Do you ever stop and look in the mirror and wonder how things shaped up this way?

You're not sure even your mother would love your face... given it belongs to a species she's never heard of and all that. She used to warn you not to run around with scissors because "you'll put an eye out." Well, you got a replacement for it at least. It's sitting in a drawer but you've got one, so there.

You can't begin to guess how you'd explain to your parents what you do for a living. Currently you're sailing around on the ocean (a blue ocean—something else they're unfamiliar with) boarding ships and going stabby-stabby to gain the trust of a feline with a quantum immortality curse. But all the details about it are classified so, you know, you can't exactly write home about it.

Your mission coordinator can see everything you do through a gem you wear on your neck. Well, most things you do. The things you get up to when you take it off would be even harder to explain.

They'd blame it all on your growing up in the shadow of your very talented sister. You just couldn't follow that act so you veered way off into left field. Not that you'd ever want to be like your sister. The world needs pirates sometimes. Fake ones, maybe even real ones. Imagine if everyone in the world was an "eminent scientist" like Theia.

That would kind of blow, honestly.

Artwork by Bill Beagle.