“Wake up, Sam!” Someone said from the other side of my door what felt like seconds later. “You and me are going to head into town to pick up supplies. First Mates orders!”

I groaned and pushed myself into a sitting position.

“Saaaam!” The person on the other side of the door sang. Whatever time of day it was, they were too bubbly for it, and I was too miserable. I changed my mind. That Waterfolk stuff wasn’t just bad, it was hell in a bottle. My head felt like someone was currently hitting it with a baseball bat.

“Give me a second.”

I changed out of the clothes I had slept in, and gave my teeth a perfunctory waterless, toothpasteless brush.

I opened the door to find Melody standing there, hands behind her back, waiting patiently. She was wearing a short white blouse and jeans, unwrinkled and clean, and her hair was pulled back into a neat bun. This was quite the feat, especially since she’d drank herself insensate last night.

“My name is Melody.” She said, “I know we met last night, but I wasn’t exactly myself, or, haha, even entirely conscious for our meeting.” She stuck out her hand and I shook it.

“Nice to meet you.” I said, rubbing my heavy eyelids. “How?”

Her grin widened. “How?”

“You can’t be this peppy. What time is it?”

“Six in the morning.”

I groaned.

She lifted her arms up to me and tapped her wrist. I had to focus my eyes, but when I did I saw a long, thin metallic blue line running up the bottom of her arm, up past her wrist where it split into five, each heading up to one of her fingers.

“You’re augmented.” I said, blinking. “And that’s no prosthetic, that's neurological work!”

“Yep. I graduated top of my class in med school. They authorized me any implants I wanted, so long as they would help with my work, so I tricked myself out. Neural stabilizers to keep my hands steady, fine optics so I could look at all them pesky arteries and such while I worked, and I had them throw in a liver that could flush my system out in twenty minutes. It’s not pretty to watch all that junk coming out of me, but it’s damn useful.”

“Huh. I heard you have to get a tattoo of all the augments you’ve got for it to be legal here in Pensacola and the other East coast countries. Is that true?”

“Yea.” She turned, so I could see a block of black text on the back of her neck. “And unless they’re organs they have to be visible, noticeably different, so everyone knows you’ve got them.” And now that I looked, I noticed her eyes were bright. Unnaturally so. Her eyes, once you knew what to look for, were noticeably synthetic.

“Yikes. I’d never let them brand me.”

She laughed, the sound clear and strong, like a heavy bell.

“At least we can have them with the proper credentials. Aren’t augments illegal in Caligon?”

“I mean. Technically.” I said, "But they're too useful to go without. No one really listens, especially not people in The Trust, unless they're Caligon Dogs.”

“Did you?” She asked, “Because you can get into a lot of trouble in Pensacola with unregistered augments.”

I shifted uncomfortably.

“They won’t find anything on me, even if they looked.” I said.

She raised an eyebrow.

“That’s how you want to play it?”

“It’s not going to be trouble for you. Aren’t we heading out soon? Besides, I wouldn’t look at me like that. What about you? A heavily augmented scholarship doctor on an Ocean vessel? Why aren’t you some Hotshot surgeon in Atlanta or something? I won’t ask if you won’t.”

Melody shook her head and gave another jovial, good natured laugh.

“Fair enough. It’s your ass, anyway. Not mine. Now lets go. We need to go get some supplies.”

I followed her out of my room and up the stairs into the bright morning. No one else was on deck. I bet they were still sleeping, this was just hazing the new guy I didn’t doubt.

“Won’t we need more people if we’re getting supplies for the whole ship?”

“Nah. We’re not getting too much. Mostly quality of life items. Medical supplies, fancy ingredients for when Elma wants to treat us to something special, and snacks. I love me some Apple-O’s, even if I have to eat them without milk. Grab any snack you like. It won’t last the whole trip, and you won’t be able to restock at the Ports in the Ocean we stop at since they’ve got shit snacks, but it’s better than nothing.”

