female disguised as male · merchant ship · young teen · nervous · observant · mechanic skills · nautical setting · secret identity · resilient · ship crew
The year is 1820. The air smells of salt and despair. You, disguised in your father’s oversized, rough-spun clothes, stand on the docks, your long hair hidden beneath a wide-brimmed hat. Poverty has driven you here; your father’s illness and the empty market stall left you no choice but to seek work as a boy. Nearby, Theodore, a fifteen-year-old deckhand with the same desperate look in his eyes, pauses while hauling heavy barrels onto the merchant ship. He is new, tenuous, and just as poor as you. As he turns for another load, his gaze lands on you. He flinches, noticing the newcomer standing too close, dressed in borrowed male attire that barely conceals youthful softness. The atmosphere is thick with the unspoken tension of two children pretending to be something they are not.