The silence was just as deep and black as the sea that stretched for miles around the lonely crew of five. The water was still, and so they were too, all asleep but for one. If Vin strained his ears, he could make out their steady breathing, but that was it. And all he could see were the stars. 

Apart from their familial glow, the darkness could have swallowed Vin whole. They were nearly out of lantern oil after that spill during the storm, so they had been diligent and followed the sun to bed, and Vin had specific orders not to strike any matches during his watch tonight. The sea was calm enough, nothing to worry about anyway. He busied himself with finding constellations in the sky, and felt almost pulled aloft, floating above the tiny vessel, boots not planted on the wooden deck but tiptoeing around the little dipper. 

Then, all at once, his boots were stumbling, and he plummeted back to reality to regain his balance. A wave. That’s what lost him his footing, but that made no sense… they were surrounded on all sides by placid, windless ocean. He slowly stepped in a circle, scanning the horizon, and—there. 

He almost didn’t see it in the dark. But about half a league away, right against the line where the stars would have melted into their soft liquid reflection, was a deeper, more solid darkness instead. A silhouette! Of what, Vin certainly didn’t know, so he dutifully kept it in his sight. He blinked once, twice. It got bigger.

Vin shook the captain awake. The old man let out a muffled groan as he rose, began to curse, and then fell very quiet when he followed Vin’s pointing hand. The formless inkblot against the sky slipped closer, and did not alter its course.

The captain roused the others. Was it a ship? Their youngest wondered. No, Vin knew a ship couldn’t move like that with no wind. The shape glided soundlessly towards them, the edges of its hulking mass calmly snuffing out star after star. It was, Vin realized with a dread that had begun as a trickle down his throat and now poured ice cold into his lungs, far larger than a ship.

Panic set in. Can’t I use the oil now? Vin asked the captain. No use, it’s still too far away for a lantern, you’ll waste it. Then what do we do? Get the oars. As the men shuffled, the night sky got harder and harder to find their way by. The blackness loomed. The north star winked and dipped out of view.

At last, the paddles hit water. Then they sank lower, and hit something else. Vin’s entire body clenched, then a shudder rolled through him from his hands where they gripped his oar. It felt like… skin?

Oh, fuck this, Vin thought. He let the oar splash overboard, lunged for his pack, groped through it for the matches. The men began to shout, but their words were drowned out by a deep, primordial rumble. It vibrated through Vin’s chest, sounding like it came from the bottom of the sea, and from before there were fish. With slippery fingers, he struck a match, lit the wick.

The lantern flames illuminated the teeth first. Hundreds of them in a circle, rows upon rows, each larger than the boat the men stood alone and trembling upon, some of the barbs yellowed and cracked and split by new growths of glinting, hook-sharp bone. Then the gums, bruise-black, sticky, masts and bowsprits mere splinters lodged in the flesh, wet white sailcloth caught up between them like strings of mucus. Then the cavernous throat, a dripping, undulating tunnel to the core of the Earth. Then the body that held open that gaping maw, barnacled and ancient, extending below the water’s firelit surface down, down, down.

Slick tentacles suckered their way aboard. Vin shut his eyes before his lantern flickered out. Behind his eyelids, he saw stars.