Winging it, Big time.

"Land! I see land! Land-ho!"
Rhia glanced up towards the crow's nest when she heard the long-awaited call. She set the wooden sword she'd been practicing with down beside the mast where Diego sat with their son. She ran with the others to the bow of the ship, a smile soon on her lips as she found herself gazing at the glimmer of land off on the horizon. "We've made it, then." She turned to look up at the young man that came to stand beside her. "Well, Chris, how does it feel to have sailed beyond the Edge of the World?"
"Pretty damn good, Rhia." He grinned down at her, patting her shoulder. "How long has it been since you were in India?"
"Too long, I'm afraid. I'm glad my son will get to see it."
"Ah, yes. To think, that we left port with forty-one, and shall arive with forty-two. It's a shame our logues will only ever show forty."
"Yes, well, that is something that cannot be helped, I'm afraid. Thank-you, Chris, for taking me with you. I know women aren't the best of luck on the sea."
"Not to mention the Typhoon." He smiled to her, shaking his head. "Think nothing of it. It was with your cousin's help that I got such a good crew."
She nodded gently. "Yes. Jason can be good for something every now and then, can't he?"
Diego made his way over, the baby still cradled in his arms. Rhia smiled pleasantly and reached out for him, taking the boy and turning him to face the horizon. "Look there, Tristan. India." The boy blinked lazily at the evening sun, not paying the horizon any mind. Rhia and the men around her laughed, relief swelling in all of their hearts. Land. It had been a long and trying voyage on the Santa Maria. By the next afternoon, they and the crews of the Pinta and and Nina could all finally be reunited on dry land.
Diego slid his arm around Rhia, smile directed towards the sky. "Come. We've had a long day, and there is crew enough in reserves to take our places. Let's get some sleep."
Rhia nodded, leaning gently against him. She glanced over to Columbus. "You should sleep, too, Chris."
"I will. Thank-you, Rhia. And you, de'Arana. We would not be here if it weren't for the two of you."
They both gave sheepish smiles, before heading below deck to their cabin. It was true. The harbours they had to navigate before leaving the west coast of Europe had been flooded with pirates. Without Diego, the ship's Master of Arms, and Rhia, the ships would most likely have been looted or comandeered.

Rhia was up early the next morning, leaving Diego and Tristan to sleep a little longer in the private cabin they'd been given. She made her way up onto the deck, not wasting any time in heading over to the bow. She frowned when she noticed Pero and one of the cabin boys, Pedro, standing with a spyglass. She noticed they were looking at the shore, a smile coming to her face.
"Trying to get a good look at the shore, hm?"
Pero glanced over at her, a troubled look on his face. "You could say that."
She tilted her head, the tone of his voice a little off. "What's the matter, Nino?"
"Take a look for yourself." He handed her the spyglass.
She took it, closing her left eye as she raised it to the right. Her brow furrowed when she saw the problem.
Pedro looked up at her. "I thought the shores of India were littered with ports and great palaces and shops..."
Rhia slowly lowered the spyglass and handed it back to Pero. She looked down at Pedro. "Go get the Captain. Chris isn't going to like this." Pedro nodded and ran off to fetch Columbus. Rhia looked back out at the fast-approaching shore. "Something tells me this isn't India."
"Then what, Rhia?"
"I'm not sure, Nino..."
A few minutes later, Pedro came running back, Columbus in tow. "What is it, what's the problem?"
"Get a look at the shoreline," Rhia said as Pero handed him the spyglass. "Those are not any shores of India I know."
Silence filled the air as Columbus gazed through that spyglass. He swallowed uneasily as he lowered it. "Well, of course it has to be India. We're on the right longitude line, right, Nino?"
"Yes, Captain."
"Then that is most definitely India. Don't worry about it. We're probably just coming to some unknown shoreline. It's possible we could've drifted a few dozen miles off course in the last storm, but not any more than that. I'm sure once we reach the bays, we'll only have to travel along the shoreline for a few hours, a day at the most, before we hit a port."
Rhia, not at all convinced, just sighed. The other two seemed reassured, though.
Columbus clapped his hands lightly. "Alright, enough of this. There's work to be done, right?"
Rhia watchd as the three of them went back to work, though she couldn't help but look back out at the approaching shore. "Jason...is this the new world you were talking about? Is this really where I was before?" She thought back to the strange country she'd lived in a few decades with a group of Vikings nearly five hundred years before. But she'd been certain that was just a part of Russia, or the island she had crossed the bridge of ice to get to three hundred years before. She sighed and ran her hand over her face. Was there really a whole part of the world she never knew was there? If it were true, to think, she'd even been there and hadn't realized! A part of her hoped it wasn't true. A new world meant new conflicts in the Old one. The last thing she wanted to be a part of in the humans' lives was some mass conquest of a new world. Besides, she missed India, and really did want Tristan, and Diego, to see it. Well...it would only be a few more hours before they would know for sure.

((All names besides Rhia and Jason are real people. Christopher Columbus we all know, Diego de'Arana was in fact the Santa Maria's Master of Arms, Pero Nino was her pilot, and Pedro de Terreros was a cabin boy on board. The Vikings she had been with were led by Leif Ericson, and were the first people to truly colonize North America. And before that, it was the Bering Straight I made reference to as the Ice Bridge.))