We took a taxi to the Super Walmart. The cabbie dropped us off about half a mile out, unwilling to navigate the almost treacherous maze of parking spots, incoming and outgoing cars, and the moving billboards that sometimes cut across traffic, ensuring everyone knew about every deal they had to offer.

“I hate Super Walmart.” I said as we walked,

“Eh.” Melody said, watching one of the billboards grind by on it’s magnetic track. “Oh. Look at that. Buy one get one free Labrador puppies. Not that I want a puppy, but it would be a good deal if I did. I always think its a shame to have just one dog. Wouldn’t it get lonely?”

“It’s just so dirty, and monopolies like this are insane. Just messed up. It’s not good for anyone in the long run, mark my words.”

"Maybe I do want a puppy." Melody said, scratching her chin.

When we reached the entrance we took the store tram to the toiletries and medical supplies first. Back in Caligon medicine, especially drugs, were strictly regulated. But in the towering aisles of Super Walmart I spotted bags of morphine, complete with an IV drip, Pain killers of a hundred different strengths and colors, even medical Heroin, locked behind a glass case. I hadn’t even known medical Heroin was a thing.

“Morphine. Always useful.” Melody said, tossing a plastic box filled with little baggies into our cart. It beeped, and the little counter on the back of the cart ticked up twenty Bills. She checked the list in her hand. “Gauze, of course. We’re running low.”

“Should I be worried that the first two things that popped into your head that we absolutely need are morphine and gauze? What happened that you’re running low on gauze?”

“Lucas adds tattoos to his body pretty regularly. He uses the gauze to keep them clean while they settle.”

“That’s not too bad a reason, I guess.”

“But we’re running low on morphine because First Mate and Hawthorn contracted Blood Fever Dengue while we were sailing through Putrice. They had to be sedated or they'd have screamed themselves to death.” Why did I say that? Whenever you said something like that the universe just had to make you eat your words, didn’t it? “Also, I’m pretty sure Elma uses this stuff recreationally when she thinks no one will notice. But don’t worry too much about that, most Water Folk are addicted to half a dozen different drugs and they function fine. Elma’s clean as a whistle compared to most of her kin. The only thing she’s really addicted to is booze.”

“Oh.” Great. She wasn’t just a cannibal, she was a drug addicted cannibal. I’d heard that the Water Folk were very blase about recreational drug use, and that it allegedly didn’t damage their bodies as badly as it did humans. But hearing that one of the people I would be sharing a tiny boat with used powerful medicinal drugs for fun didn’t sit well with me.

Sterile needle and thread, aspirin, cotton swabs and Wound Glue ™ went into the cart, the meter ticking up after each item. We headed back to the tram and Melody stuck a little black credit card into our cart and the meter reset back to zero, opening the doors to the tram at the same time. The tram lurched forwards, exiting the Medicinal aisle, and speeding past other trams in what would have seemed reckless had I not known they had anti crash sensors and very advanced pathing tech.

We stepped out into the enormous, cool room filled with aisles stacked with food. It was substantially more crowded than the Medical supply section and we had to weave our way around a pair of harried looking fathers towing a gaggle of children behind them, a couple who couldn’t stop touching each other heading for the winery, and a dozen other different types of people who barely saw anyone else, too busy figuring out what they were going to eat this week.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“What are you partial to?” Melody asked, “Anything you want. It’s on me, a gift for the new guy! That way I won’t feel as bad when we push the shitty chores onto you.”

I smiled, unsure if she was serious or not. “I like a good wine, I suppose. Something dry from Southern Caligon.”

“Dry? That’s boring.”

“Anything else is just juice.”

“You can’t get drunk off juice.” Melody said,

I was alone in my taste it seemed. I would need to acquire a sweet tooth or I would go hungry on the ship. The bulk of our purchases were things like cookies and poptarts. Melody threw a three dozen count of Juice Boxes into the cart.

“Is that the wine you prefer?” I asked,

Medlody laughed,

“These are for Quiver.”

