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Sploosh-Splash and Yum!

That was just a wonderful bit of pitter patter splashing in her feathers! Tasty shells burnt and crisped and pulped free of all the drossy organo-carbo-silicate tissues. Leaving just the soft fuzzy feather dust and a few other sturdy delicious bits wedged in her tines.

Tunie was the smartest and bestest sneaky hunter she was! She was also a hero too, that was fun as well but especially the tasty tasty dust! And best of all she was definitely going to get a nice long brushie out of this. Of course it was going to take a while before that and would be a little stingy and achey in a few bits until then but that was fine! She had lots of other feathers she could use to carry the load while she rested the slightly strained ones!

Well now that she was done and zooming well past the place with the tasty gnats it was time to correct her course again up and out and away from all the stingy clouds and dust and things so she could push-push-PUSH to a proper and full speed.

Finally she got to go her proper speed! She got to strain her potencies and shift her heaviness from her feathers into the bulk of her skeleton and flesh and cargo. Fill up herself with heaviness and speed until everything seemed to slow around her and at the same time she was slow to them. Until she was squashed shorter and shorter and shorter with how much speed she vaulted through the reef with.

Her drive quivered in anticipation to finally get some proper use and her primaries fluffed and strummed in excited little flutters that in a younger and less skilled ship would have jostled her crew and cargo.

But Tunie was a practiced and skilled ship and she knew how to balance and time her flutters so to not overly rustle her insides. While she scooted and coasted out of the thick bog of vapors Tunie hummed and supped on her spoils. She slid feathers over one another, sweeping the accumulated dust and delicious delicious dusts into clumps and then then running the richly lathered tines into her many mouths where her symbiotes could ferry them where they would be most useful.

Such wonderful richness! Such savings! Ports were nice but Tunie just craved things sometimes, and her crew promised she was getting what she needed and watched her insides carefully to make sure she was not getting sick but sometimes a ship just needed to find her own vitalloys.

That was just proper sense even if it did not make any real sense. Crew were silly and did not understand but that was fine, she got her treats and Crew did Crew things. Like right now.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Crew sometimes closed themselves off like this inside the tiny little closed off secret dark silent box.

Tunie could not talk to Crew when they were in there and closed it all up. Crew could not talk to Tunie either. Tunie had learned that this was very important because some crew things could make Tunie feel queasy if they leaked. That was understandable, Tunie had things she had to keep closed off so that crew and cargo were kept from going off too!

It helped Crew morale a lot though whenever they got back out of the secret-dark-silent-box. Tunie was pleased because this tended to be a sign of a big trajectory shift! Like a impact ricochet!

Crew should be zooming into a very strong morale after this! And that was always good! Tunie looked forward to having Crew Morale improved. And improved Morale meant the next stop would be good mass-grist ratio feeding! It meant better passenger morale! It meant helpful suggestions on courses!

Good Crew Morale was going to take Tunie’s Best crew and make them and even Bestester crew! The thought made her do a little tumble of laughter, slowly of course, so as not to throw her cargo all around too much. But still everything was delightful now!

And they were going into the forest again! Tunie liked the forest, sure it was a bit to soupy for her to go fast, but it was exciting too! There were so many trees and little animals and dangerous things to throw rocks at and need to be quiet and hardly any scary signs of the horrible secret unseen monsters ever!

Also when they visited the port in the forest Tunie got some of her favoritest treats! They were special slurries from when she was just a little ship in her creche city where she grew up! Made just like she remembered them! She loved visiting the forest. Even though she had to go super slow in the last bit to avoid crashing into any trees and she couldn't tell any ships about where she went and be super sneaky about leaving traces leading into it. But there was no Traffic in the forest and for that Tunie thought that made up for almost everything else.

Oh and her crew morale tended to be improved after visits to the Forest Port as well! It was Tunie’s favorite place in the reef. At the moment anyway, she was sure that they would be going to her favoritest place in the reef some time soon as well. But to be perfectly honest she had a lot of favorite places in the reef and she was always delighted to go to them.

This was just one of the better parts of being a ship.

Yes! This was like many others before it going to be one of the best trips ever.

Tunie was so glad she could share it with her Bestest of Crew.