My eyelids flickered, slow to open in my malaise. I'd been dreaming of a ship that was being chased by an enemy vessel. I could hear the captain shouting orders as we fled through the darkness. A burning smell filled my nostrils, and I felt the ship's deck shake.
Then... nothing.
My body felt sore and inconspicuously wet. The ambivalence of salt and smoke hung in the air like a bad perfume. I lifted my head slowly, finding myself lying on the deck of the ship. I rolled over, feeling my body twist uncomfortably. When I sat up, I saw that I was surrounded by other bodies.
Blinking the weariness of sleep away, I tried to reconcile all of this.
"What the fuck," came the words, an awed statement. They were alien in my mouth, my voice unfamiliar.
I looked down at my body, repeating 'what the fuck' under my breath as panic started to bubble to the surface of my thought.
This body, the one I wore as I inspected it, was not my own! I knew my body like... like someone would know their own body!
Panicked thoughts rose to the surface, <What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?!>
Stumbling to my body's feet, I discovered that I was shaky on my own two... new legs. <Did I die? Did I get isekai'd? From a dream!? I didn't even meet Truck-kun!>
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, and my blood was racing in my veins. I could feel my skin, my muscles, my bones. It was all different from me, but it was mine.
Slowly, my adrenalin began to seep from me and began to release its grip on my mind. Thoughts came more clearly and reasonably and I began to catalogue my losses. <My cat's gonna starve,> I lamented. <They'll notice I'm not at work; I'll never get a paycheck again!> The last thought was a sorry, but liberating one.
<So what am I? Where am I?>
The question echoed in my mind, and I could feel my mind searching for the answer.
Scouring the beach, I would soon discover my answer on the ship's deck, staring out to the horizon. On the fractured deck I saw a familiar figure, one I'd seen through the lens of dream.
I blinked, trying to refocus my eyes. As my vision adjusted, I made out the profile of a young woman with short, mud-red hair. She had a striking look about her, a mix of fear, disappointment, and a face smeared with soot. Her eyes, a bright green: stared out to the sea.
I trekked a shaky progress across the beach and started to climb up the wreckage. The activity, I found, was pleasantly easy! When I was in my own body, I couldn't even imagine completing a chin-up. Now, I was climbing up the remains of the ship without much effort at all.
When I reached the deck, she hadn't moved, nor did she move as I crossed it, but when I entered her periphery, she startled.
"Eh?" her reaction was hesitant. "You're not dead?"
"... Who am I?" I asked.
She shook her head, wary eyes fixed on me. "You don't remember?"
Shaking my head, I answered, "No... I'm sorry."
"Even your name?"
I shook my head in response as a building sense of dread seemed to built.
"Well... you're called ${Name}, a deckhand on the 'Dauntless.'"
<A deckhand? So even in this Isekai, I start as a nobody?>
"Calwyn?"
"Yep," her head nods appreciatively, then she looks down to the wreckage we're both on, "and meet the 'Dauntless,' or... what's left."