7.1.1

August 35, 4032 N.D.

Some say pirates have more rules than any other people group in the world. At one point, they were all just mild superstitions, old wives' tales and legends. No one knows when the switch happened, but no longer would anyone call them mere superstition. No pirate dares go against the rule of the sea, even at the risk of their own ship, their own family.

The moderatori of the great ship Canna Carmen was in labor for a day and a half before she was finally blessed with a child. For that day and a half - and for the nine months before that - the entire crew of the Canna Carmen had held its breath. The rule of the sea states that having a moderatori on board is the greatest good luck charm a ship could ever have. Having two, however, would bring destruction. It was for this reason that if a moderatori birthed another of its own kind, if the ship was at sea, the baby was immediately thrown overboard. Sometimes, if the ship was lucky enough to be docked, the baby would be dropped off with a family living on the pier, who would then either get stolen from the family or sold to a pirate crew for a high price. The one exception to this rule, however, is if for whatever reason two moderatori have lived on a ship together for more than ten years. If that was ever to happen, the rules became acutely more complicated.
Tapa had not purposefully gotten pregnant, and had spent the nine months in fear, hoping desperately that she would give birth to a healthy, normal child; one with powder pink skin and small curved ears. For the day and a half that she was in labor, she could be seen throughout the day and night whispering prayers through clamped teeth. No one could really understand what she was saying, but that wasn't abnormal, and no one paid it any mind.
Moderatori more often than not seem to be whispering to themselves. The thing about moderatori that in fact makes them moderatori is the special skill that they possess; moderatori can control. What can they control? Rocks, trees, cups, lizards, anything that they can name. The moderatori are born knowing an ancient language lost to the world, and anything that they can name, they can control. Everything has a name, although not the one that most humans know it as. Everything that has a name can be controlled through that name. The moderatori can move the waters to forward a boat, they can sift the soil with a stream of words, the more powerful of them can bring the rain, snow, or hail upon the world - all with their words. The tricky part comes in when it comes to finding out names. The names of inanimate objects are always the same - the name of one rock is the same as the name of the next, all soil goes by the same name. Living things, however, play by different rules. Every living thing has its own name, individual to itself. Every oak tree, every mountain goat, every human. To learn individual names, moderatori have to listen. Everything eventually says its name. Sung in the sunlight by the sunflower, growled in the night by the wolf, or escaping as a whisper by the lips of a human, unbeknownst even to them. Of all of them, humans' names are hardest to hear. They say their name rarely, and mostly when no one else it around. Knowing someone's name means having power over them, and even subconsciously, that is something that humans hate.
So a moderatori can manipulate the language that is innate to them, to control the world around them. That is why they are so feared, so special, so wanted. That is why Tapa always whispered to herself. It was what a moderatori was born to do.
That day in late August, the prayers of the people of the Canna Carmen were answered. No life was lost, for the sweet baby boy that appeared onto that ship was, in fact, powder pink with small curved ears, in sharp contrast to his dull green skinned mother with her pointed ears. A healthy baby boy.
She named him Poru.