Collie of the Wild

by elmagnifico

Aboard

Winona stared into the fog, trying her best to make out the “ship” that would bring her out of the swamp. All that availed her senses was the smell of wet ground, coupled with the sight of the thick gray cloud that had settled over the swamp. Insects and who-knew-what-else were making too much noise for her ears to be any use.

She was just considering returning to Solitaire's shack to ask where his friends were when she heard it. A rhythmic thump, separate from the songs of the cicadas and the humid throb of the swamp. Smell alerted her next of the approaching object, her nostrils speaking to her of black tar and used wood. As the sounds grew louder, more aromas made themselves known. Sweat and rope, chipping paint and grease, evoking images of plows and summer furrows.

She turned to where the smells and sounds were coming from. Now that she was looking at it, the fog in that direction was getting brighter than the surrounding mist.

Then, like a cragodile breaking the surface of a murky pond, the ship emerged.

It certainly looked wooden, its groaning sides bringing to mind more stationary structures. A pair of lanterns, one a simple flame in a lamp, and the other glass globe inhabited by a swarm of blinking lights, lit up its front.

A voice pierced the fog.

“Fend off!”

A pair of misshapen bundles flew over the side of the ship swinging down on ropes to bang against the wooden panels. They were then caught between the ship and the platform she was standing on, taking the impact with a muffled thud.

A rumbling brogue split the silence that fell.

“Alright, the beacon's lit, all hands on deck to offload supplies! You two, get off your feathered duffs and do your jobs, or I'll have your guts for garters! I don't want to stay in this neck of the swamp any longer than we've got to.”

The exclamation also snapped Winona out of her stupor. She couldn't just stand here watching. She needed to make her presence known. So, she spoke.

“Hello?”

A series of rumblings and scraping noises were the only responses she got from the ship.

“Hello!”

As she looked on, a wooden box approached the edge of the ship, accompanied by more rumbling and scraping.

Frustrated, she let out a series of short barks.

The rumbling stopped.

A beaked face, like a bird's but stubbier and with a twinkle in its eyes not found on its smaller cousins, peeked over the edge of the ship. Its appearance reminded Winona of the Warden from earlier. Instead of inquiring about lawbreakers, the beak split into a smile, accompanied by a happy-sounding voice.

“Ahoy there! What's a dog like you doing in a swamp like this? Don't you lot live on the other side of the mountains?”

Winona ignored the questions. They didn't mean much to her, what mattered was that she had the ship's attention.

“I want to get home! Solitaire said you'd help me!”

The bird-face quirked a feather where his eyebrow ought to be.

“Did he now? Well, it's not my place to give permission about that sort of thing. Come aboard, you'd best talk to the captain.”

With that, a pair of feathery arms ending in scaly hands extended over the side. There was something odd about those arms, besides their alien makeup, that Winona couldn't quite place, but she padded forward and gripped them in her paws nevertheless. Despite her misgivings, they pulled her up the side of the ship effortlessly, and when she got to the top, Winona saw why.

The hands that had hoisted her belonged to two separate creatures. Their arms were shaped more like hers than Solitaire's, although the rest of their bodies belied any relation. For one thing, they stood on all fours, rather than balancing on their back two like Winona had found she could. Despite their posture, the pair of them were only just shorter than she was. They weren't identical, with one having darker accents on his white feathers than the other, but besides that they looked almost the same, like a lighter shaded, more stocky version of the Warden. The both of them spoke in unison, sounding for all the world like one voice.

“Welcome aboard the Honeysuckle!”

Then, they lost synchronization as one on her right flashed her a smile and spoke.

“I'm Mikko. I'm the handsome one.”

The darker of the pair pushed his doppelganger onto the deck, an identical smile plastered on his face.

“I'm Tuuli. He's actually the stupid one.”

Winona could hear, see and smell others moving on the ship, but their details were lost in the flurry of activity that was these two.

“Am not!”

Like the Warden, they were more akin to birds and cats than herself or Solitaire.

“Are too!”

However, these two were shorter and squatter than the swamp guardian.

