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12th Day in the 4th of Ründ’s Months, Dry Season, in the 29th Year of King Bornidin the Young’s Reign, 126th Reckoned Year
There once was a sailor who drown at sea, the baddest sailor ever was he.
He went for a swig,
down in the brig,
and fell in the barrel of mead.
Down, oh, drown oh, fell in the barrel of mead.
There once was a sailor who drown at sea, the baddest sailor ever was he.
He went for a piss,
off in the mist,
and fell off the decking so dandy.
Down, oh, drown, oh. Fell off the decking so dandy.
From ‘The Baddest Sailor’, Shanty, Author Unknown in the 54th Reckoned Year
First Mate Mavis makes Cheese and The Big Man spread sand on the decking they got wet. Shushilah and Petsune are tasked with putting away all of the Runnykit supplies. Petsune grabs the four cups and Shush grabs the dice. When Petsune sees the leather arm guards again he mentions them, “So why a tower whale? Is there some significance for you?”
Shushilah sighs loudly and says, “Significance? Yes, yes. Is important for all to remember, I’m thinking. The tower whale, she swims through the forests of the vines, yes? Is where she gets her name. The vines break and they float up, up, up, until they are reaching the surface and getting tangled there. This is where the Fill come from, or Mass, as you Dintish say. Is important to remember, everything has a place, yes?”
Petsune is touched by the significance, and his perspective of Shushilah shifts. Together they replace the dice in the captain's quarters, then return the cups to an irritated Bor. After everything is cleaned up, Mavis calls Petsune up to the helm, where he stands behind the ship wheel, looking important. Petsune is still intimidated by Mavis. He wouldn’t be surprised if the man had a peg leg and maybe drank sea water. Once up at the helm, Mavis starts giving orders to Petsune as if he’s a crew member, “Go grab the pitmite paddle from Sprig, I’m sending you below decks to the food stores. Bor said there were a few of the nasty little buggers rolling around down there.”
“Oh um, yes, sir.”
Petsune has no idea why but he does a military salute and then walks away, cursing himself for a fool. Before he gets more than ten steps Mavis calls to him, “On second thought, take Sprig with you. Wherever he is. He probably needs something to do.” Petsune gives another enthusiastic yes sir and then walks off. As Pet walks away, Mavis mutters “…probably wouldn’t be able to get the paddle out of the rascal's hands anyway…”
Petsune hears Bungle barking and figures that’s probably where Sprig is, so he walks that direction. He follows the sound toward the bow of the ship, and then hears Mavis’ voice again, “On second thought…” but Petsune turns and sees it's only a prattlebeak sitting up in the rigging. He contemplates a plan for procuring a feather, but it is too high, and Mavis gave him a job. Instead, he keeps walking after the yips until he locates Bungle. The small billypug is barking at Bor in the kitchen area, and Bor is yelling at Bungle
“Get out of here! You’re not getting any!”
Bungle snatches something off the corner of a cutting board and scampers off, followed by curses and threats of basting from Bor. Petsune slowly backs away, deeming it wise to leave Bor alone for the time being. He remembers that Mavis said he was to go below deck, so he decides to check there next for Sprig.
As he walks, he considers the crew and his opinions of them. He finds them strange, but he can’t find a word for what it is about them that is so different. They are friendly enough, and they seem to be orderly while allotting time and space for leisure. It isn’t at all how Petsune pictured the ship life. He imagined a cut-throat environment where tension bubbled below the surface like a boiler shark. Yet, that’s not at all how it is on board the Painful Lady. It’s not only clean and civil, but also actually sort of fun. Not to mention the incredible sights. He’s only been aboard for about a day and has already seen the incredible migration of the ginder rays. He walks back along the ship's railing, thinking about what Chapel told him.
When he walks back under the branch where the prattlebeak was, he hears Sprig’s young and spry voice coming from the above, “Have you seen Bungle?”
This time however, when Pet looks up, there’s Sprig sitting on a branch next to a large round prattlebeak. Petsune never realized how big they really are; the bird is almost the same size as the boy. Petsune answers Sprig’s question with a pointed finger and poses his own question,
“Could you perhaps grab a feather off that bird for me? I would greatly appreciate it.”
“An’ what’s a Deepblood want with a feather?”
“Well, Cheese won the first round of Runnykit and —”
“I like Cheese. She’s funny. I don’t think I like you. Priests ain’t funny.”
“Is that so?”
