Migrant's journey to Singapore (Nanyang)

It had been countless hazy hours, maybe even days, or months. The dark, dingy ship rocked in turbulence, the rushing storm and waves drowning out the groans from the ship's cramped interior, of those slumped on the floor and all over each other. They were feeble and limp, chests rising shallowly in the attempt to breathe in air that was warm, musty, turned damp from the humidity. The only, scarce light came from the stormy sky outside the ship, seeping through the slits between the wooden planks of the low walls in single rays, and providing fleeting moments of illumination as the lightning sharpened the shadows all around, overwhelming colours in blinding white and dyeing shadows yet darker. The darkness further narrowed the area of the limited space they all shared, smelling of sweat, mould and the piercing, vile stench of what little food the unsteady waves had forced out of many of them. A young maiden with clear, delicate features and eyes hollow as bruises was slumped back, ill-fitting long tunic and trousers hanging on her body, the coarse cloth pooling out onto the floorboards. The wooden plank wall behind her creaked as she did so, but not to her knowledge. A draught of freezing wind steadily crept in through the gaps between the wooden boards. Even in his sleep, a young man of no more than seventeen years was curled into a ball across from the young lass, clothes too loose for his thinning stature. The dim light of the ship's interior threw blurred shadows across his face, casting his tanned skin into near-darkness. Despite the cold wind, beads of sweat rolled across his forehead and down his tense brow, and entire body stiff as a board, he murmured a name. "Mèimèi," he whispered between pale, dry lips, emaciated body shrinking back tighter in all subconsciousness, "Ah Min, don't leave me... don't go..." She could hear it clearly, with all its hush and lowness, even through the deafening torrent outside, even from across the sea of people in between them. It crept into her ears, amidst the chilly wind that enveloped her in its course. He said the name with so much tenderness, so much sorrow, it latched onto the heart of the young lass and didn't loosen its grip, giving rise to a dull ache deep within her chest. Tendrils of shadow spiralled across her face to the arrhythmic lurching of the ship. Her gaze lowered to the damp wooden boards, just so she would not have to look at his moment of vulnerability, to give him the privacy he deserved; knees hugged tight to her chest as she swayed along to the rhythm of the torrent that swelled and declined as if it couldn't make up its mind. There was a scarcely perceptible tug on her sleeve from behind her. "Ma," she immediately turned round to attend to her mother. The deep-set scars of creases on her mother's forehead deepened as she was rocked to consciousness. Bit by bit, the frail old woman opened her eyes, carved crow's feet blooming from the corners of her natural squint. She slowly parted her lips. "Siew-ah," she whispered hoarsely. "Yes, Ma?" She pushed all thoughts of the young man and his sister out her mind and bent forward to seek her mother's gaze, long braids falling over both shoulders. Her mother looked for a long time into her eyes, and finally whispered, "Don't be sad any more." Her mother's voice was soft yet firm, gentle yet unyielding, but even so, hesitant. The lass almost swallowed. "Don't be sad any more," her mother said again, voice thin and tired eyes distant. "Nanyang will have many more challenges for you to face. Do what you think will make you stronger." "But Ma," the lass whispered forlornly, voice thick and shaky; straining to hold back. Yet somehow everything she held back, told her mother everything she didn't know how to say. "Be strong," her mother whispered. "He will be strong too." • • •
Not long after boarding the ship, the young lass remembered that across from her mother and her had been a young man of similar age, about seventeen, and a younger girl, pale and pinched albeit lovely. The lass would often watch them from across. The lad was of similar age to her. He looked vaguely familiar, a face that reminded her of home, but perhaps it just been her own longing for her hometown. On this ship, their only means of survival, she would not believe there was another who did not miss their hometown, and so she buried this feeling of deja vu deep into her stomach. Still, she was disinclined to ask him for his hometown for his gaze, gentle but cold like flakes of ice. Although as an unusually tall lass she was nearly his height, he carried himself with such a posture that even with short hair and a mellow face, it intimidated far more than had he put on a scowl and stomp. So she merely watched. And for days, weeks, who knows how long, she could only watch. The younger girl, who had a light tread and a graceful smile, had looked up to him very visibly. She had an intelligent glint in her eye that expertly disappeared whenever she amused her brother or had heart-to-heart talks with him, gently drawing out his feelings from him; that reappeared whenever the hint of a smile finally broke through his composed, reserved demeanour. From their conversations of few words but overflowing meaning, the girl had proven bright and clever beyond her thirteen years, but especially cared for him, amusing him with all sorts of witty antics that sometimes, just sometimes, brought a smile to her own face as she watched from the shadows. It warmed her heart. Much more than it should have to see his gaze toward the girl with all coldness melted away; instead his eyes shone with affection; like she was the light of his life, from his eyes shone a brilliant, beautiful warmth, as solitary but heartwarming as a flame. But then the light had flickered, and gone out, and she could still remember the young girl's coughing and vomiting that for days had gone on, and the raw desperation and helplessness in his brow as he listlessly patted her in her seemingly endless sleep; the sheen of sweat on her pale forehead, and his shouting, his blind struggling as they had dragged her overboard and the flame had extinguished forever. All that was left was the intoxicating smoke of the smothered flame, and cold, and darkness. • • •