Dark figures approached the cell. Light shined scarce much like all else the man in orange came to learn. If someone had something, they didn’t have much of it. If someone had anything, the treasure came guarded as best a dragon in chains could. The guards didn’t get much either, the prisoner came to realize, but this gig--and they knew it. When a baton produced--and this happened frequently--peace quickly established. Sometimes peace needed not establishing at all: baton anyway. Having been stuck for a spell, the man in the cell considered himself well learned in the operations of his home. How many appeals had he burned through? And he hardly tried. The prisoner couldn’t bring himself to share a gaze with a single one of them. He knew himself dead.
But a cynically won education hardly comforted. When dark figures came, it was known with each ringing step, iron grating reverberating throughout the block. Whether they stopped before the cell or pass on past that shook the resolve of many--whether their time ran dry. And the prisoner swallowed hard. The figures turned their key. He knew himself determined.
Fugger shot up with a start from his sheets, staring at nothing for only nothing could greet. No porthole bestowed clarity to his quarters--not at the moon’s mercy--he realized squinting. Drawing up to his window, Fugger noticed the intense amount of stars that spilled out from the sky and out towards the horizon--not something he’d ever bore witness to--not in this life or the last. He fumbled out his cabin and back up onto deck after finally, successfully sniffing out trousers.
“Huh...”
Dark figures once far overhead now all came to roost atop the ship’s offerings, its flags gilded in gulls. And down the flags in return ran seagull offerings all dripping back down to deck. Fugger frowned. A task fit for his first mate, Fugger then figured. He glanced around for his plunder’s newest addition but seemed to find only more gulls, an amount ever increasing. The words that hung past them continued their hang, the message as clear as it’d been from the start:
QUEST ACTIVE: SAIL TO SHORE
Active meant current, right? Fugger wasn’t quite sure--it all obviously demanded a directive, but from who or what? Was it that which brought him here? Fugger’s thoughts blanked as he watched his first mate mount the deck beside him.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“You a poet?”
“What?” Fugger replied.
“Got your eyes all on the stars. Poet behavior,” his crew member affirmed.
“Ok. Did I ever get your name?”
“Did I get yours?”
“Fugger is fine,” Fugger decided.
“That so. Hell, fine. Bellhound.”
“What? Is that your name?”
“No. You’ll be sayin’ it anyway,” said Bellhound.
“Ok. It’s all the same to me.”
Fugger turned away and back towards the seagulls. “I was actually looking at them,” he added. Bellhound looked them over as well. “Who’s cleaning that up?” he wondered aloud. Fugger turned to him, silent. Bellhound frowned.
“Why’d I join up with you? And what’d you do to the ship’s crew, huh?”
Fugger wore a sudden similar frown. He didn’t know, and he said as much. Bellhound peered at him with an incredulous look which spurred Fugger to reaffirm his ignorance, that one moment he wasn’t here and the next he laid naked atop bark. Reminded by his own words, he shot his hand up and pointed to the sky.
“Do you see that?”
His first mate glanced upwards.
“The stars, captain?”
Fugger frowned again. “Those words--you don’t see the words?” he asked.
His first mate finally smiled. “Sippin’ on more of those weapons o’ yours?”
Fugger hadn’t, but he found the idea a worthy suggestion. He set out to re-enter the ship and was very nearly all the way out the door and down the ladder when Fugger jerked his head back out, the ship’s single crew mate still where he’d left him.
“You care to sample some with me, Bell?”
The mission directive placed in the sky, unchanged and unphased by the clouds, the stars, the gulls and the night, watched the ship’s two seamen descend beneath wood. If the words had sprout ears, they’d’ve overheard laughter--and a more alarming sound as well: water sloshing violent whipping, hurtling spray into the air. Fugger had been no fool as to the amount of seagulls increasing. What he lacked, however, was the worldly knowledge of its meaning. Deep within the vessel, wines were uncorked and drank merrily. Three hundred yards from their celebration, a whirlpool gave birth to a figure lit by starlight. It approached.