The tattoo shop was a fisherman's shack reeking of opium and brine. A single beam of sunlight struck the place in half, slithering in through a little window in the back and reflecting on a collection of apothecary bottles, leaving one half of the shack in semi-darkness and the other in a murky, flickering glow that reminded Skylipso of the water that danced between the tree roots of a mangrove.

In the darkness, an old woman with a glass eye was grinding herbs in a mortar. "You want to get yer fortunes told?"

"We're here to see Ravi," Marjorie, Skylipso's bo'sun, said.

The woman stomped down the pestle with more force, her jaw twitching alarmingly. "Ravi? Always Ravi."

Sensing a bout of bitterness there, Skylipso said, "We could get our fortunes afterwards?"

The woman's posture relaxed only an inkling. "Ravi! Customers!" she shouted and then pointed her pestle at Skylipso. "I'll gift you with a free sampling of my talents in advance. He's going to make you girls cry. Mark my words." The pestle came down again, accompanied by a cackle that made Skylipso want to march out of the shack and never look back.

"Are you sure about this place?" She hissed in Marjorie's ear, in truth not all that eager to get a tattoo and cursing the night she made her crew that promise. Under the influence of too much ouzo and by Poseidon, didn't they know it. But a promise was a promise, so ...

Marjorie rolled up her sleeve to uncover the intricate painting of sea monster Scylla on the top half of her arm. "That's Ravi's work. Yeah, I'm sure."

Ravi entered shirtless, a floppy belly hanging over dirty breeches and a bottle of wine to his mouth. That was reassuring.

"Let's go!" Skylipso pushed her bo'sun towards the door, but she pushed right back.

"You promised. Give him your drawing!"

The drawing was by Pippa's hand. Only thirteen and the youngest member of Skylipso's crew, cook's daughter was gifted with a pencil, and for this occasion she had drawn a simple, yet beautiful impression of "The Ocean Breeze", the brigantine they all called home.

Skylipso fought the nausea that always came with every minute she was forced to spend on land while Ravi tattoo'ed the drawing on her left shoulder. "This better not take too long," she huffed.

Ladies and gentlemen, it took almost an entire day.

By the time Skylipso pulled her shirt back on, the sun outside of the shack had set and she had vomited her guts out twice but she hadn't cried. Not. A. Single. Tear. Not even a sniff, and so she rushed to the old woman's counter to flaunt her very dry eyes.

The woman's mouth twitched with suppressed amusement. She opened and lifted the palms of her hands to Skylipso like a cup. "What do you see?"

Skylipso leaned closer.

"There's nothing there," Marjorie said, "come on, let's go home!"

But that was not what Skylipso saw. In the palms of the woman's hands the drawing of her ship came alive, together with miniature versions of her and her crew. Phaedra, Pippa, Marjorie ... climbing the rigs, singing shanties, brazing storms together. Skylipso's heart swelled, touched by the beauty of their life together.

Mesmerised, she kept staring as lifetimes of adventures fast forwarded in front of her eyes, each crew member becoming older. Phaedra was the first to turn into a lifeless, rattling skeleton, then Marigold, Marjorie ... one by one they aged and died. All of them, even Pippa, but Skylipso remained a thirty-something, vital pirate ... always.

By the end, she was all alone, sailing an empty ship in the palm of the old woman's hands and tears rolled over her cheeks. This was her fortune, her future, and she knew it to be true, the sadness of it settling deep within her bones.

"Told you so." The woman closed her hands and walked away.