Consolable

She walked into the middle of the crowd that consisted of her own people, but she found no comfort in the familiar faces around her.

She looked at Spade, and he looked back at her, and for a moment she could feel appreciated. His sympathy for her was so apparent and so inevitable that a small part of the painful lump inside her separated itself and disappeared.

Another piece was chopped off as the first mate touched her shoulder gently, and finally Myorka came to her, as nurturing and soft as always, and she could just drown herself into that motherly love.

To the pirates she would always be number one.

Hialda had also arrived, looking at her with her dark brown eyes, so pretty that Serenica wanted to cry.

"It's all right if you can't be a doc," Hialda said. "At least you're an amazing healer."