Dishes clinked together in the sink, a knife chopped rhythmically against the counter, and a constant dull and muffled thunder roared from the heavy rain blown against the hull of the Gaping Maw by raging winds.
Autumn stood atop a small crate that provided just enough height for her to comfortably reach over the rim of the huge cooking pot. She stared with a somber expression, past the slowly bulging and popping bubbles on the surface and into the swirling, nondescript abyss of the stew. Adan stood at a countertop quickly chopping vegetables, not pausing as he glanced over his shoulder at the chef.
"Killup," Adan broke the silence as he turned his attention back to his task, "can you get me more carrots from the cargo hold?"
Killup dropped the bowl he was washing into the sink with a clatter and hopped off the countertop with a grumble, "always me that's gotta talk to the rats."
A few moments after the door shut behind Killup, Autumn spoke up, "we don't have any carrots."
"He'll be busy for a while," silence lingered for another short while before Adan continued, "there is something I don't understand about the plan."
Autumn kept stirring, her pace quickening slightly, "ask Eli, he's the details guy."
"It is not about the details, it is about you."
It wasn't like Adan to prod for prompting when he had something to say. In the short time Autumn had known him, he had always said what needed to be said with the same unflinching pragmatism with which he completed tasks. She was all too familiar, however, with the way people spoke when afraid of setting off her often short temper. She sighed and dropped the long-handled ladle to lean against the inside of the pot. Her hands found the edge of the pot and gripped it tightly, the scolding heat of the cast-iron leaving no burns on her skin.
"Just spit it out, metal boy."
Adan placed his knife on the counter and turned to face her with an expression of genuine confusion, "why do you seem uncertain if you'll go with your friends?"
Her grip on the pot tightened, released, and then tightened again. She was mad, but it wasn't at him for asking, or at her friends for leaving, or even at the too-cold iron that refused to sear her skin like it ought to -- like she wanted it to.
"Perhaps I shouldn't have asked," Adan said, half turning back to his work before Autumn finally answered.
"Do you know what's it like to crawl your way out of the dirt?" Her voice was steady but the tension underneath wasn't hidden, "to have every detail of your life holding you back, but to claw and punch your way through it all anyway?"
"No," Adan answered after a second, which to him was worth several minutes of thought, "I don't suppose I do."
"I'm not saying I have small ambitions," Autumn spun around on the crate to face him, leaning back against the pot as she continued in a slightly calmer tone, "see the world, try every food, and along the way make my name one worth remembering. I've always been asking a lot for a half-halfling from the foothills. Doesn't change how badly I want it, though."
"You seem to be doing well in those goals."
"Yeah," Autumn laughed bitterly and motioned to her surroundings, "thanks to this place. This ship, this job, they're the ticket to my dreams."
Adan looked away in thought for almost a moment, "you worry that this is the only chance you'll get."
She scoffed, "took you a while to figure that one out."
Adan returned to chopping his vegetables, "it was a tricky answer to find because I was created to think logically."
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Autumn started to retort when she realized he was calling her illogical, but hesitated when she became pretty sure that -- in a vague and roundabout way -- he had just said he believed in her. She huffed and returned to stirring the stew.
"No one asked you," the words didn't have the bite she wanted them to.
______
Littletooth darted between crates and barrels, sliding around turns and skittering back up to speed as Iris chased after him. She avoided blipping, at least when he was looking, because that seemed to prompt him to do the same -- and she was very tired of playing "find the wyvern" on a ship big enough to house a village. If she didn't blip around him, however, he seemed to mostly forget he could even do it.
The wyvern made his fatal mistake when he aimed for his usual shortcut, a tight gap between two crates with a third stacked on top to form a tunnel too short and too narrow for Iris to pass. It had worked great every other time before, even if recently he had to wiggle and squeeze his way through it. Today was the day he had finally grown too large, however, and found himself firmly wedged in place half-way through the tunnel.
Iris casually walked around the crates, crouching to peer down the tunnel at him with a smirk, "gotcha."
Littletooth frantically huffed and scurried backwards to escape the tunnel, but Iris only laughed. She wasn't concerned with actually physically catching him -- if she was then Abby would have been helping -- chase just seemed like a game he enjoyed, and she knew she could use the exercise.
She jumped in fright when she rose from the crouch and turned to see Victoria standing only a few inches away.
"No one will ever love you," Victoria smirked.
Iris was taken aback but extremely confused, and then the image of Victoria flickered and reappeared as a hazy black silhouette in the shadows. The light of the glow stone hanging from Iris's neck flickered back to life.
"What the fuck was that?" she shouted.
Several tentacles rose out of the bottomless bag to swirl threateningly around Iris, while Littletooth trotted in front of her with his wings spread and his fangs bared.
"Just seeing what works," the nightmare said, each word coming out as the voice of a different friend or foe of Iris.
Iris's face contorted into a mixture of annoyance and disgust while her voice filled with wrath, "why can't you just leave me alone? What is your fucking problem?"
The nightmare laughed with the voice of her mother, "you know what I am. You know what I want."
Iris steeled her expression while clenching her fists, "I'm gonna kill you one day."
A mouth appeared in the darkness of the silhouette's otherwise blank face, contorting into a smile that she recognized but couldn't quite place. It didn't move as the nightmare spoke, "not if you kill yourself first."
The silhouette disappeared with a burst of darkness like spores exploding from a mushroom. Her snarl that turned into a scream as she spun around and swung her arm. A window to the void ripped across her palm and her greatsword shot out, slamming through a barrel and pinning it to the crate behind it. Ale gushed out from the puncture and seeped through cracks between the floor planks.
She stood there heaving rapid breaths that only calmed when a gentle tentacle lay across her shoulder and a small wyvern nuzzled against her leg. Another tentacle retrieved her sword and sheathed it into the bottomless bag, while a third pointed upwards.
Iris nodded hurriedly, "yeah, good idea."
Only a moment later Iris was settling into her hammock with Littletooth sprawled out on top of her outstretched legs. The crew's quarters were bustling with the activity of a pirate crew fresh off their first pillage in a while. Piles of coins slid back and forth across make-shift tables while losers groaned and winners gloated, a few too many pirates sang shanties to poorly played music on plundered instruments they didn't know how to use, and the occasional fight broke out what loot belonged to who or how the details of a particular story had actually happened. Despite all this, Iris was glad there were at least plenty of lights to keep the nightmare away.
Trying her hardest to pretend she was alone, Iris cracked open her journal and waited for it to fall on an empty page. A tentacle held out a vial of ink while another passed Iris a quill, and she began to write.
*Dear mom,*
*The nightmare is getting worse. It pokes and prods at me like a toy, plucks at threads of my emotions like a lute. I'm so tired, and I think I'm beginning to forget what it felt like before I had it. Did you ever have to deal with something like this? A monster you can't escape, or thoughts in your mind that aren't your own? I hope not, but if you had some advice, that'd be nice right about now.*
*Everything's about to change again soon, that's okay though. I think I'm ready for it. Can you believe sailing in the sky across a continent actually gets boring? I don't even want to think about what sailing across the ocean must be like. Eli says we'll be catching a boat sooner or later, anyway, but personally I hope we find somewhere else to hang around for a while first.*
*What I really need is a grand quest like yours, you were so lucky to find one so early. Hopefully your entries actually get around to telling me how that happened soon, and hopefully my big quest comes soon too. Wandering is fun and all, but a little purpose would go a long way, too.*
*Be safe out there, mom,
*Iris Orion, 997*