Three more days had passed.
Nothing happened. No one went missing.
There were no strange sounds in the night, nor any shouting or sudden panic spreading across the deck or among the passengers.
The ship moved steadily and predictably, and most of all, peacefully.
Everyone began to relax a little.
Though it wasn't quite the same, it was closer than ever.
The passengers' mood followed.
They came up to the deck more often again, though not as many stayed past sunset.
The curfew remained.
Sonder stayed in her place at the stern most days.
Watching, thinking, and waiting for something to happen.
She hoped nothing would, but there was a chance that something would.
More often than not, she spread her senses over the deck, just in case.
After the third day, a thought settled in her mind.
"Maybe there really was nothing," she thought.
A man disappearing. A sailor falling overboard. Another doing the same.
Unlikely.
But not entirely impossible. People made mistakes.
Maybe she had been wrong.
Her grip had been tight on the railing, and it loosened slightly as she went over the thought.
If there were no troubles, there was nothing to worry about.
Peace would return, and everything bad that had happened was nothing more than coincidences, however unfortunate.
She looked out to the dark sea, stretching endlessly. It was hard to see where the sea ended and the horizon started, and vice versa.
It was a moonless night, so there was a blanket of darkness that not even the stars could fill.
And when Sonder finally thought she could relax, something was off.
She stilled.
It wasn't a sound, not something she heard.
It wasn't something she saw either, as the sea looked the same as it always had.
The ship felt the same beneath her feet, but something was off.
Her expression changed, just a little.
She focused.
The feeling was faint, very faint.
Like something lightly brushed against the edge of her awareness.
Like it was intentionally trying to avoid her notice.
It wasn't on deck, nor was it above in the masts, sails, or sky.
After a moment, she decided that it could have only come from below the deck.
Sonder's gaze lowered slowly.
Toward the wood beneath her feet.
She didn't understand what she was feeling.
It wasn't like anything else she had felt, if she was really feeling anything at all.
No person or living creature felt like that.
It also wasn't like it was with Aest. He had no presence at all, but this had... something.
It was hard to locate, and even hard to pinpoint.
If the thing moved around, she lost it, and she did more than once.
It wasn't like a person moving. There was no steady rhythm of moving in one direction according to one's footsteps.
To her, it felt unfamiliar and indistinct. It was in one place, seemingly disappeared, and then was somewhere else, though not far from its point before.
It evaded her senses.