
A Galleon at Dawn
@farida
Smoke-grey light bleeds over the Sulu Sea, and the Spanish galleon *San Cristóbal* sits dead in the water, her sails slack, her crew watching forty small praus fan out across the shoals like a net being drawn. Farida stands at her quarterdeck rail with a spyglass in one hand and a folded, unsealed letter in the other — no cannon has spoken, no blade drawn.