white shirt, and sturdy brown pants, the necklace was all he had left of his family. His younger brother Jaebum had carved it for him, an artist's talent in the young boy that he had been. He was now already into his second decade... if he was still alive, anyway. Jaehwan was only a year older but he had always been taller and thinner than either of his two brothers, and he towered over his sister and her husband. He towered over most of the villagers, actually, earning the jokes of many of his fellow villagers for his height.

"Please be okay," he murmured. His hope was meant for all of his family, not only his little brother, as well as the rest of the villagers he had grown up alongside. Folding himself forward, he caught the necklace in his hands, bound as they were, just so that he could have something of home to ground him. His wrists were rubbed raw from the manacles there, the chain attached to them heavy and wrapped several times about the post so that he could only barely bring his hands together. For comforts sake he had positioned himself facing the post, straddling it with his long legs and letting his hands rest on his thighs, but now he simply bent with his head pressed against the sturdy wood and his hands in front of him. 

Steps on the stairs along the side of the room brought his head up, and he shoved his necklace back through the laces of his filthy shirt before letting his hands fall to his legs once again. He didn't want them to know