“Yup. They never is. They’s always yellin’ ‘bout somethin’, an’ it’s never somethin’ worth yellin’ ‘bout.”
Petsune considers this for a moment and finds himself agreeing with Sprig. In all his years with various churches, the Fathers only seem to yell when it’s trivial. They try way too hard to remain calm and collected during the serious stuff. “Well, Sprig. I agree with you in that. Now, Mavis asked me to get a ‘pitmite paddle’ from you? He said we’re to go down to the food stores an —”
The prattlebeak interrupts by repeating “pitmite paddle” in Petsune’s own voice. Sprig leaps down from the rigging and lands heavy with a stumble into Petsune. Pet helps him gain his balance again and then follows him. Sprig says, “You mean the slacker whacker. Mavis uses it to punish anybody who don’t chip in enough.”
Just before they reach the stairs, someone says Sprig’s name. It’s Harlan and he speaks in a flat voice and says, “It’s not good to lie to a priest, Sprig. Worse yet to steal from one. Give it back.”
To which Sprig replies, “Give what back?”
But Harlan simply says, “The sea is not deceived.”
“Ah, you ain’t no fun Harlan. He didn’t even know…”
Petsune is shocked that Harlan knows this phrase. Is he a Coldor, or a friend to the Cleave? Who is he, really.
Meanwhile, Sprig reaches inside his tattered shirt and removes Petsune’s adorned dagger from his time with the Sanctum of Souls. Sprig carelessly hands it over to a dumbfounded Petsune. Not only is he shocked at Harlan, but now he is horrified at having been robbed. What exasperated the whole situation is how little it seems to matter to anyone, particularly Sprig. Petsune takes the proffered dagger and says heavily, “You know, the last two people who stole this from me ended up cursed.”
Sprig’s interest is apparently piqued because he turns and says, “What curse? How?”
Petsune fashions his face into a look of grave seriousness. “Oh yes… they were bullies at the Church of the Deep, and they stole it just as you did. But the next day, they were both met with so many misfortunes that they begged me to forgive them.”
A look of genuine concern crosses Sprig’s face before he responds, “And… did you? Forgive ‘em?”
Petsune nods sagely and answers in his most priestly voice, “Yes, yes, I did. Of course. I couldn’t let them suffer when they clearly acknowledged their wrongdoing.”
At this, Sprig drops onto the ground at Petsune’s feet, startling him. He sounds like he is sobbing and pleading for Petsune to forgive him, and Pet feels a pang of guilt before Sprig begins laughing.
Now Petsune realizes that Sprig has been playing him for a fool. Sprig rolls over laughing and holding his stomach. Harlan doesn’t make a sound or comment, simply walks away in silence. Eventually, Sprig is wiping tears of laughter from his face and saying, “Oh, I got you! I got you good. You thought you had me, but I got you!”
Petsune appears annoyed, but then he realizes that he was also trying to trick Sprig. Seeing that he was simply outmatched, Petsune replies amiably, “Indeed. It seems I am in the presence of a master. Teach me your ways, o’ great one.”
Sprig laughs again and then comments,
“Okay, okay. Maybe you ain’t all bad.”
Sprig leads Pet down to the food stores. Once they are out of earshot, Sprig begins badmouthing Harlan, “Harlan’s no fun. He’s always watchin’ me. I weren’t gonna keep your knife. Just practicing. Honest!”
Petsune decides to not comment on the practicing bit and finds himself believing Sprig’s intentions. Petsune opts for the common ground, “Yes, Harlan is very, um, intimidating. I don’t think he likes me…”
“Pft. Join the club, Priest.”
“Chapel-er-The Captain called him a ‘brooding pirate’, is he really?”
“Oh yeah, he broods all the time.”
“No, I mean a pirate - is he a pirate?”
“He were tellin’ me once that Chapel saved him, jus’ before he were hanged! It were a right good story actually.”
“Oh… wow. It sounds like it.”
At the bottom of the stairs, Sprig grabs the pitmite paddle off a hook on the wall. He does this without looking, suggesting this is a frequent practice of his. Thefood stores are under the foredeck and the kitchen, so they walk through the hold toward the bow. They pass a variety of areas and small doors, all places Petsune has yet to see.
As they get closer to the food stores, Petsune begins to hear chittering and clicking, and something like chewing. Before they reach the door, Sprig suddenly asks a question out of the blue, “Do you really believe our souls sink to the bottom of Yath when we die? I heard that Deepbloods believe that.”
