Their scars, their smell, and the hate that poured out of their eyes all competed for attention.

Ahab had run down to the beach as soon as he got the message... an old bandit had washed up on the beach, and the villagers needed Ahab's help to translate.

Now, he and a few others stood a distance away from the figure that hid under the shade of some trees and big rocks on the beach.

Ahab, while he caught his breath, studied the situation. A tray of food halfway between the villagers and the bandit, and a glass bottle of water. Ahab saw how the villagers had spaced themselves out in a half circle at a distance. They all knelt, and it gave the impression that they meant not to cause panic.

At the same time, Ahab spotted Moe, the acrobatics instructor from the school, leaning on a cane. This was a clever deception... that cane and Moe's grey-streaked beard gave the impression that Moe was a crippled old man, rather than a champion wrestler and freakishly strong and quick grappler nicknamed the panther.

"Everything they do is so gentle here," Ahab thought, and remembered the barbarity of his youth. When the bandits found castaways on the high seas, it was an awful thing.

Unless the unlucky soul could quickly demonstrate how they might be useful to their captors, they'd suffer an awful fate.

Ahab saw a gap in the half circle, and realized it was for him. He knelt. The figure looked at him with such venom in its eyes. Then Ahab read the pattern of the scars on the side of the figure's face.

Ahab yelled to the figure in his first language. "I'm a rejected one too!"

The figure made no reply but something in its posture changed. Ahab continued.

"You can walk back into the sea where our family sent both of us." And Ahab pointed to the ocean, "or you can accept their kindness." and he gestured at the glass bottle lying in the sand.

The figure's eye's followed Ahab's hand, and then looked back at him. "You're one of us?" it spoke, in a near whisper, showing the signs of dehydration.

"Just drink the water!" Ahab implored. Then he crawled to the glass bottle, opened it, took a sip, and then decided to crawl closer.

The figure was an old woman. Up close, Ahab could read the scars on the side of her face, and on her arms. He didn't like thinking about having to explain what the scars meant to the people here.