//------------------------------// // Chapter 11: Bankruptcy // Story: Set Sail // by Jack of a Few Trades //------------------------------// “He likes me...” I thought out loud. The words rattled around in my head like pinballs. “Gallus likes me.” I said it again, letting it sink in a little bit. After a few moments of staring at the wall, a smile crossed my beak. The smile gave way to a giggle as I retrieved my pillow from the floor. “Pssh. That’s silly.” I fluffed the pillow, rolled over onto my side, and closed my eyes. But then they opened again. “Or is it?” He sure had been acting weird at the ring toss booth, but that wasn’t a crush type of awkward, was it? It felt more like an “I’m not sure I want to be friends anymore” kind of awkward. Did griffons get confrontational when they were in love? I wanted to laugh it off again, but this time it felt different. I hopped out of bed and flipped on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in dim light. Could it be so simple? Was he being cagey because he was crushing on me? The easel in the far corner of the room drew my attention, the canvas facing the wall. I dragged it out from the corner, exposing the week-old stripes of paint crossing the mostly barren canvas. Immediately, memories flooded into my brain. The Harmonizing Heights. The personality test. Gallus stiffening when I caught up with him under the waterfall. Gallus jumping and flying off when I accidentally leaned against his shoulder. I believed him when he said he remembered his roommate needed help, and then he avoided me for a week. In hindsight, it was obvious. “It’s a crush!” I exclaimed, beaming at the painting. “He’s not leaving because I messed something up! He wants to leave… because of me.” The smile melted off my beak like snow in a kiln. “Oh no.” My bowl of shrimp in cream sauce was still on the nightstand, long cold, but I didn’t mind. Now that it wasn’t wracked with guilt, my stomach complained about the lack of dinner it got tonight. Not to mention I needed brain food. I popped a piece into my mouth and went back to the painting. Gallus wanted to run away because he felt awkward around me. That was very different from me needing to find him a new roommate. How could I fix that? Could I fix that? Things were getting complicated. We were supposed to have a fun summer together, but he just had to go and catch feelings. Nothing ever stayed simple in the life of Silverstream. But it wasn’t like he was being clingy! In fact, it looked like he wanted to run away from his feelings. He was probably all kinds of torn up inside! In a weird way, it was kind of cute. My cheeks heated up as the implication of that thought settled in. I sat down on the floor and took another bite of cold shrimp. Chewing helped me think. How could I approach this? For as convoluted as the situation had become, it came down to a simple choice: yes or no. I hadn’t ever thought about Gallus in that way. Did I want to take things past friendship with him? “He is pretty cute,” I mused, tracing the dried paint lines on the canvas with a talon, the blue and yellow stripes sandwiching a soft pink one. “And he’s nice. Responsible. Hard-working.” I imagined him coming up to the doorstep with a bowtie, his crest feathers coiffed just right, taking me out to dinner at that fancy new café down by the shore. We’d go for a walk on the beach and hunt for seashells. Maybe I could take him swimming down at the big coral reef west of Seaquestria. Going on a date with Gallus sounded pretty fun. In fact, it sounded like tons of fun! Gallus would be a great date. But what about our argument earlier? It probably had him messed up like crazy! If it upset me enough to lose my appetite, he’d be pacing the floor and agonizing over every little detail of what we said. It would take a miracle for him to get any sleep, the poor thing. I polished off the last of my leftover shrimp and walked to my closet, grabbing a robe and slippers. If he couldn’t sleep, I could go over there and put his fears to rest right now. And then we’d both get a good night’s sleep! I closed the bedroom door carefully and stepped out onto the landing. Dad had already gone to bed, and the den below was dark and still. A year ago, this would have qualified as sneaking out, but I was old enough now that he couldn’t enforce bedtimes and curfews anymore. On the off chance he woke up and found me absent, I quickly scribbled out a note and left it on the breakfast table: Went to go see Gallus. Needed to ask him a question about the Hootenanny. I’ll be back in an hour. Love, Silverstream. The night air felt invigorating, despite the fact that my beak had started going