“Quiver likes juice boxes?”

“Quiver loves sugar, it’s practically all they eat. I don’t know if its good for them, I wouldn’t think so, but it never seems to hurt them and they throw a fit if we don’t have something sweet for them so we make sure we always do.”

“Huh. You know, in Caligon companies aren’t really allowed to make sugar with…” I looked at the nutrition label, small, almost hidden on the bottom of the box, “Damn. they can’t make things with half as much sugar per serving size as these things. Is there any liquid in here at all or is it just a bag of sugar? I like something sweet time to time but this is ridiculous.”

“You hoity toity Caligonians just don’t know whats good.” Melody said, slapping the box out of my hands and knocking it back into the cart.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a doctor?”

“I fix people after they do something stupid or catch some sort of horrible venereal disease. That’s my job. I’m not a nutritionist.” She said, grinning.

We left Super Walmart with bags of snacks, medical supplies, two super sized boxes of cigarettes for Hawthorn since they were buy one get one free, and hailed another taxi back to the docks.

“Where are my cigs.” Hawthorn said by way of greeting. He was sitting in the same chair he was sitting in last night, only now there was an umbrella protecting him from the harsh Pensacola sun.

Melody dropped the boxes on the floor, just far enough away from his chair that he wouldn’t be able to reach, and headed below decks.

“Haha.” Hawthorn said, “Could you pick those up for me, kid?”

I set my groceries down and recovered the boxes.

“If you don’t mind me asking, is there something wrong with your arms or legs?”

“Yea.” He said, as I tore the box open and handed him a pack. “Not a secret. But let’s talk about that when we set sail, hows about. You’ll be less inclined to run off if the only place to go is drowning.”

I raised an eyebrow, picking up the grocery bags again.

“Well. That doesn’t make me comfortable at all.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I started bringing the bags down the stairs.

“Still not reassured.”

Down stairs I ran into Selimy. She was wearing the same thing she'd worn last night and was apparently trying to take bags from Melody, but Melody seemed reluctant to hand them over.

"I've got them, Selimy. Don't worry. Sam is helping me."

"Many hands make light work!" The tall woman said, "It's no trouble." She said, wrenching one of the bags away.

Melody sighed, and I followed the two women into a room I hadn't entered before.

It turned out, unsurprisingly, to be the kitchen. Elma and Thatch were already inside. Elma tending to half a dozen pots all simmering on a large stove, Thatch sitting with his hands folded at a table nailed to the floor. He wore a blue button down shirt and tan slacks. He seemed, despite his odd nature, the most normal of the crew.

"Ready for some breakfast?" Elma roared. I flinched. I was still kind of hung over.

I put the groceries on the counter and began putting things away. Melody and Selimy did, too, but Selimy seemed unwilling to acknowledge her disability which made more than one thing clatter to the floor, and made Melody wait behind Selimy, putting the things she put away in their proper spot after the blind woman misplaced them.

"Selimy! This is cold, I know you're blind but you can feel that this was milk, can't you? Why would you put it in the cabinet?"

"The ways of a seer are mysterious, Melody. I see things in a way you can’t even imagine."

"I'm putting the milk in the fridge."

Selimy shrugged.

“Ok.”

Suddenly I was grabbed by the shoulder and yanked away from the cabinets. I could feel a strong, clawed hand dragging me and for a moment I was about to lash out, but then I realized it was only Elma. That didn't make me relax much.

"Look!" She said, her voice still much, much louder than I felt the situation warranted, "No people on the menu today!" She was wearing jeans and a white tank top that somehow managed to seem more suggestive than the bikini she wore yesterday.

"Oh. Good." I said, forcing my attention onto the pots. True to her word It seemed like she was just boiling eggs. A lot of eggs on an industrial sized stove with at least eight different burners.

"Just wanted to put your mind at ease." She said, stepping away. I looked back at her, and I realized that her smile was forced. Was she… uncomfortable? She shifted, made like she was about to put a hand on my shoulder. But she pulled her hand away, hesitated, and then eventually decided to slap me on the back a little too hard.

