( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I'M NOT DEAD!!!
...
The sea swallowed my entire life in three slow, insulting bubbles.
I stood at the side of the Blue Gull and watched the last bit of my little boat vanish under the waves. One moment it was there, and the next, the ocean slurped it down, leaving behind a few sad circles of foam.
My boat. ＞︿＜
My berries. ＞﹏＜
Vale's ledger. ╰（‵□′）╯
Gone! I was given the literal golden ticket into the inner workings of Port Tragedy before I got there, to get some sorta plan to hit this place for everything it's got.
I stared at the water, and the water had the nerve to look calm.
I turned away from the railing and began pacing across the deck.
The crew of the Blue Gull stood scattered across the deck. The guards I had beaten earlier suddenly seemed very interested in the deck planks. One man held a mop and had been wiping the same spot, while another pretended to tie a rope that was already tied. Captain Rusk stood near the helm with one hand on the wheel, his face tight, his jaw clenched, and his eyes doing everything they could not to meet mine.
That was probably wise.
"Kai," Pelli said gently, "I understand that you're upset."
"Upset?"
"Devastated?" Pelli said
"You're tellingme I'm upset?" I said, slightly annoyed.
Pelli shrank. "I'm just comforting you, I guess."
"You're close to being thrown overboard."
"Wahhh!" Pelli shrieked
Behind him, one of the sailors made the tiniest choking sound. Pelli glanced back at them, then quickly looked at me again.
"Look, at least the boat went quickly."
I stopped pacing.
"What," I said.
"I mean, it didn't suffer?"
My hand twitched.
Pelli pointed both palms at me. "Bad sentence. Awful sentence. I withdraw it. I am withdrawing it from the deck."
"It carried me across the sea on stubbornness and splinters." I reminisced.
"A noble vessel." Pelli nodded
"It leaked from three places."
"A flawed but brave vessel."
"And now it is dead."
Pelli put a hand over his heart. "Then we honour it."
The sailors stared at him.
Captain Rusk closed his eyes, rubbing his face.
I narrowed mine. "How?"
Pelli looked around for inspiration and found none. "By... not sinking this boat?"
I blinked.
Pelli nodded like that was genius. "Exactly. Your old boat gave its life so this boat could carry on."
"This boat was already floating."
"Yes, but now it has a purpose for you."
I stared at him for a long moment. Then I pointed at the deck beneath us. "This boat better not sink."
Several sailors shook their heads at once.
"No, sir."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"Very sturdy, this one."
"Barely leaks at all."
I whipped my head toward the last sailor.
He froze.
"Barely?"
Pelli grabbed my shoulder and tried to steer me away. "Food. We should get you food. Food helps grief."
I opened my mouth to argue, then a smell hit me.
I stopped moving.
It was warm. Savoury. Thick with meat, onions, and pepper, the smell drifted from the galley hatch, curled around the mast, and slapped me across the face.
I slowly turned.
A cook had emerged from below with a large pot held in both hands. Steam rolled out of it. Behind him, a younger sailor carried bowls and spoons. Both men froze the moment they saw me looking.
I looked at the pot.
Then at Pelli.
Then back at the pot.
"What," I said, with the calm of a man seconds from violence, "is that?"
Pelli swallowed. "Stew."
The word hung there.
I stared at the pot.
The steam touched my face. It was funny; I'd adapted to being hungry a while ago, yet my mouth began to salivate at the thought of some stew.
"How much," I asked, "is some?"
The cook hesitated. "A bowl?"
My stare sharpened.
He corrected himself. "Many bowls."
"Good."
Ten minutes later, I sat on an overturned crate in the middle of the deck, eating stew from a bowl the size of a helmet while the crew stood around pretending not to watch. Pelli sat cross-legged nearby, holding his own smaller bowl and wearing a proud expression.
I swallowed, pointed my spoon at the cook, and said, "This is excellent."
The cook looked confused, frightened, and proud all at once. "Thank you?"
"I'm still furious."
"Yes."
"But this is excellent."
"Thank you."