numb by the time I slipped through a small gap in the forest canopy and landed on the path in front of Gallus’s apartment. I knocked on the front door three times and waited. And waited. I knocked again, but still nothing. Neither of the two bedrooms in the tree’s branches were lit from the inside. I gave it one last try knocking on the door, but got no response. He was probably asleep after all. Even without the emotional distress I caused him, it had been a long day. Still, I wanted some way of knowing I’d see him again soon. After the last week of him making himself unavailable, I had to make sure he knew I was looking for him. But how? I didn’t have any paper to write him a note, and I might have been frozen solid by the time I flew two roundtrips from here to home. Maybe I could carve a message into the front door? “Nah, that’d creep me out too.” I scratched my head, but then my claws bumped something tucked against my ear. A pen! I must have absent-mindedly tucked it there after I left the note for Dad. Sometimes not thinking about things paid off! But I didn’t have anything to write on. Thinking fast, I flew up just high enough to touch the apartment tree’s branches and plucked a leaf from it. The pen had trouble leaving marks that were legible, and I had barely any writing space. The point of the pen stabbed through the leaf in a couple of places, but soon enough, I had my note. I slid the message under the door and let a breath out through my nostrils. Feeling a bit let down, I turned and took off. It was a little silly of me to expect to resolve problems like this in the middle of the night. I could just come find him tomorrow. The tip of my tail twitched back and forth gently as I watched the road below me. I usually didn’t spend a lot of time sitting in tree branches since Griffonstone didn’t have many that weren’t the size of a city block. My legs ached from the awkward position I had to lay on the branch, but that didn’t matter. I was focused. A little discomfort was a small price to pay if it meant I didn’t miss my mark. Hour three of my stakeout, give or take. My stomach rumbled and my eyes sagged, but still I waited. I had to be here if they went by. I had to know what they were doing. I had always figured some sort of underground market existed in the nicer, more civil parts of the world like Equestria and Hippogriffia, but no signs of it were evident while I was in school. It had to be smaller business than what went on in the back alleys of the Griffon Empire, but I knew it was there. There was money in it. I just needed to find the way in. Silverstream would never approve of this. I let out a breath as the incident from earlier ran through my head again. The awkwardness. The lies, each one another shovelful of dirt out of the hole I’d dug for myself. She had come so close to finding out the truth. I came within an inch of giving her a tell-all worthy of the tabloids. If that happened, the metaphorical hole would have doubled as my grave. And then Diamond said to be honest with her. That was crazy talk! The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was in too deep now. No matter what I did, what I said, she would find out. She would be hurt. She would stop talking to me and our friend group at school would fragment. I was living on borrowed time anyway, so what did it matter? Forget that noise. A shadowy form approached from the front, and I froze. The fur on my back bristled and my claws kneaded into the tree’s bark. As quickly as my alert raised, it lowered. Just another regular hippogriff walking past on the path below. They paused at a doorway across the street and fumbled with their keys, eventually finding the right one and entering their tree, returning the scene to stillness. It was about half past midnight now, judging from how far the moon had risen. They probably weren’t going to show up. Surely whatever they were peddling would be in higher demand because of the weekend, but maybe I just hadn’t picked the right tree. I’d encountered the smugglers on this path two nights before, but maybe they took an alternate route tonight. I stifled a yawn, signalling that the time had come to head home, but first I had to get out of the tree. I had camped out on part of somegriff else’s home. If I made any noise, I would wake them. Slowly, I slid myself down the branch, using the claws in my hind paws to cling to the bark. I didn’t make a sound as I left my perch, reaching the ground with a grace I could only thank the feline half of my genetics for. I didn’t think about her as I walked down the road toward home. Then: movement. Far ahead of me, almost out of sight entirely, two