Author's Note:

These stories are bound around Maori Hawke, female mage extraordinaire and star-crossed lover of Isabela- although the pirate queen fights the label profusely, albeit a little too profusely if you ask some.

While growing up, Maori's father, Malcolm, instructed the apostate in the ways of magic, but also attempted to bestow upon her the wisdom of his years and experience. Each chapter- with the exclusion of this prologue- begins with a conversation between father and daughter which has some reflection on the story about to be told.

Just to make things crystal clear, whether you leave a Review, FAV, Alert or Lurk, I am extraordinarily grateful for your interest. Time is valuable, so the amount you spend reading [and hopefully enjoying] the fic is very much appreciated.

Feedback is a wonderful thing! Motivating, charming, provoking, challenging, fascinating, inspiring… and a whole heck-of-a-lot of other "-ing" type words! Thank you!

Another note: The following stories are a collection of one-shot "sketches" and will not always be in chronological order. Originally, this fic started with story told in chapter 3, but once I had a clear head on how I wanted to proceed, I edited it and rearranged the order. If you have previously read that story, then I encourage you to read it again to see how it is folded back into this collection.

Prologue

I will weep no more for the lost- disquiet in their restless sleep. I have no more tears to shed for my youth- wrested as it was from place to place with a constant eye gazing upon the path behind. Life in me is still strong and I will not grieve for what was or for what might have been. Mine is a different path and I must follow where it leads.

I look out from my high perch onto the rolling waves of the blue sea and I hear the voices of my family calling to me across the years. I close my eyes and see them now as they were in my earliest memories. They stand before me and I enter once more into that glad time when we were young and the Blight had not yet come – before the fleeing and the ugliness that followed.

I have decided to take quill to parchment and write. Perhaps writing will ease the long months of my confinement. Perhaps my words will hear a measure of the peace that has been denied throughout my life.

In any case, I have little else to do; I am a captive – made a willing prisoner in this place upon the water. So I will write: for myself, for those who come after and for the voices that cry out not to be forgotten.