(All is a procession;
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

There are few things wilder than the sea. People consider fire its rival, an element equal in power, forces that will forever battle but never dominate each other. In truth, water can easily overpower fire, in its simplest or most complex forms. You can fight fire with water, but never the other way. Throw water to the fire and it's gone. Add fire to water and it evaporates only to come back, heavy cloud hanging lazily above your head, blocking your view of the light until it bursts and there's water everywhere again, and so the circle continues.

Captain Oh thinks he's biased towards water. The sea is all he's ever known in his short life. He doesn't like to remember about growing up. There's not much to remember anyway. Under cruel circumstances, he found himself at sea way earlier than anyone should. Now all that occupies his mind is endless expanses of blue, sometimes vibrant, sometimes dark. An untameable element in its rawest form, whose depths he'll never really know.

But he really wants to know. He wants to know what hides in the deepest point of the widest ocean. Craves to touch the seabed, document its life, be it plants or otherwise. Does it hide fish? Mermaids? Monsters? Captain Oh wants to know it all. He's spent half his life on a boat, fifteen years stretching like the horizon in front of him, the unreachable line his small fingers tried to capture when he was only ten.

There's a bitter undertone in all his memories of home. Jagged puzzle pieces that barely make one whole picture. A comfortable bed, bare walls, the splitting sound of broken wood as his room's door is kicked apart and the rough scrape of worn fabric against his baby soft skin as he's blindfolded and thrown into the bilge of a ship.

His first encounter with the sea is not the most pleasant one. He finds himself struggling to reach the small, filthy windows of the boat, propped up on what he hopes is a decorative-only canon, trying to catch a glimpse of the outside world. Sehun can't tell the sea and sky apart, just a massive expanse of midnight blue. The night is clear though, there are no stars but he can't see the moon either, despite his efforts to locate his only source of light.

In time, this twisted dream becomes reality, which in turn becomes routine. His comfortable bed becomes salt-rotten wooden planks. Warm meals of fresh meat and vegetables become endless pieces of undercooked, salt-packed fish. Smooth, rosy skin and baby fat cheeks become cracked knuckles and fingers riddled with calluses. There's so much salt, where he breathes, where he steps, he thinks his still developing lungs are going to give up and collapse. But he endures, survives, evolves. Sehun's physical innocence goes with the wind, with the sea, with the sun and endless salt that won't stop lightening his hair, with the innocence of another crew member, a few years older, who's stupid enough to vocally admit Sehun is the love of his life. Sehun watches him walk the plank with forced coldness as he claims, again and again, that he was the victim of the older's advances. The boy meets the sea, Sehun's lies are rewarded with a feast and a flea-infested mattress. And life goes on.

An abrupt jerk of his head brings him back to the present. It's not a common occurrence to dwell on the past, but when it happens, Sehun goes down memory lane heavy, like an anchor slicing the waters as it hits the ground. He's lounging on the ship's deck as the calm waters gently lull his crew to sleep. Oh who am I kidding?, he thinks. These scumbags are so belly-full of rum you could make them walk the plank and they'd bounce right back up.

He chuckles at the idea, eyes briefly crinkling at the corners as they follow the full moon's light. Sehun has always found his peace when the skies are crystal clear, when he can almost feel the sun or moon beams burn through his skin. It's always more stressful for him when gloomy clouds obscure his view of light sources. He thinks he'd die without light.

Despite his love for water, Sehun knows his true element is wind. He has a special bond with it, treats it as a live being. And to his surprise, as soon as he's ripped away from home, thrown into a battle of life and death, manipulates it. He won't forget the first time the ship had been stuck in the same expanse of ocean for three days due to the lack of wind. Sehun sat at the furthest part of the forecastle deck, long legs swinging tiredly over the water, when he noticed the ripples forming below his feet. Dismissing it for playful fish, he frowned petulantly when he got a handful of sea water smacking him in the face. Sehun was left to wonder how in the Seven Seas he'd managed to create waterspouts just by swinging his feet several meters above the sea.

To this day, he's come to the closest level of mastering the art of manipulating a natural element, where an elegant wave of his wrist can send full blown tornadoes against each possible enemy. Still, Sehun mainly enhances breezes to slide his ship faster against the water's surface, sometimes to scare his crew into submission, or assert dominance over new members and old rebels. But most of all, he uses his supernatural power to rid the sky of clouds, so that his precious light is always by his side.

The water agrees with him too. There's a strange connection between the way it moves and the amount of light it gets to reflect. After all, he thinks, light is what gives water its beauty, otherwise it's only translucent, bland, colourless. It's not a coincidence that fish always come out to play when the moon is at its peak, either.

Nature craves light, is what he tells himself as he lazily steers the ship, his precious Black Pearl, towards a patch of rocks that seem to emit a light of their own. He's careful in his movements, sharp in his orders for a half-drunk crew to lower the anchors and set up the planks. Tonight, Sehun thinks, on his 25th birthday, he's exploring this rocky expanse of land with the lonely cave at the edge, because he craved its light more than all the gold and silver he's collected in his travels. More than he craves the fresh sea breeze that gently puts him to sleep every night on the deck. He craves this light more than life itself.

The expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists.