shadowy figures crossed the road. My attention deepened. I strained my sight to wring every last bit of detail I could out of the faint moonlight. I broke into a sprint, still taking care to keep as quiet as I could. I reached the spot where I thought they crossed the road and slowed my pace, slipping off the path and following along in the direction they had been moving. I looked for any evidence of hippogriffs, searching for tracks or broken branches. The darkness made that next to impossible. Maybe if I had the ability to follow scent trails I would have been able to find it, but alas, griffons hunted by sight and sound, not smell. After stumbling around between the tree houses for a few minutes, I threw up my hands and gave up, returning to the main path and resuming my walk home. “Must have been my eyes playing tricks on me,” I muttered, kicking at a pebble. I’d just resume my search tomorrow. When I found my way back to my tree, my energy had slipped. Today had been long and taxing. I just needed to get a good night’s rest and forget all about it. My knuckle brushed something on the floor as I entered. I flipped the light on, revealing a bright green leaf that I didn’t remember seeing when I left. Whatever. I’d just clean it up later. I brushed it aside and went up the hollowed-out tree branch to my room, where my still-blanketless bed awaited. Maybe I’d have enough money next paycheck to buy some sheets. I got up early the next day. My thoughts never fully left the smugglers. My dreams had me running after some shadowy figure, in a tunnel that grew ever smaller the further I chased it. The walls closed in slowly, cinching down inch by agonizing inch. The end of the tunnel never got any closer, like I was running on a treadmill. Try as I might, no matter how hard I ran or how loud I screamed, only the walls got closer. Just as stone pressed against my back and knocked me to the floor, I woke up drenched in cold sweat. I didn’t know what it meant, but it was a very unsettling way to start the day. I walked with purpose down the path toward Main Street. The sunlight streaked through the canopy in long rays over my head. The air felt a little warmer than the typical pleasant and crisp days on the mountaintop. I hoped it wouldn’t get hot up here too. Not on my day off. I did enough sweating during the week. Evidence of the High and Dry Hootenanny had vanished overnight, and the normal stands set up along Main Street returned. The tents and the trash left by the crowds had been cleaned up, but I could see that the temporary stage near the main gate to the city was still being broken down. The layout of the tents had shifted a bit after the festival, throwing my sense of direction off slightly. It took me a few minutes to find the street I took a wrong turn on two nights before. Bingo. There, just off to the left of the path, sat a shrub. I traced a line across the wide thoroughfare to another road on the far side. This was it, right where I’d followed the smugglers across Main Street Thursday night. I retraced my steps down that path on the other side until it ended at a T-intersection. One tree to the left, and there it was. The door they’d disappeared into. I knew enough about shady dealings that snooping about would be noticed and dealt with severely. I needed to keep up the appearance that I was just passing by. As I walked past, I took in every detail I could about the door. Red and wooden, nothing worth remembering. The tree it led into wasn’t what I would have expected of a hideout, though. It came complete with a picket fence and well-kept hedges, even with a cutely painted mailbox out front. It looked like a family home. Maybe that was the point? Hide in plain sight, operate out of a place that the authorities would least expect? After a lap around the paths deeper in the forest along the northern edge of the mountain, I came back around and made one more pass by the smuggler tree. Again, nothing that suggested nefarious activity. Why those smugglers went here was anyone’s guess, and it left me with one less lead in on the market connection I wanted. I was directly in front of the house when the door opened. Every muscle in my body tensed to make a break for it, but that would blow my cover. Play it cool, just keep walking. I watched the hippogriff who came out from the corner of my eye, taking in all the details I could. Female, magenta coat, deep blue eyes. She had pierced ears in addition to the pearl necklace and a mane that more resembled big feathers than hair. Everything about her seemed ordinary. She didn’t seem to take much stock in me, casting a disinterested glance in my direction before