The Sea Made Of Cloth

(This is a small excerpt from chapter one, I think it's kinda bland and I'm missing something. So don't be shy to give feedback and what I can improve on. Thanks in advance. :) )

The boat rocks and creeks, waves crash and roll. I hold onto the side, praying and begging I don’t slip off. But Captain Specky laughs, embracing the terrible storm. “Bring it on! You old coot!” He chuckles, Specky sways and lets salt water splash him in the face, licking it like precious gold. “Sir,” I shout, “this seems awfully foolish! Let us leave at once!” My nerves could not take the sense of adventure anymore. “Oh Thomas! You need not be scared, the sea is our friend, she won’t hurt you!”

Thunder rolls in the distance, clouds grow gray quickly. Wind whips and pushes my hair covering my eyes, I could not see for a great deal of time. I lost my way of direction, and fell overboard, water gurgles in my ears as I make a great splash. I try to swim and swim, but the currents are just too strong. “Help!” I yell louder than the mountain tops, “Help me captain!” I go over and under, then over and under once more.

I close my eyes, “so… Is this what death feels like? Hectic and dangerous? What a way to go.” I hear the captain’s voice in a far away land. “It seems the sea is only my friend today! I’m coming lad!” I hear a strange and unfamiliar roar. I open my eyes to see a kraken, it’s huge. Tentacles spread everywhere, a large and deathly beak. Its yellow eyes pierce into my soul.

Now, I wasn’t sure if I were dreaming. But I swore on my right leg; it was made of yarn. And then everything goes black.

(Chapter One: Stranded)

“Lad! Lad!” Captain Specky shakes and shakes Thomas’ body. “I must begin mouth to mouth!” Captain Specky licked his salty lips, and started to lean in close. Thomas woke up in a heartbeat. “Aw! Captain Specky!” He coughed up water and vomited on his shirt. “Ha ha! The little lad is alive! Good to have you back Tommy!”

He slapped him on the back, “everything… Hurts. Did we shipwreck?”

“You could say that, I suppose. Ah! There's our little boat now!” He laughed that old stupid laugh. The tiny little row boat swept onto the shore, it wriggled and bumped, and shook and janked. Then… It fell into a million pieces.

“You have got to be kidding me! This is why I don’t do anything with you captain Specky! You always find a way to get us in trouble, I am sick of helping you run away. Or stealing money from shady men, or… or…” Thomas sighed from exhaustion. “And we are stuck on an island, with no food, or water. And all because we are looking for an imaginary sea monster-” Suddenly the boy stopped talking. Specky also stopped in his tracks, refraining from placing hot sand into his ears.

“What is it boy? I am not used to you pausing your rants aimlessly.” Thomas walked towards the shore. He looked out to the ocean, washing the vomit with water. “I saw the Kraken, I remember now. I remember its angry yellow eyes, and that sharp black beak. But something strange happened. I just don’t know what.”

“Was it perhaps made out of yarn? I suppose I forgot to spear that detail on our little excursion.”

“Spill it old man. What are we really looking for?” Captain Specky waddled over the boy nearing the shore. He grabbed his spyglass, and looked out of it. Pointing it up to the sky. “Do you see that? The island in the sky?” He handed Thomas the glass. He looked towards the left, then towards the right; absolutely nothing in the sky he saw.

“You are one crazy old coot. I’m going to lie down in a pile of sand, maybe even dig a grave. Because there is no saving us from permanent death!"

“Aw! You must believe! If there’s no believing what do ya got?” Thomas sighed and sat still in the sand. “Fine…” he said, he snatched the spyglass once more and believed with all his might.

“Believe, believe, believe…” He whispered to no one in particular. And right there, before his very eyes, appeared an island filled with tropical fruits and waterfalls, gold and jewels. Animals of every color and form. And the best part, other people!

“You weren’t kidding! How’d you see?”

“This is my home! Where I grew up. Bakunawa Retreat! Come aboard now lad, it’s time I tell you the truth.”

Captain Specky whistled a high pitch, then out of the blue a flying whale came and ducked below. It had beautiful blue skin, and a glitter pink tail. A lovely beast.

“My word captain… Such a beautiful animal indeed. A flying whale by golly!”

“Esme! My love, come to old Specky!” The whale shirked her lovely song throughout her blowhole and dived in for a hug. “Lad, meet my old companion Esme! I told you I was coming back, and you doubted me? Eh?” Specky rubbed her head as she sang her song with joy and passion as her owner came back home.

“Could you take me and my friend up to Bakunawa? I have some unfinished business to handle.” He narrowed his eyes, something told Thomas’ gut that this wasn’t going to be a very pleasant visit.

Esme’s wings, gossamer-thin and shimmering like spun sapphire, beat gently against the air, lifting the small boat they’d conjured from the remnants of their wreckage. Thomas clung to the edge, eyes darting between the floating island above and the captain, whose grin had widened into something both triumphant and secretive.

“Why did you leave here?” Thomas asked, his voice barely audible over the whale’s song—a melody that hummed in his bones like a half-remembered lullaby.

Specky’s mirth dimmed. “Old sins, lad. Old sins.” He patted Esme’s neck, and the whale tilted her head, a sound like rustling silk escaping her blowhole. “But today, we mend them.”