“Your mother's ugly.”

Moreover, while they had none of the Warden's grace,

“We're twins, idiot.”

they were speaking and moving with an almost bewildering speed.

“Doofus.”

Winona wasn't sure why,
.
“Bentbeak.”

but these two annoyed her.

“Mangefeather.”

Then, she realized why.

“Dweeb.”

Another memory. A collection of feelings.

“Blueberry.”

Charging onto a field, the smell of dirt, white feathers and seedstock scattering into the air.

“Redcurrant.”

The sounds of indignant squawking mixing with her barks.

“Numb-head.”

These two were different,

“Flybrain.”

in the same way the Warden was not an egret,

“Butt.”

but they were still annoying.

“No you.”

Very annoying.

“You infinity.”

Their back-and forth was interrupted by an authoritative voice from the other side of the boat.

“IF YOU TWO DON'T GET US PUSHED OFF IN THE NEXT THREE SECONDS, I WILL PERSONALLY DEBEAK YOU BOTH AND USE YOU FOR FISHBAIT!”

As Winona watched, the twins shared a look, and then replied in unison.

“Aye, captain.”

With that, they both jumped over the side. Winona moved to the side of the ship to see if they were alright, but before she could look the two soared back into view, each held aloft by a pair of wings.

They turned a showy loop-the-loop above the ship and then flew down to the platform she'd left. They pushed against the ship, chattering away and each disparaging the other's pushing prowess.

“They bicker like a pair o' old hens, but their hearts are in the right place. Thank the First their head plumes are different colors though, or I'd never tell the two rapscallions apart.”

The voice was louder than the hat-owner's, and riddled with a strange brogue rather than a drawl. It was also coming from right behind her.

Winona spun around, and was greeted by the sight of yet another person standing there, completely different from the others she'd met or could remember. This one stood a bit taller than she did, on two limbs. Unlike her own, the newcomer's lower legs ended in hooves, with the relevant limbs covered in thick hair and curved in odd ways. The upper body looked similar to her own, but without the thick fur covering anything, and a strip of cloth around the widest part of the torso. Capping the odd creature was a head that reminded her of rumbles and moos, with the short stubby horns and wide nose sealing the relationship, even if it was a distant one.

“Captain Nigans, master and commander o' this fine ship and sorry excuse for a crew, at your service. Although from the sound of it you'll be at mine until we reach port. I assume ya can work to earn your berth?”

Winona wasn't sure what a berth was, she assumed it was a place on the ship. So, she straightened her back and looked the captain in the neck. Staring at her eyes would be a challenge, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She wasn't sure why she knew that, or to straighten. It just seemed the right thing to do. The words followed naturally.

“Yes ma'am!”

The captain's eyes softened at that.

“Good to know. Shake on it?”

Winona looked down in response to motion. The captain had her right hand extended, fingers open.

A quick flash of memory passed behind her eyes.

“C'mon Winona, shake paws!”

Ah.

She laid her right hand in the captain's, and moved along as the captain shook it up and down. In her peripheral vision, the captain's face contorted a bit, expressing mild disbelief, followed by a wide grin that made Winona nervous.

“You grip like a wet fish, but no worries. We'll fix that right quick.”

With that, the captain grabbed her right hand. The captain arranged her fingers so they were gripping the captain's hand, and then the digital undulation began in earnest.

“Like that. Faith, what have you been doing with your life, no clue how to shake hands? What's your name anyway, hound?”

“Winona.”

“Well, Winona, nice to have confirmation old Solitaire's still kicking. Heard he died months ago, et by a timberwolf.”

A sudden twinge made Winona turn, hoping for some reason to see the Solitaire's home twinkling there as she'd left it. Instead, there was only a bare hump of grass and the floating platform, slowly moving away as the ship drifted.

Winona stared at the swirling mist in horror. There was no hut. Just an empty island and a ball of blinking lights floating in the mist. Was any of her experience real? Had Solitaire been alive at all? Already, she could feel her memories of the hermit fading, like he had, into the mist.