she stepped out of the tree with a bag of garbage in tow. Maybe I had the wrong house? There should have been some signs that something was up, but I had nothing. It was an ordinary house. An ordinary hippogriff taking out the trash. I’d just have to keep searching for answers if I actually wanted to get— CLINK! Behind me, the girl dropped the trash bag by the path. It must have been full of glass, because it hit the ground with a nearly ear-splitting sound. She didn’t seem to care, walking back up the path without a second thought. I paused as she disappeared into the house. Why were they throwing away so much glass? Could that be a clue? I shimmied off to the side of the road and hunkered down, watching the house for any signs of life. At least one hippogriff was inside, but I would just have to take the chance that they were busy enough not to notice me rifling through their trash. I backtracked around to the front of the house and slunk toward the mailbox. It looked like the curtains were drawn, so my luck held for now. It struck me as a fitting metaphor for how far I’d fallen when I cut a little hole into the plastic bag with my claw. A dry chuckle rolled off my tongue. I couldn’t get away from the trash, whether it be dumpster cleaning or dumpster diving. Maybe I was the garbage all along. At least I was with my own kind now. I pulled the bag open and peered inside, immediately noting a surprising lack of unpleasantness. Whereas the sailors produced only the ripest, juiciest, most rancid trash possible, this one didn’t smell like trash at all. I took a whiff and… Wine. Strong wine. Among a light assortment of general garbage, the bag was mostly filled with empty wine bottles. While it wasn’t my place to judge another griff’s vices, it almost certainly wasn’t the result of a single hippogriff wetting their beak. I didn’t have time to ponder that, though. Every second I sat here was a second I could be caught. I slunk away from the trash bag and resumed my journey down the street. The smugglers were trafficking alcohol, then. It struck me as a little odd considering how much drinking happened back home in Griffonstone, but then I remembered the rave. The back room where they served up swill to those who knew where to look. Alcohol was illegal here. That house had to be a distributor for some sort of underground liquor trade. Emerging from the forest and joining the flow of the Main Street market traffic, I meandered without a course in mind as I chewed over the new information. The market square was busy today, probably making up for the time they lost closing early for the Hootenanny the day before. I needed food, so I swung by a stand selling freshly-caught fish. There were so many varieties on the ice that it made my head spin. The river near Griffonstone only had a couple of species, but those were bony and tasteless. These were huge and colorful. After a few minutes of indecision, I came away with a couple of pounds of shrimp and halibut, both things I hadn’t eaten before. The best part of living here was definitely the seafood. I may have been beaten down and alienated from everything else, but these hippogriffs sure made some good fish. Surely Ty had some spices stocked at the apartment I could use to cook myself a nice meal later. I turned to start my walk back home, but I only made it a few steps before I stopped in my tracks. My attention locked on a tall clay pot sitting on the ground in front of an odds and ends dealer. The pot was unremarkable, but it forced a connection in my head. It looked a lot like a pot that griffons used to ferment wine. I knew how to make wine. I also knew how to sell wine. “How much for that pot?” I asked the vendor. A few minutes later, I dragged a heavy clay pot down the path toward my tree. The vendor wasn’t very keen on haggling with me, and I didn’t really have anything to trade to sweeten the deal. I paid full price for the pot, which left me with just five bits to my name until my next paycheck on Thursday, but I’d be fine. If my idea held any water, it would pay for itself in no time. As tempting as it was to roll the pot for convenience, I knew better. One pebble hitting the side wrong would leave me with a pile of clay chips in the road. I just had to keep dragging it along, lugging it on two legs. At least there wasn’t far to go. I worked up a bit of a sweat getting it down the road, but soon enough I got to my tree. I kicked the door open and then heaved it up the steps, plunking it down on the living room floor with a heavy exhale. The pot doubled as a way to carry my food as well. I took its lid off and reached down into it, retrieving my shrimp and