"Right. Anyway. They'll be done in a second. If you don't like boiled I can make em scrambled or sunny side up. Most of these are for quiver anyway."

“Boiled is fine.” I said, heading over to the table. I joined Melody, who turned away from Thatch as I took my seat.

“What in the world was that?” She asked me.

“What?”

“Elma. Whatever… that was.”

“I dunno.”

“Right.” Selimy snorted, sliding into the seat across from us. “It’s got nothing to do with the fact you basically said to her face you were afraid she was going to feed you people last night.”

“I do not remember that!” Melody said, mortified.

“Look, she’s a… It doesn’t matter.” I said, raising a hand. “I’m gonna do my best to keep my stupid tongue in my head. How do you even know about that? You weren’t even there!”

“I’m a seer and this is my boat.” She said, deadly serious. “Nothing happens on this vessel without me knowing.”

“First Mate told us what happened while you were gone.” Thatch said in a low voice, glancing over at Elma, who was singing a song I didn’t recognize while methodically dipping a ladle into each saucepan, checking the egg’s progress. “You should apologize.”

“Look. Let’s just drop this.” I said, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Her feelings were hurt because I pointed out what she was? I wouldn’t be offended if someone pointed out that I had black hair. I wouldn’t be offended if someone pointed out that I was a man. And if you’d literally eaten someone that meant you were a cannibal.

“Didn’t know Caligonian’s were a bunch of racists.” Selimy sniffed.

“That’s not----”

“Egg!” Elma said, slamming an egg sitting in a little metal egg cup in front of me. “Whatever argument you were having is over! It’s food time! Back home in Polash if people argued over dinner that meant they weren’t hungry and we took the food away from them. There weren’t many arguments at the dinner table there, let me tell you.”

When she finished distributing the eggs, she reached into an oven underneath the stove she’d been using to cook the eggs and removed a tray of rolls. She slid the tray into the middle of the table with a flick of the wrist and literally spun to the cabinet fridge collecting an armful of cheeses and vegetables and a stick of butter, which she deposited onto the table with another little twirl in reverse.

“Make em how you like em.” She said, and everyone at the table except for Thatch began grabbing up their chosen ingredients and making a meal out of them. “I’ll be right back. Gotta bring these down to Quiver.” She said, striding out of the room with a pot full of boiled eggs.

“Try the eggs.” Melody said, grinning. She had removed her egg from the cup and was cutting it into slices, layering them on one of the rolls. Selimy had cut her eggs too, placing the slices onto a leaf of lettuce, along with cheese and a little butter before folding the lettuce over it all and popping it into her mouth.

I simply stuck my spoon into the egg and shoveled it in. I stopped. It was… good. It was just an egg, but it was boiled to perfection. I tasted paprika and something else I couldn’t name, but whatever it was complimented the egg perfectly. I looked down at my partially eaten egg. It even looked perfect. It was the quintessence of what a boiled egg should look like. Pristine white and morning yellow, my uneven scoop the only thing marring its perfection. For a moment I felt bad for not being more careful.

“See?” Melody said, elbowing me in the side. “Elma was a chef in Polash. Licensed, too, which is a hard thing to manage. The Water Folk take their cuisine very seriously.”

“Because they’re a bunch of hedonists, right?” I said,

Everyone stopped eating to stare at me.

“What is wrong with you?” Melody asked,

“What? Aren’t they? That’s what their whole society is based around, right? Making themselves feel good. I didn’t say it was a bad thing, though it’s probably the reason our technology is so much better---”

“You are not making a good impression, Sam.” Melody said, her voice flat. “Just shut up and eat your egg.”

I finished my food quickly and headed up. I passed Elma in the hall as she was coming back, her pot completely empty, and she stopped, before plastering a smile onto her face.

“Hey!” She said too genially.

“Hey.” I said, passing by her. I could be civil. I wasn’t a racist.