Captain’s log, day 495
It took me a full hour of lowering sails and getting rope burn until I could catch a glimpse of the Captain’s smile of approval. It was more of a tired chuckle than a smile, but it was still leagues better than her stabbing me with her eyes.
“You can throw those away. I won’t have those bed linens hoisted on my masts. And that rope isn’t good enough to hang a man with, much less hold the sails in place.” she calmly scorned me as I could feel me jewels making their way up to me throat. I pondered for a second about murdering her while she was sleeping, but something made me reconsider. Whether it was me leaden feet, or the fact that I slipped off the side of the mast and fell on my head was something I had yet to care about. After all, I was reluctant more likely because she was the kind of woman that commanded obedience to some degree. The kind for whose whims you’d murder people, because you know she’d murder you if you did otherwise. So I was once again bereft of things to say in my hopeless defense.
“But… I thought you said…” I murmured more faintly than an enamored lass.
“I said I wanted you to get them, I never said I’d actually use them.” she intervened with that sharp tongue of hers. I could already tell she was going to sharpen her talons on me arse if I didn’t find some way to enter her good graces.
I left the sails and rope where I stood and I walked up on her ship. I retracted myself like a scared cat when she extended her hand (I imagined, for a second, that there was a sword in it). I realized she only wanted to seal our deal with a hearty handshake. I tried throwing her off the fact that I had soiled my pants just moments earlier and shook her hand with all the strength I had left (none). With her other hand, she handed me a mop (“handed” meaning she thrust it at my chest).
“It’s time for you to get to know your crew better. I hear the way a man scrubs a deck is a dead giveaway for the kind of person he is, so I need you to gather all the information you can about your fellow crew mates. I trust you’ll have fun.” Her words were accompanied by a gentle push in the direction of the sorry bastards scrubbing the decks like they’d find gold under all the rotten wood. She was so gentle, in fact, that I nearly got impaled on me damn mop. That would have ended the day fittingly, I suppose.
“Like I just found the greatest riches in the world” I interjected to cover the metallic sound of my fillings grinding against each other. I took one long look at the crew, then the Captain, then the crew again, then myself, mop-in-hand. It was at that instant that I realized I should have just stayed at the tavern and gotten dead drunk. Especially since it looked like it was going to a while before I was going to be able to do that again.