halibut. Those went straight to the fridge. I then grabbed a drink of water and toweled the sweat off my brow. Just one more push up the ramp would do it, and then it was relaxation time. When I walked over to the pot, I took a glance at the incline that led to my room and immediately thought better of it. A short break on the couch was in order before the final push. It wasn’t like anygriff else was going to come in and ask me why I bought large pottery for no reason. My body melted into the cushions when I flopped down. I’d been working myself pretty hard since I came to Mount Aris, and my muscles were grateful for the downtime. I took a deep breath in through my nostrils and let it out through my mouth. While my body rested, my brain had some work to do. If I wanted to get into winemaking, I would need supplies. Yeast and sugar were available at the market. Easy enough, but getting enough fruit to make a worthwhile amount of wine would be tricky. The market didn’t have a ton of selection, and the prices there weren’t super cheap. Griffonstone had the same problem, but grain was plentiful, so the griffon drink of choice was beer. I didn’t know of a way to make an appetizing form of alcohol from fish, so wine was really my only choice, but buying fruit wouldn’t be economical. But I can get it for free. I dug around in the fur on my chest and found one of the thicker scabs from the stackberry bush. Silverstream had told me that they grew wild in the area. That meant they had to be abundant. And freely available! It was the obvious choice. The thorn bushes that had forced me into an uncomfortable situation with Silverstream would get me out of a different one. If this worked, they’d make me a fortune. My tail twitched back and forth on the floor as thoughts of money drifted through my head, but then it brushed against something. I lifted my tail and found a leaf clinging to the tuft of fur at its tip. After a failed attempt to shake the debris loose, I snatched it with my claws, but before tossing the leaf aside, I noticed some dark lines scrawled across its back. Need 2 talk 2 U. ASAP. Ring toss stuff. -SS. I frowned at the note. It was just like her to push the issue even after I’d ruined everything. She never knew when to quit. And writing messages on leaves! She probably just pulled a leaf off of the tree and used it. Like I was supposed to check my floor for random leaves with messages on them! On what planet did she think that would be a reliable way to deliver messages? She could be so spontaneous sometimes that it was a problem. Before it bugged me any further, I threw the leaf back to the floor. It didn’t matter. Not anymore. I’d see her when I saw her. With the newfound annoyance to fuel me, I hopped up and started dragging the pot toward my room. The sting of exertion in my muscles didn’t mask the dull ache in my chest. Watching afternoon thunderstorms bubble up and rain themselves out had become a favorite activity of mine over the last few weeks. As the heat and humidity swelled, so did the clouds. Every afternoon was a game of chance. Would a storm blow over and cool us off, or were we going to swelter in the sun all day and not cash in on the humidity that we were stuck with either way? It was anyone’s guess. Boredom and monotony had nearly pushed me to the point of starting a betting pool, but that would require the other workers to actually talk to me. I tried every now and again, but none of them ever seemed interested in holding a conversation with me. Small talk wasn’t something I shied away from, but I couldn’t make it happen here. “Afternoon!” I chirped, forcing myself to stay upbeat as I pushed a greasy cart that smelled of rotten fish toward the trash pit. The hippogriff passing me cast a sideways glance and muttered a hello back. So went my typical interaction with the sailors, day in and day out. At first I didn’t understand it, but lately, I’d come to a realization. I wasn’t one of them. The navy was like a family. The griffs here held a certain respect for each other. They looked out for each other, even if they were strangers. But me? The outsider who didn’t earn his way in here? Regardless of how secretive Silverstream and Queen Novo may have been about putting me here, I still stuck out like a sore thumb. I hadn’t gone through training. I wasn’t from here. To my knowledge, I was the only griffon within a thousand miles. I just scooped trash out of the ships and would be gone in a few months. They didn’t respect me. Why should they? At least I had the thunderstorms. A rumble overhead brought my attention back to the sky. Sure enough, the clouds overhead had grown dark and pregnant