Sprig pauses before opening the door and looks right at Petsune with a very genuine and inquisitive face. Petsune cannot tell when the boy is being genuine and when he’s playing him for a fool. He decides he would rather be kind and assume the boy is genuine, rather than think him false and be hurtful. So Petsune answers with a serious response, “Well, yes. Deepbloods do believe the dead sink to the depths, sort of. We believe our faults become weights that will drag us into the depths, if we have done enough wrong. The Church teaches that believers in Delód will remain buoyant and be whisked away while the unbelievers will sink into the silt, eternally drowning in the mire.”
Sprig looks at Petsune with a nonplussed face and then turns to open the door to the food stores. Inside, there are dozens of orange-sized pitmites crawling around, but when they notice Petsune and Sprig, they curl their legs flat against themselves and begin to roll around. Petsune finds it sort of cute when they do this, but overall, they are more a nuisance than anything. He knows pitmites store food in their legs, so the fatter the legs, the more food stores they have eaten. These pitmites have average sized legs, so they haven’t been down here long. Sprig whacks one with a paddle but he hits the hard shell on the back and sends the pitmite flying instead of squashing it. Out of nowhere, Sprig poses another question to Pet, “What do the other Churches think? Big Man says the Sanctum has their head stuck ‘somewhere the sun don’t shine’, wherever that is. So, what do the other ones think? About when you keel over.”
Just after he asks, he whacks a pitmite hard on the back which smooshes the bulbous underbelly, causing it to splat all over the wall it was on. “Well,” Petsune replies, “the Sanctum teaches that when a believer in Ründ, um, passes on, they are greeted into a great hall of feasting and celebrating.”
“But what if you ain’t a believer - then what happens?”
“Well, the unbelieving soul is cast off Yath, into the outer darkness.”
Petsune tries to step on a rolling pitmite, but it narrowly escapes. Sprig has squished two more into the floorboards. This time it's Petsune’s turn to ask a question, “What about you? What do you think happens?”
But Pet receives a curt reply, “Don’t know.”
Then Sprig leaps onto a crate and tries hitting a pitmite crawling on a ceiling truss. He swings and misses, then asks, “And the Empty Hands? What do they think?”
Petsune gives a good stomp and hits one, but it just bounces off toward the door. “Well, The Order believes each person’s soul is made of starlight. So, when they die, they return to the night sky to make a new star or relight an old one.”
“An’ if you ain’t believed? Where do you go?”
Almost all of the pitmites are squashed, except for a few that scuttled off behind the crates. Petsune moves a crate so that Sprig can get at the one behind it. “Well, the Order believes there is no distinction between those that believe in Wōde and those that do not.”
Petsune watches Sprig crawl back behind the crate, then hears the paddle connect with a pitmite’s soft side. Sprig’s head pops up from behind the crate with a slight smile on his face,
“I like that one.” He asserts.
Petsune asks, “Why’s that?”
Sprig shushes Pet and is looking around the room, listening for scittering. When he’s sure they got all the pitmites, Sprig says, “‘Cause I ain’t a believer in nothing. An’ I don’t wanna spend forever drownin’ in mud.”
Petsune isn’t sure what to say to this. He realizes this is likely Sprig’s first civil interaction with someone wearing robes. He suddenly feels very underqualified to be reassuring someone about what comes after death. “Well, um, I don’t think, or at least it’s not likely that you would, uh, do that.”
Sprig fixes Pet with a very quizzical look, then says, “You’re weird.”
Petsune says more to himself than to Sprig, “So I’ve been told…”
Petsune follows Sprig as he bounds up the stairs. Soon after they are above-deck, Bor rings the meal bell, and the crew gathers round for the midday meal. Bor lists off what the meal consists of, and Petsune’s mouth begins to water. “We have pan seared gipp, sautéed in barrel plant extract, with sides of caramelized padada and cubed toskar root, drizzled with gar lily honey.”
The crew shuffles anxiously, inching closer to Bor in anticipation of the meal. Despite the eagerness of the crew, a single glare keeps the crew in a well-formed line. Benafield holds out his plate, staring at Bor’s hands with a look of pure expectation, his tongue licking his lips. Suddenly Chapel shouts from somewhere above, “Sails off the starboard stern!” The Big Man watches Bor’s hand waver and then replace the food into the pot. He appears seriously aggrieved, and Pet can just barely hear him mutter under his breath, “Ah, drown it all…”
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