Behind her, she heard the captain take a deep breath, and then a short snort, followed by a mutter. Something about smell and blinklings.

“Nice to see you finally got some proper security, you old goat!”

Winona looked at the captain askance. An odd sentence. A goat was a small quadrupedal animal that had to be kept away from the gardens, and that made no sense. Who was she addressing, what did it mean?

Before she could work herself up any further, Winona heard the reply, muffled slightly by the mist.

“Yer mother was a winged buffalo an' ya father smelt of elderberries, you decrepit air witch!”

Winona listened to the voice. The cadence was the same, as was the pitch and tone. She even thought there might have been a bit of that wheezing laugh at the end there. That was Solitaire alright. The captain and her friend exchanged a few more insults, but like with Mikko and Tuuli, Winona couldn't hear any malice in their voices. Nevertheless, she gawped at the disappeared hut, or where the hut ought to be, for a few more seconds before one of the twins spoke from right at her elbow.

“Don't mind the captain. She's been telling old Solitaire to hook his blinklings up to a glamor for as long as I've been doing this run with her.”

He turned, and slapped a hulking creature that was standing there.

“Ain't that right Pooch?”

The creature didn't turn around. His (she could smell that much) voice was deep and gravelly, like he was chewing a stack of pebbles.

“It's VAN PUCH. Puh-oock. You cut ze cuh-sound off, like you lose your head as you say it. Dumkopf.”

Winona could hear him snuffling the air, and she realized he was probably taking in her scent. She was not quite sure how to deal with this. Indecision reigned behind her eyes as “Pooch” turned to face her. He was about as much like the captain as the twins were like Solitaire. His nose was pushed in, he had no horns, and his teeth, what she could see of them, were snaggled and sharp.

Even as she took in these details, she could see his eyes doing the same. One of the wrinkles above those too-large eyes raised like an inquisitive eyebrow. Should she to ask him if anything was wrong? Introduce herself? There was something familiar about that face, but she couldn't quite place what it was.

The captain, calling from somewhere outside Winona's field of vision, cut in before conversation could start.

“Pooch! Get your stubby tail belowdecks and stoke up the engine! I want us in Freedom City by morning!”

Pooch paused and drew in breath through his mouth, one finger extended into the air. He looked at Winona for a moment, then towards the back of the boat, and then breathed out. His reply sounded subdued.

“Aye keptin.”

His eyes shifted left and right, and Winona could smell a new emotion on him. It wasn't fear, although it was close. It wasn't anger either, although she could see blood rushing to his face.

“Vhen keptin gives you liberty, hyu come down ze hold, yes? Show hyu vat I do on zees ship.”

Before Winona could come up with a response, the creature called Pooch padded towards a square piece of wood sitting on the floor, lifted it up, and climbed inside the hole beneath.

“You don't have to go, you know.”

Winona turned, and there was the captain, her arms crossed over her chest, eyes glinting and a hard expression on her face. Before Winona could ask what the captain meant, she continued.

“Winona, Pooch has no authority over you. He tells you to do anything you don't like, you tell me. I don't think that's what he meant, but the fact remains. You don't have to do anything you don't want to, so far as he's concerned.”

Winona wasn't sure what that meant. She wasn't sure what Pooch's offer had meant either. There were a lot of things she wasn't sure about, but this boat was her best chance at returning the hat, so she decided to keep her puzzlement to herself.

“Yes, ma'am.”

And, before Winona had time for second thoughts about expressing her doubt, a set of claws had seized her around each of her upper arms, and she found herself frog-marched around the boat. A griffon spoke from her right as she moved. Her nose told her it was Mikko.

“Right, first things first, we need to get you familiarized with the boat.”

Tuuli spoke from her left.

“You are unfamiliar with nautical terms, yes?”

She had no idea what they were talking about, so she shook her head. The twins grinned in response, the two of them crying out in joyous unison:

“Crash Course!”

The two griffons swung her around so she was facing the front of the boat.

“Port,” said Mikko, pointing across her chest to the opposite side.

“Starboard.” Tuuli continued, mimicking his brother.