with rain, ready to birth a torrent onto the harbor. Today, I would get the cooldown I wanted. As I returned to the latest ship and began tying the ropes to my cart to lower it into the hold, a few fat raindrops splattered on the deck. I quickened my pace. If we were due for a downpour, I could at least stay dry for a little while longer. I tied off the ropes and hoisted the cart, dropping it through the cargo hatch and into the hold. Once below deck, I pushed the cart to the side of the open hatch so it wouldn’t sit in the rain while I filled it. In the few minutes it took me to pile the trash into the cart, the shower came in. A flash of lightning lit the cabin for a brief moment and thunder echoed off the mountain overhead, starting as a gentle roar before ramping up to a booming peak. The rain funneled into the open hatch, pooling on the cargo deck. It didn’t seem like a good idea to leave it open during a storm, but I hadn’t been trained in how to close it. Thinking back to the way the navy griffs treated me, I didn’t feel a strong desire to go above and beyond. Soaking myself to the bone was enough. The rain trickled between my feathers and fur, the cool water a shock against my overheated skin. I hoisted the latest trash load out and untied the ropes, paying little mind to it. I was going to enjoy the rain. It was just about the only thing I could enjoy anymore. As I pushed the cart toward the mainland, my thoughts drifted toward home. All of the misery and loneliness I dealt with there seemed to pale in comparison to what I felt now. The scheme I’d cooked up the previous day didn’t sound so appealing anymore. My conviction to not worry about Silverstream had dried up. It was just a thin veneer of denial. Ruining my friendship with her hurt. A sharp, burning pain, far worse than anything I would have dealt with if I’d just gone home instead of going through all of... this. Maybe I’d make good on the lies I told her after all. I could just take my paycheck on Thursday and buy a ticket to Griffonstone; put all of the failures of my first three weeks here behind me. At the pit, I unceremoniously turned the cart over onto its side and watched the trash fall into it, assisted by the torrential rain pooling at the base of the garbage pile. I turned the cart upright, and then we started the cycle again. I was about to turn back onto the pier when I nearly jumped out of my skin. An alarm bell mounted to a pole above me suddenly ringed loudly and frantically. Where the docks had been mostly devoid of activity, in seconds a flood of hippogriffs came out of the ships and from the dry dock area. Faced with overwhelming confusion, I did the only thing I knew to do: get out of the way. I pushed my cart into a gap between two crates on the edge of the pier and stood by it. The other sailors cast a few glances in my direction as they went where they were trained to go in case of emergency. The bell rang for a minute longer before it ceased. “What the hell is this about?” shouted a familiar gruff voice. From around the corner came the pale blue form of Lieutenant Cedar Breeze, clad in a bright yellow poncho. “Who pulled that alarm?” He stormed past me without sparing a glance. He disappeared into the curtain of rain, and that concerned me. I assumed the officers would be in the loop on surprise drills, but he sounded just as confused as I was. That meant this had to be real. My stomach fluttered. Were we under attack? Was something about to explode? Was it a rock slide from the cliffs above the docks? It took me a few seconds to process the sudden gravity of the situation. We had no visibility thanks to the downpour, so whatever threat lurked out there could come from any direction. Without warning. Suddenly, being alone sounded like a terrible idea. I left my cart behind and ran as fast as I could on the wet stone, trying to catch up to the one familiar face I had to cling to: my mildly bigoted boss. I caught up to him near the southernmost pier. He was in the process of directing a few sailors off to where they were needed. “Lieutenant?” I asked. He whirled around to face me, his face as serious as a heart attack at a funeral. “What?” “Reporting for… duty?” Cedar Breeze started to roll his eyes, but he caught himself. “I guess I need every set of claws I can get. Go take up watch on the pier. Make noise if you see anything.” “Yes, sir! What do I need to look for?” “Anything.” I gave him my best approximation of the proper salute and marched out onto the wooden pier. This was the most lightly used pier in the harbor, and today only one ship was moored here. I found a position that looked out to the south and hopped