The Dorian Strand

She was smarter than me, and I found that a little annoying. I was rowing the rowboat, or "more accurately" the skiff, through the choppy waters of the Dorian Strand. She was sitting in the stern, navigating, head bent over a map and compass, checking the landmarks on the shoreline. Occasionally she would tap my knee if I needed to adjust course. Left or right knee; a single tap if I was a little off, or multiple if I was very off. We had no rudder, 

She hadn't told me where we were going, probably because she never tells me where we're going. 

I suppose I'm okay with it. If we were doing something illegal, I'd have the benefit of plausible deniability. 

Although last time, we were attacked by a gratuitously large "chambered nautilus." I had called it "one of those things that look like an octopus hiding inside a seashell." It had latched on to the rowboat with its tentacles and was using its spiny tongue, or "radula," to bore through the bottom. 

That time she had uncorked one of her many vials she wore in a bandolier over her dress and dumped it onto the writhing mass of tentacles, which then immediately turned itself inside-out. I think that's what it did anyway. Hard to tell with a creature like that but I'm pretty suremost of it is supposed to be inside the shell. 

I had just kept rowing the whole time. She usually handled stuff like that. Whenever we encountered something that just needed to be hit with an oar, she usually left that to me. Probably doesn't want to waste her ingredients.