As they neared Bakunawa Retreat, the island materialized in layers, its trees woven from ivy and ribbon, their leaves fluttering like paper banners. Waterfalls cascaded into thin air, their streams dissolving into mist that glittered with flecks of gold. Yet beneath the beauty, Thomas noticed fraying edges—a bridge unraveling at its corners, a tower sagging as if held together by memory alone.

“Is it… falling apart?” he murmured.

“Not yet,” Specky said, but his hand trembled as he adjusted his tricorn hat.

Esme landed on a platform of cloud-stone, and the moment their feet touched ground, the air thickened with whispers. Threads of light slithered around Thomas’s ankles, tugging him forward. “Ah! Don’t let the ribbons touch you! They’ll eat ya for lunch if not careful.” Thomas stomped the tiny ribbon snakes and continued following his captain.

The pair gained stares and looks from people around them, everyone stopped what they were doing just to gawk at them. Thomas couldn’t help but feel embarrassed and somewhat ashamed.

“Where are we going? And why is everyone staring, most of them are human, like us. Right?” Specky smiled, but his fun childish demeanor was off. “Not after the things I committed, no one here sees me as one of their own.”

Speck walked carefully next to a woman and child, he drew his sword and pinned it against her neck. The woman screamed like hot lava was boiling in her bones. “Captain!? What on earth are you doing to that poor woman!”

“Shut it boy!” He snapped, the woman dropped her bags and held on tight to her son. The fear in his eyes said it all. “You are going to tell me where Lysandra, Princess of Bakunawa Retreat is, or else it’ll be your head on a stake!” Thomas could not believe what he was seeing. “You mean Queen Lysandra! She’s not here with us, no longer on the island. The council of the Loom had stolen her as soon as you stepped foot off this land years ago.”

“And what about…. What about Mildra? Where is she?” He stuttered, the woman held back tears of her own. “Let me and my boy go, or I won’t say a thing!” Thomas pleaded along.

“Let go of this poor soul and her son, what has gotten into you captain?!”

“UGH!” Specky shoved the young lady and child away. “Tell me, tell me her fate and I will leave you be forever.” Speck’s hands shook in fear, not wanting to know the answer coming out of her mouth.

The woman picked up her bags and grimaced, she looked him in the eyes. Then smiled.

“Dead I presume.”

Silence fell like a dropped anchor.

Thomas stood frozen, the wind whipping strands of hair across his face as if trying to shield him from the captain’s unraveling truth. Specky didn’t move—his sword still outstretched, arm trembling, eyes wide and unblinking. The woman and her child scrambled away, vanishing into the canopy of fluttering ribbons that draped the marketplace like gilded banners.

“Dead?” Specky whispered, the word cracking like old wood underfoot. “No… no, that can’t be true. I promised her—Mildra—I said I’d return before the last thread sang…” His voice dropped to a broken hum, almost drowned by the distant melody of Esme’s song echoing from the landing platform.

Thomas stepped forward, placing a hesitant hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Who is Mildra?” he asked gently, though dread coiled in his stomach like one of those ribbon-snakes.

“She was my wife, the only woman I should truly and only love. They took her… THEY TOOK MY LOVE!!” Specky screamed to the heavens. He got down on his knees and cried.

“Oh my. Captain… I am so sorry. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain you are in right now, but how come no mention of her on previous excursions? Why am I only finding this out.”

The captain’s shoulders shook with a grief so raw it seemed to carve the air around them. He buried his face in his hands, his voice muffled but heavy. “Because grief is a private shroud, Thomas. I wore it under my uniform, tucked away like a faded photograph. To speak of her was to invite the wound to bleed anew. Every mission, every raid, I fought not just for us or the coin, but to carve a path back to her. I thought… I believed if I gathered enough power, enough influence, I could bargain with the shadows that took her.”

Thomas knelt beside him, the coarse grit of the cobblestones pressing into his knees.

“Who took her?” Thomas asked, his voice barely rising above the wind. “Who are ‘they’?”

Specky lifted his head, his eyes red-rimmed and haunted. “The council of the Loom. The same who had taken the new-found Queen I suppose. We don’t have much time, son.”

Specky turned towards the crowd of people who watched every moment that had just unfolded before their eyes. He felt pain, shame, and anger for what his formal home had turned into.

“You can all stop starring, shows over people.” Thomas resumed apologizing and saying sorry for his captain’s reckless actions. “Oi! Tommy! Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

“What kind of work? I’m only asking because I don’t want to draw sharp swords at helpless women and their children! You are going awol!”

“Well what choice do I have?!”

“Choice?” Specky spat, rising to his feet in one jagged motion, his voice cracking like the sky before a storm. “There was a time when I had choices, lad. When I could’ve stayed—when I could’ve burned my commission, torn up the contract with the Masters of the Sea, and lived out my days in that little cottage by the Silverfen with Mildra’s laughter tangled in the ivy. But I chose this life. Chose honor. Chose duty. And they repaid me by unraveling her.”

The last words came out like ash.

(That's all I have so far, please give feedback and things I could use to improve.)