Sequestered on the Gaping Maw with nothing worthwhile to pass the time, Iris resorted to casually exploring the ship to pass the time. Her first stop had been the gun deck, situated just below the main deck and just above the crew quarters. She lingered on the stairs as she observed a handful of crewmates, including Cameron Cole and Quartermaster Luo, wheeling around and inspecting a few of the cannons. The quartermaster seemed to be explaining to Cameron each of the different models of cannon they had aboard, and the basics of their capabilities and limitations. Iris found the conversation disinteresting and hard to follow, so she continued upwards to the main deck.
There was a decent amount of activity on the main deck as members of the crew specializing in maintenance worked to complete last minute repairs and run through checklists in preparation for the ship's upcoming journey. At some points along the railing, small teams of pirates gathered to lower themselves down the side of the ship with ropes to patch damage to the outer hull. Leaning over the railing to look down at them almost made Iris dizzy, and a thought occurred to her as her eyes followed the hull of the ship down to the choppy waters below -- just how many decks did this ship have? Counting portholes gave her an answer of at least four, but the ship's hull continued down much further beyond where the portholes stopped. She decided to descend into the depths of the ship soon and find out what exactly was down there, but today was all about the main deck.
She turned her back to the water and leaned against the railing, surveying the ship for her next point of interest. She found it in a tall, muscular green-skinned elf woman who was hefting around large barrels full of dirt, moving them around between different positions while occasionally stopping to evaluate the layout. She yelped when Iris appeared beside her.
"Iris Orion," Iris held out a hand for her to shake, "what'cha up to?"
The woman composed herself while looking mildly embarrassed, and then shook Iris's hand, "I’m Misty. The new chef wants to grow food on board, and I got stuck with the job." Her voice was deep and husky, and though her frame still betrayed the characteristic slimness of elves, the muscle built upon it was nothing short of remarkable.
"They expect you to grow food in barrels?" Iris asked.
Misty grabbed a barrel by the rim with both hands and tilted it, rolling it to a new spot as she replied, "oh, I can do that easy. The hard part is finding a place to put the damn things that won't be in the way."
Iris watched as she rolled the barrel against the railing in a gap between the rigging mounts spaced along the railing, then dusted her hands and placed them on her hips while she stepped back to inspect.
"What do you think?" Misty asked.
"Seems like a good spot to me," Iris shrugged.
"Fuck it, then," Misty shrugged back. She placed her hand in the exposed soil that filled the barrel almost to the brim, and green light began to emanate from her fingertips. A moment later, little green sprouts formed around the perimeter of the soil closest to the railing. Within seconds, the spindly sprouts grew tall enough to topple over towards the railing, where they wrapped themselves around the rail like tiny climbing vines.
"Whoa," Iris said in wonder.
"Give those about a week or two," Misty said, "and they'll have grown strong enough to hold the barrel in place through waves. Those are just the straps, though, this is the real prize." Misty pulled a small root vegetable from her pocket, it was pale brown in color and about the size of a large berry or nut, "it's called a sunchoke. These babies will grow wild in a bucket of sand if you let them."
Misty took the sunchoke and buried it a few inches deep in the barrel, then placed her hand atop the soil once more and imparted more glowing green magic. A few seconds later, a small sprout climbed out of the soil where she had buried it.
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"It's so cool to watch them grow so fast, where did you get plant powers?" Iris asked.
"Anyone with a thread of life can work with plants if they read the right books," Misty explained, "in my case, though, it just kind of came natural. I was hoping for life stealing abilities, but with Threads of Power, sometimes you have to take the specialty you get. When my second thread ended up being a Thread of Matter, the plant specific abilities only got more advanced."
"What all can you do?" Iris asked, "can you grow trees? Could you grow one the shape of a house? Does it work on mushrooms--"
"Easy, kid," Misty held up a hand, "didn't anyone teach you that it's rude to go around asking specifics about people's powers?"
"Oh, sorry," Iris shrunk away sheepishly, "I just got excited. And, uh, no, actually. No one taught me that. I'm still kind of new to having powers."
Misty laughed as she grabbed hold of the next barrel, "right, new to having powers and you're on the crew of the Gaping Maw. Okay."
"I'm serious!" Iris insisted, but Misty seemed disinterested as she returned her focus to her work.
Iris harrumphed, and began looking around for her next target. The folded sails caught her attention, and then the massive masts which must have originated as solid redwood trunks. They towered into the air over the ship, draped in all manner of sails and rigging and ropes. When she shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted, she could make out what looked to be a structure like a small room built into the top of the tallest mast, just below the fluttering black flag at the peak. Sure, she thought to herself, why not go for a climb?
She tucked her hat into her bottomless bag, lest the wind carry it away. On either side of every past was a net-like structure of large, interwoven ropes that attached to the railing and narrowed as they reached up to attach to a mast high above. She spotted a few pirates using these rope structures for climbing as they conducted repairs, and decided on the first part of her path. She blipped to one of the rope structures, appearing on the underside hanging from her hands and feet with her back facing the deck below. She climbed up a few rungs of rope that way, but found it quite slow and uncomfortable, so she blipped to the other side of the rope and instead scrambled up the incline like a hill full of holes.
Several minutes of climbing and blipping brought her to the peak of this particular rope structure, where it narrowed to a point and was secured tightly to the mainmast just below a narrow platform of planks. She was about half way up the mast now, the main deck appeared as far away from her now as the water had from the railing, and she was thoroughly winded. She elected to take a break on the platform, and made herself at home as she pulled a wrapped sandwich from her bottomless bag alongside a waterskin filled with ice cold tea.
As she ate, Iris stared out over the vast lake beyond the bay. Even at this height, the distant shores were beyond the horizon, and if she didn't already know it was a lake Iris might have assumed she was looking out to sea. If this is how big a lake can be, she wondered, just how big is an ocean? She thought back to the mountains around her village, and the rare occasion in which she had climbed atop the ridge. There had been flat farmlands and grassy plains extending out as far as the eye could see, and in the distance the nearest city to her village had been only a grey speck on the horizon. She imagined all of that were suddenly water, and found new appreciation for the vastness of the lake.
She jolted as a loud boom cracked through the skies, knocking her waterskin off the platform and almost falling off herself. She reached down and blipped the waterskin back into her hand before it fell out of range, and then looked out to the water where she watched a cannonball land with a splash. Another boom followed soon after, this time the cannonball traveled much faster, and landed much further away. There didn't appear to be anything out there worth shooting out, and no one down below on the main deck was panicking, so she guessed Cameron and the other pirates messing with the cannons must have moved on to testing them.
Iris still wanted to reach the crow's nest atop the mainmast, but it was settling in how severely she had underestimated the climb. She could make it, she thought, but wasn't sure she'd still have the energy afterwards to climb back down -- leaping down and attempting to blip to a safe landed amongst all the rigging and sails was not something she had any interest in trying. Another option was relying more heavily on blipping to climb faster and easier, but that was not such a trivial thing as in the redwood forest. Though the height of the mast from the main deck was comparable to that of a redwood, the ropes and sails were must less inviting terrain to navigate than the sprawling branches of the forest. In the meantime, though, the heavy breeze was a calm kind of exhilarating, and the ambiance of squawking birds, distant sloshing waters, and the occasional cannon fire left little to be desired. She packed up the remains of her lunch, stretched out across the narrow platform, and settled in to watch the slowly approaching sunset.