(...)You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

There's tension in the air as Sehun breaks into a fight with his crew, that stumbles on the deck, like a mass of teenagers after their first bottle of rum, as they realise the ship is moving. Their Captain is all but barking orders, pointing at the rocky patch of land in the middle of nowhere. They're doing everything they can to stop him, pulling on the sails to close them as they feel the night breeze around them gradually intensifying. None of them wish to face their Captain's wrath who, despite his lanky appearance and young age, possessed a power beyond human abilities. Captain Oh's friendly demeanor and rare smiles work well to make his crew forget about the fact that he can rip out whole forests with just a of his head, so he often makes a show of it, just to reset the boundaries.

But even the strongest winds can't save Captain Oh if he crashes their ship against protruding rocks, so in the end his crew betrays him as they close all sails and drop even emergency anchors, immediately bringing the sizeable ship to a halt.

"Ya'll haf'ta swim for it Cap'n, we don't fancy no sleepin' with the fishes t'nite~". Sehun turns his head at the Navigator's words, piercing him with a stony look as he walks hurriedly towards him, broad shoulders tensing as they do when he's preparing for a fight. He barely registers the rest of the crew parting in the middle, blending themselves with the background as they watch with a mixture of awe and fear at Captain Oh's impending show of dominance.

The Navigator, a short man that looked permanently greasy, with maybe three hairs on each side of his head that somehow managed to reach his shoulders, takes off his worn hat as he wipes a palm over his sweaty forehead. Sehun stops just steps away from him, his elegant form casting a towering shadow over this petty excuse of a man, cowering in fear in front of his Captain's figure. The younger man smiles, a small tug at the corner of his lips that everyone always told him were a little crooked to begin with, as he stares down at the Navigator.

"And why is it that you can't follow your Captain's orders, you scallywag?" he says, voice dipped in honey and poison. Although familiar with pirate lingo, Sehun has always preferred the company of books whenever circumstances allowed it as he grew up. Something about speaking like landlubbers made him believe he could hold on to the last bit of the past he carried with him.

"T-too many r-rocks Cap'n, who knows how m-many ov'em under th'waters! D-dangerous!" the Navigator retorts, visibly shaking, teeth chattering as he tries to maintain eye contact with Sehun without enraging him further. The Captain laughs then, a short, loud chuckle that has his pale face thrown back, dark brown hair ruffled from the wind that somehow seems to be coming directly from his lean body. He grabs the short man's hat then, snatches if right out of his hands and turns around, starting to take a few steps. There's a soft exhale of a breath held in too long somewhere behind him, and it has Sehun whipping around at neck breaking speed, hat flying out of his hand and straight towards the Navigator's face with unnatural force.

There's a loud crash as the mouse-like man collides with the main mast, pieces and splinters of wood scattering everywhere. Sehun doesn't even spare him a glance, only walks towards the forecastle, securing his ever-present gun on his hip and checking if his compass is still hanging from a thin piece of leather on his neck. He quickly gets rid of any unnecessary articles of clothing, leaving himself in a thin cotton shirt, standard worn pants and heavy leather boots. Standing on the banister, he turns to look at his crew, familiar faces staring up at him in wonder, and he clears his throat pointedly.

"COWARDS, THE LOAD OF YOU!" Sehun shouts over the suddenly roaring wind. There's water splashing everywhere, hats flying off into the distance and oil-heavy hair of various men onboard moving in all directions. Small cracking sounds can barely be heard the wind's thundering and a few heads eye the tall masts warily, calculating the time needed for them to escape, should their Captain tear their ship apart in a fit of rage. Heavy currents rock the halted ship, whipping it from the sides as the young man bends his favourite element to his will. "IF IT WEREN'T FOR ME YOU WOULD ALL BE DEAD SINCE I WAS ONLY A CHILD!" One particularly strong wave tips the ship's balance and several members of the crew fall in an undignified heap of limbs. Sehun only holds onto the main mast tighter, suddenly aware of the damage his petulant, childish tantrum is causing.

"LOWER THE PILOT LADDER AND BE ON GUARD! YOUR CAPTAIN WILL BE BACK BY DAWN!" With one last shouted order, the raging winds seize, and Sehun looks out to the sea, but his gaze only lingers on the small island ahead of him. He's sure his eye caught the soft glow emitted from the caves grow brighter for a second, but it could just be a play of his eyes. One calculated jump later, Captain Oh Sehun is in the water, hurriedly slashing through its surface, eyes wide open and senses alert to avoid underwater rocks or cleverly concealed sea creatures.

Stepping on land has Sehun feeling oddly like a fish out of water. He thinks of the parallels, of the years spent at sea, of a diet that consists mainly of seafood, and shakes his arms distractedly, vaguely imagining gills weighing down his skin. He walks carefully around the shore, wet sand crunching under his heavy boots, wet clothes clinging in a familiar manner to his tense body. Sehun's senses are in overdrive as he walks towards the cave on the other side of the shore, eyes fixed on the subtle light that only intensifies as he grows closer to the source.

He reaches the cave in several long strides, fingers slowly wrapping around one of its walls as he glances inside carefully. There's a shadow dancing on the opposite wall of the cave, soft, feminine curves mixed with sharp, masculine angles that have Sehun wondering just what in Poseidon's name is he witnessing. A breathless chuckle has him pulling his head back, body sticking to the cave wall and one hand creeping towards his gun.

Before he even has time to pull it out of i