"If you had given me this before, I might have only broken half as many noses."
A guard with a bandaged nose made a small noise.
I looked at him. "You still deserved it."
He looked down into his stew. "Yes, sir."
Pelli leaned closer. "See? Healing."
I held up the empty bowl.
The cook hurried forward to refill it.
Captain Rusk watched from the helm, arms folded, mouth pressed into a line. He had not eaten yet.
"You," I called.
Rusk's eyes shifted to me. "What?"
"Eat."
His brow tightened. "I am steering."
"You have a man next to you who knows how to hold a wheel."
"That man knows how to hold a wheel. He does not know how to steer."
The man next to him looked offended for half a second, then remembered I was nearby and became neutral.
I lifted my spoon. "Then take three bites and continue being miserable."
"I do not take orders from pirates."
The deck went silent again.
Pelli slowly lowered his bowl.
I looked at Rusk. Rusk looked at me. The captain had a bruise darkening under one eye from earlier and pride sitting heavier than the pistol he no longer had. He was scared. Angry too. Maybe more angry than scared.
I took another bite of stew.
"I'm not a pirate," I said.
Rusk snorted. "You boarded my vessel, assaulted my crew, claimed command, and forced me to alter course."
"I'm just a concerned citizen"
Pelli coughed into his stew.
Rusk's nostrils flared. "A concerned citizen."
"With strong opinions, yes"
"And a bounty."
"Yerp"
"And you admitted to taking my ship."
"Temporarily, but yes"
"You threatened to throw men into a sinking boat."
"I didn't know it was sinking at first."
Pelli raised a finger. "I did mention that."
"You yelled it too late."
"I yelled it as soon as I processed the tragedy." Pelli sucked up.
"The tragedy is my ledger is gone." I spat.
A few sailors glanced at each other when I said ledger. Good. Let them remember. Let them remember this was not just about a boat. Not just about berries. It was a fact that the cargo they held below deck came from somewhere. Marlo Grest's name was still in my head like a thorn under the skin. Port Tragedy waited somewhere beyond the horizon; its riches awaited me.
Rusk finally looked away first. He muttered something that was probably an insult, handed the wheel to the sailor beside him, and came down for stew.
I did not smile.
Pelli did, which ruined it for both of us.
The first day on the Blue Gull ended with the crew still terrified of me, Captain Rusk still glaring at me, Pelli still trying to make conversation with me, and me trying to catch up on some sleep on a makeshift hammock.
...
The next morning, I woke up to three sailors standing near me with a bucket.
They froze.
I stared up at them.
The one holding the bucket looked at the other two. The other two looked at the bucket. The bucket looked guilty.
"What," I asked, "is in that?"
"Water," the bucket sailor said quickly.
"For?"
"Cleaning the deck."
I looked at the deck around me. I was lying in the middle of it.
He swallowed. "Around you."
I sat up slowly.
All three flinched.
Pelli's head popped out from behind a stack of crates. "Morning."
"Were they about to pour water on me?"
"No," Pelli said.
The bucket sailor said, "Yes."
Pelli looked at him. "Why would you say yes?"
"Because he asked."
"You can lie a little to survive."
"I'm bad under pressure."
I stood, stretched, and took the bucket from him. "Cleaning is good."
The sailors stared at me.
I dumped the water over my head.
All three shouted.
The cold hit me like a slap from an angry aunt. I shook my hair out, wiped water from my face, and handed the empty bucket back.
"There," I said. "Now the deck around me is clean."
Pelli stared.
The bucket sailor looked down into the empty bucket, then up at me.
A tiny smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.
He killed it immediately.
I saw it.
I decided not to mention it.
By noon, I had made the guards carry every crate connected to the stolen cargo into one hold. Since Vale's ledger was now busy feeding fish, I needed something else. I made a new list on the back of shipping notices, old meal orders, and one very rude letter Rusk had written about late port fees. The crew watched me work at first like they expected me to eat the paper.
"Crate seventeen," I said.
A sailor pried it open. "Silk bolts."
"Mark it."
