Saturday, January 5, 2008

Truth Be Spoken Here

On the surface of some world, somewhere, there is a ship foundering on the open sea. Upon it are the usual crew of lost souls, each adrift between stars and sky and sun and storm and salt and sea and wind.

I have kept my footing on her decks for nigh on two years now, despite all efforts to the contrary.
It does not feel like much of an accomplishment. The ship is called The Doubt for good reason.

A Typical Day:

Dawn fluffs her pink and golden hair at the night and blows the darkness away with long fingers of sunlight... of course, this means nothing to myself or the crew, for we have been up for hours, slaving away at whatever the most important tasks are... we enjoy the work, and the silence and the sound of ocean and wind. We enjoy the darkness slowly turning to light, and the ornately random blanket of stars that sleeps us through the night.

Mostly we like the lack of leadership. We seem to get more done, and well, without their assistance. Madwink McCutcheon, once master of a fleet of hundreds, rips his hair out daily trying to recover the lost position of our lonely Doubt. The crewmen, all of whom speak languages similar to eachother but bearing no resemblance to english, work hard at rowing and patching and pulling nets and rigging, patching sails and tossing buckets. They sing or hum while they work, and occasionally resort to dancing with mops, laughing joyfully.

My first task of the day is a great steaming cauldron of coffee. Me and Raggah are the only ones who really drink it, though Madwink has been known to take a cup every other week or so. Madwink seems to survive on breadcrumbs and air. Raggah and I require sturdier stuff. One cup each, every morning. Occasionally we even find one of our hidden boxes of biscuits and dig in...

After that I get to compile lists, and check and crosscheck and notate and tabulate and reference and cross-reference and recheck and denote and infer and deduct and conclude every stray little piece of information that can possibly be gleaned from our transitory inventory. Even on a ship, the inventory is transitory. Mysteriously so. The numbered crates and boxes and all of their multitudinous contents shift and change and meander and slide and upend and reverse themselves chaotically after I have retired for the night. I have come to accept this as normal. If we ever see civilized land again, well, things might change, but for now, this is what we have to work with.

Madwink is at the helm, cursing and spitting like a cat with a brick tied to it's tail.

"South!!!" he shouts at me. "I specifically told him NORTH and tied it off and he took it and switched it and holy hell we spent God knows how many hours going SOUTH against WIND AND TIDE!!! WHAT THE HELL IS HE THINKING???"

He's thinking he owns the ship and he can do whatever he pleases with it, I specifically do NOT say out loud. There are a lot of things I specifically do NOT say out loud on this ship.

"Up to the crow's nest, Monkey, off you go. Take a bead on the horizon and bring me back th' weather."

I hate the crow's nest. It is not what I was hired for. But then they got me out here on the open ocean, and it was all downhill from there... So, for lack of an excuse, I scale the teetering, swaying heights and peer over the rim of what might as well be a balsa-wood fruit basket at the top of the ship. At least it has walls, I think to myself as I level the spyglass at the horizon and begin to scan through it. I am currently high enough in the air that I will be able to trip any birds that might happen by. Perhaps an albatross. Better yet, a pelican. I can force it to drop its fish.

"Storm before us!" I call down to Madwink. The volume of the cursing an unintelligible muttering grows very loud. I quickly continue to scan the horizon for 360 degrees... just in case something better-- something solid-- something green--

"LAND! MADWINK! LAND-HO!!"

Dear God, Thank You for this opportunity to leave this cursed and You-forsaken beast of a ship. I and the entire crew swear our fealty to You and please, please, please, let us just make sure before--

"HAR! What's this I hear about LAND? There's no land in these parts, Monkey, you've lost your marbles and expect us to follow you! Now, come down from that roost and get back to your business--"

Ah, frick. Too late.


(to be continued...)


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