on top of a crate. Looking for ‘anything’ didn’t set my mind at ease. It only told me how poorly prepared we were for whatever was coming. I searched around for weapons, but there was nothing in easy reach that I could use. I was defenseless. BOOM! A flash of lightning striking close by nearly made me bail into the water below. It was probably against safety regulations to be sitting out in the open during an uncontrolled lightning storm. But that was probably the least of our concerns right now. We were under attack! Probably? I kept my eyes trained on the sea, or at least the dozen or so meters of it I could view before it dissolved into gray. I couldn’t even see the end of the pier from my position. I heard a few commands and orders shouted over the storm to my right. More griffs were arriving on the scene. Reinforcements were good. I was drenched to the bone and shivering, but I had a job to do, and I would do it. I would keep my watch and hope that everyone else did theirs. A little bit of sunlight returned as the storm let up a bit. Visibility increased quickly as the rain tapered back, which gave me some relief. I could practically watch as more of the immediate area became visible, until— Ship. I jumped up and squinted into the haze, just barely recognizing its outline, maybe a hundred meters out. That’s a ship coming right at me. The lieutenant said to make noise if I saw something. Griffons were built for that. I took a breath in and pushed. “ROOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAR!” I threw everything I had into that roar. My throat burned from it, and I could hear it echoing off the cliffs above the harbor, quickly replaced by the sound of claw- and hoof-steps racing up the dock toward me. Cedar Breeze was flanked by half a dozen sailors. “What in Tartarus was that, recruit?” he shouted. I took a breath in and choked on it. It had been a while since I did that. “Ship!” I coughed. “Due south, a hundred meters! Ship coming right at us!” Cedar Breeze took out a sight glass and followed where I pointed. A fat pause filled the space between the raindrops as we waited. I held my breath. Slowly, the spyglass lowered. “It’s one of ours.” I stole a glance at the ship. The rain lightened further as the storm wound down, revealing more details. The ship only had one mast, which struck me as odd considering its size. Instead of sails, it had oars run out, pushing it toward us slowly. As it closed the gap, I began to notice damage. Jagged stumps on the deck showed where the other masts had once stood. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it was listing to the left a little. “Go to headquarters. Get all available talons to Pier One, on the double,” Cedar Breeze said to one of the griffs behind him. The messenger saluted and flew off. Wordlessly, the lieutenant waved the other griffs on the pier forward, the group taking wing at once and flying out to the ship. I assumed the command to follow didn’t include me, so I stayed put. Over the course of a few minutes, griffs gathered on the pier. They used ropes to reel the ship in sideways toward the pier. When it was perpendicular to the dock, I could see the full extent of the damage. The entire starboard side was riddled with holes big and small. I finally got a look at the bold white lettering on the side of the ship’s bow: Eidothea. Why did that sound familiar? The damage was horrifying up close. Through a peppering of holes I assumed had to be from cannonballs, I could see hippogriffs moving around on the inside of the ship. There must have been two dozen holes dotting the length of it. And yet, somehow, it was still afloat. The ship bumped against the dock with a dull thump, and the dock crew began mooring it. Another crew brought in a gangplank and ran it up to the top deck. In a few moments, the ship’s crew began to disembark. Eidothea’s crew were battered and bruised, many covered in some sort of black tar that stained their coats and feathers like ink. They moved slowly down the plank, shuffling along like they were ready to drop at any moment. The first few off the ship seemed fine, if exhausted, but then one with bandages came out. And another. One griff’s head was wrapped up, and another limped on a bandaged hind leg. They weren’t so filthy, but their injuries seemed to grow progressively more severe. A griff missing her entire left front leg hobbled slowly down the plank, immediately assisted by a couple of dock crew griffs as soon as she reached the bottom. A sudden sense of duty outweighed the shock of seeing such severe injuries. I qualified as spare dock crew, so I joined the group at the base of the gangplank. When