Pelli scratched it down with a bit of charcoal. His handwriting looked like a spider had drowned in ink and tried to crawl away.
"Crate eighteen."
"Tools."
"Mark it."
"Crate nineteen."
The lid came up.
Inside were little wooden toys, carefully painted. Horses, boats, birds, tiny people with round heads and simple smiles. The hold went quiet.
Pelli's charcoal stopped moving.
I picked one up. The paint on the little boat was blue.
Something in my chest pulled tight.
The sailor who had opened the crate looked at the floor. "From Port Tragedy?"
"Maybe," I said.
I put the toy back exactly where it had been and closed the lid more gently than I had opened anything in my entire life.
"Mark it," I said.
Pelli nodded and wrote slower this time.
By evening, the crew had learned two things. First, I was serious about finding where the stolen cargo came from. Second, I did not smash things for no reason.
Mostly.
…
A week has now passed since I took over the Blue Gull.
The winds were hard and sudden; the ship lurched in the swell, and half the deck became shouting, ropes, and panic. Sailors ran from mast to rail. The sails snapped overhead like they were trying to tear free and start their own life. I had no idea what most of the orders meant, but I understood when a rope got loose, and three men failed to hold it.
The line whipped across the deck and knocked one guard flat.
Pelli shouted my name.
I caught the rope.
For half a breath, the entire ship dragged against me. My boots (which I borrowed) skidded on wet planks. My shoulders burned. The rope bit into my palms, and somewhere above, the sail cracked full of wind.
I grinned.
"Oh," I said, "you want to be difficult too!"
I wrapped the rope around my forearm, planted my feet, and pulled.
The line came back inch by inch. One sailor shouted something that might have been impossible. Another scrambled in beside me, then another, and suddenly four of us were hauling together. The sail bent, the ship groaned, and the loose line snapped back into place.
The deck erupted into movement again.
Rusk barked orders from the helm. "Tie it down properly! Secure that side! You, check the forward rigging!"
The sailor beside me panted. "How are your arms still attached?"
"Git gud", I said, flexing my arm
The sailor chuckled before he could stop himself.
I looked at him.
He looked away.
I tied the rope badly.
He looked back, winced, and said, "That knot's going to slip."
I held it up. "This knot has survived many battles."
"This knot is shit."
The sailor took the rope from me and showed me how to tie the knot properly. He did it slowly, probably because he thought I might explode if corrected too fast. I watched. Then I copied him. Mine looked worse, but it held.
"Acceptable?" I asked.
He inspected it. "Barely."
"Meh, good enough"
That night, the crew did not scatter quite as fast when I walked past.
Cut to the next day.
Pelli decided I needed to learn ship words, I was barely on ships during my time as a Marine so this should be fun.
"That's the bow," he said, pointing.
"I know that one."
"That's the stern."
"Or the Back."
"Stern," Pelli repeated
"Angry back?"
"No."
"That's the mast."
"Yeah the big stick"
"Kai."
"What? It's a big stick."
"That's the galley."
"Stew room."
"Technically, but no."
"Arguably the best room on this ship"
"Hard to argue." Pelli nodded
Two sailors nearby were coiling rope. They were listening. Badly. Every time Pelli said a proper word and I ruined it, their shoulders shook.
Pelli pointed upward. "Rigging."
"Sky ropes."
One sailor bent over so fast I thought he had been stabbed.
Pelli pressed fingers to his eyes. "Please stop calling things by what they are."
"Why do ships have fake names for everything?"
"They're not fake names."
"Then why is the kitchen not called kitchen?"
"Because it's a galley."
"And why is the bathroom not called bathroom?"
Pelli hesitated.
I narrowed my eyes. "What is the bathroom called?"
He looked trapped.
I pointed at the taller one. "You. What's the bathroom called?"
He looked at Pelli for permission.
Pelli sighed. "Tell him."
The sailor took a breath. "The head."
I stared.
He nodded.
"The head," I repeated.
"Yes."
I looked around at the ship. "You people are disgusting."
The sailors laughed.
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 2300