Winona looked down at the two arms, crossing in front of her and indicating into the distance. She tried to sneak a word in edgewise.

“Okay.”

With that, the left (or was that port?) claw pointed straight ahead.

“Fore.”

She was spun around, and then they were facing the back of the boat.

“Aft.”

A thumping noise called her attention downward. A leg was projecting around and in front of her from the right, and the paw at the end of that leg had the first toe extended downward.

“Deck.”

Then, a claw was back, gesturing around them.

“Foredeck.”

Another pointed at the back of the ship, which was raised enough to have a door in it.

“Poop deck.”

Then more and more gyrations, getting faster and faster as the Twins picked up momentum and enthusiasm. First stop was a door set into the deck.

“Hatch,”

Open the hatch.

“Hold,”

Close the hatch, spin around to one of the posts sticking out of the deck and pointing off to the left.

“Portmast.”

Another whirl, with the portmast's opposite twin coming into view.

“Starmast.”

A box in the middle of the deck.

“Envelope locker.”

A piece of wood sticking out of the poop deck.

“Wing-lever. (Don't touch!)”

From there the spinning just got too fast, and before Winona could protest properly she was sitting on the deck, unsure of which direction was up, let alone starboard. All the scents were mixed up by the whirlwind pace, and her hearing was not helping either. For a moment, all she could hear was the rhythmic thump-thump from below, presumably her heartbeat.

It took a few seconds for her to realize that the thumping was not, in fact, her heart in her throat. It was coming from directly beneath the poop deck, a steady beat that was part roar, part whine. The sounds deepened, and then there was a metal-sounding crunch, and a splashing sound started coming from the stern. She looked up at Mikko, who was standing off to a side, new headgear perched upon his skull. She quirked an eyebrow at the exuberant twin.

“What, never heard a rune engine go? I'm sure we included that in the tour.”

Winona frowned. He was wearing her friend's hat. She snatched it off him and stuffed it back under the band around her waist, and growled her annoyance. It wasn't his hat. Wasn't hers either. No-one, barring her friend, ought to be wearing it.

Something long, thin and projectile-like flew into her peripheral vision. An old, ingrained habit stirred beneath her conscious mind, and caused her to snap with her mouth rather than her hand. Before she could think to do anything else, the flying pole was securely trapped between her jaws.

She turned, trying to find the source of this oblong intruder. The pole made a swishing sound as she moved. There was Tuuli, coming up from a crouch.

“You'll be helping Mikko pole the boat.”

From behind her came a squawk of protest.

“I think not! She'll be helping you pole the boat, whilst I get some shuteye.”

Tuuli responded by pointing at something over her shoulder and yelling “Look!”.

Curious as to what the excitement was about, Winona turned, and instantly felt an impact on the pole, which jarred her entire upper body and made her teeth hurt.

When she got around to where Tuuli had pointed, there was only Mikko, holding his head, and the sound of squawking laughter from behind her. She turned to face the prankster, but only got another jarring hit for her trouble.

Once she'd rounded on the culprit, he was rubbing a sizable lump on his head, the perfect mirror of his brother's. His smile was only just cracking at the side of his beak, but Winona could hear it in his voice.

“I suppose I deserved that one. You head below Mikko, I'll teach Winny here how to pole.”

She frowned. That was not her name. She spat the pole into her waiting hands and growled.

“Winona. My name is Winona.”

Tuuli only winked, which gave her the feeling she should have kept quiet.

“Right. So, here's how we do this. I stand over here, on the port side, and fend off anything I see in the water, like a cragodile or a sandbar or something. You stand over there, and do the same thing on the starboard side. The rune engine pushes us through the water, we just keep the ship from colliding with anything that might have developed in the channel since we were last here.”

And so, thump-thumping away, the ship chugged off into the swamp.

Winona, however, only had half her mind on the water ahead. There didn't seem to be anything in there, just a few water plants hovering in the murk. One of them bumped off the ship as the Honeysuckle drifted into it. Seeing nothing threatening, Winona chanced a glance at her waist. The hat was still there, tucked under the band where she'd put it after Mikko swiped it. Why was she carrying it?