another amputee came down the ramp, I pushed my way forward and offered myself as a crutch to a bright green griff with a missing hind leg. Being shorter than the average hippogriff made me just the right height to act as a crutch. “Thank you,” he said weakly, wrapping a foreleg over my shoulders. He wasn’t as heavy as I expected, but then again, I’d been tackle-hugged by Silverstream enough times to know that hippogriffs weren’t as dense as ponies. “Don’t mention it,” I said. “Where are we going?” “Our captain said—” the sailor coughed dryly “—they’re setting up a triage station at the dock entrance.” “Works for me.” I concentrated on keeping my steps even to match with the injured griff’s slow pace. I had a lot of burning questions about why this ship had so clearly been attacked. I snuck a glance up at the sailor’s face, noting his sunken and sad eyes. He looked like he’d been used up days ago. Asking him to tell me what happened to the ship was probably a bad idea, but I figured starting a conversation would help keep his mind off the pain. “You got a name?” I asked. “Nimbus,” he breathed weakly. “Nimbus,” I repeated back. “Do you live up on the mountain?” He shook his head. “No, I stayed in Seaquestria.” We took a couple more steps before he turned his head and looked at me. “I didn’t know we had griffons in the navy.” I laughed. “Turns out I’m the first one.” The rest of the rescue operation bypassed us on our slow trek toward solid ground. Most of the other crew from the ship were in better shape than Nimbus. A steady flow of griffs sped past us in both directions. I glanced over at the others just as Lieutenant Cedar Breeze passed by. Our eyes met, and I half expected him to say something to me, but he just gave me a quick nod. On the step that transitioned from wooden decking to solid stone, Nimbus faltered, leaning more heavily into me. The stump of his missing left hind leg pressed into my back, and he winced. I assured him, “Just a few more steps, buddy. Almost there.” The triage center was hardly set up at all. A few medics had assembled with basic first aid kits, but they were quickly getting overwhelmed by the sheer number of injured griffs. Just like on the dock, the catwalk that led from the docks to headquarters was bustling. It seemed like the entire navy had mobilized. One of the medics noticed us, rushing over and pointing to an open spot on the ground where I could drop him off. We hobbled over to the spot together and carefully lowered Nimbus down. I crouched onto my belly as he lowered himself and rolled off to the side, keeping the stub of his missing leg elevated through the roll. Nimbus more or less collapsed onto the ground and immediately relaxed on impact. Instantly, he was surrounded by two medics. “Thank you,” he muttered, though he wasn’t looking in my direction. I left the medics to their work and started making my way back to the ship, finding my spot among the stream of sailors heading that way. It looked like the last of the crew was making their way down the gangplank now. The group on deck had shrunk to just a few, and workers from the dock were making their way aboard with tools, probably to stabilize the ship so it didn’t sink. When I got back to the group around the gangplank, they had helped the last of the Eidothea crew. The situation seemed well handled, but I decided I’d hang around as long as I could in order to avoid going back to trash detail. There were no more griffs to assist to shore, but surely I could find some other job to assist with. A few dock workers carried various items down from the ship, and I gravitated toward them. Unskilled labor was my forte. I spread my wings and flew up to the ship’s deck. When I landed, my eyes went wide. There, standing right in front of me and surrounded by several high ranking officers, was a familiar face. His salmon-pink mane was greasy and tangled, and a big, blood-stained bandage wrapped around the pale yellow fur of his arm. “Ty?” I asked quietly to myself. Now I knew why this ship’s name sounded so familiar. The group of navy brass started moving toward me, seemingly headed for the gangplank. I sidestepped, hoping to avoid getting noticed. The higher ranking griffs didn’t even look at me, but they had all walked ahead of Ty. He had a limp thanks to the injury on his shoulder. Unlike the commanders, he noticed me straight away and paused. We stared at each other for a brief moment. I could read how exhausted he was from his eyes, red and embedded under dark, deep circles. “Hey, dude,” he said, flashing me a tired smile. Words failed me. “Hey.” He kept on walking before either of us thought of anything else to say.