The answer was simple: It belonged to a friend of hers, one she could remember working alongside for a long time. Most of her memories, the ones she still had, were shared with that friend.

Friend.

Realizing what was bothering her, Winona set her pole onto the deck and rushed to the stern, barreling by the still-woozy-looking Tuuli.

She thundered up the steps to the poop deck two at a time. She passed the captain, who was standing by what she now remembered was the wheel, and giving her a funny look.

Winona ignored that. Time was of the essence.

When the end of the ship and the railing would let her go no further, she took in breath. She'd need a lungful to make herself heard.

“Solitaire!”

The shout almost echoed in the swamp, before it was eaten by the muggy atmosphere.

“Thank you!”

Having delivered her message, Winona strained her ears for an answer. She wasn't particular about what her new friend said. What mattered was that he had heard.

No response came from the thick miasma that they were leaving behind. Only the chug-chug of the rune engine, whatever that was, reached her ears. Silence reigned for a few more seconds, before the captain's brogue broke it.

“I'm sure Solitaire understands. He was never the best at remembering thank-yous either.”

Winona looked back at the captain, who was not watching her. In point of fact, the captain was looking at what was ahead, and turning the wheel in front of her as she did. Watching where the boat was going.

Winona realized she ought to be doing the same thing, from her post up front.

Settling back into her role, Winona sighed. The work was easy enough. Just use the pole to push anything that might sink the boat. Cragodiles were more than happy to get out of the way once they were aware of the obviously-bigger-than-them thing about to run them over. Floating logs were less cooperative, but did not actively fight her pole's firm nudging.

An introspective smirk played at the edge of Winona's lip. This was better. She wasn't lost, or at least her path ahead was pretty clear. Work on this ship until they got back. The captain knew the way. Moreover, she could actively work towards that goal, with good, honest, physical labor.

Her motions became practiced. Back, forth, back, forth, in tune with the throbbing from within the ship, she shifted her gaze across the arc of swamp she could see. No logs in the path, no rock-like backs breaking the murky water's surface so far as she could see.

After a bit, she heard Mikko come out from beneath the deck and replace his brother at the station opposite hers. Tuuli promised to relieve her once some time had passed. In the interim, the work proved occupying.

Back, forth. Side to side. The familiar motions let her slip away in a haze of familiarity. Her vision swam. She'd done this before.

Ripples of grass passed by, and she could feel her tongue lolling about as she gamboled in the sunlight. There was a great rumble ahead and to her left, and she could smell the deep, earthy bovine musk with undertones of road dust and sweat, and amplified a hundredfold by weight of numbers.

Her friend was there too, moving alongside the herd, keeping up with the rhythmic thumps of a solid set of legs. Their job was to make sure the group all made it home safe and sound, on time and without breaking anything. This her friend accomplished by guiding their momentum with a nudge here, a whoop there.

For herself, the job was simpler, albeit more strenuous. It involved watching her side of the group and making sure none of them got out of formation. To do this, she had to patrol up and down the lines of heaving, sweaty – cow, that was the word – and running in wherever she saw deviation. Once there, she would bring the offending drifter back into line with well placed nips, barks and shoves.

After that, it was back to patrolling, matching the movements of the oscillating herd and keeping them on task. Back and forth, the rhythmic motion of her survey took her. Back and forth, the thunder of hooves mixing with the joyful whoops of her companion and the stolid moos of their charges. Back and forth, back and forth...

“Fend starboard! Sandbank!”

Mikko's shout drew her out of her reverie, and she thrust the pole down, pushing hard against something deep beneath the surface. The ship didn't float left like she'd thought it would though. In fact, it drifted right, towards her, despite her shoving. She dug her feet in, and she could feel her claws cutting shallow furrows in the wood as she pushed.

There was a deep, rumbling rubbing noise to signal her failure. The ship jerked slightly, setting her off balance. She tried to adjust like she'd been learning to ever since waking up, but the movement, back and to the right, was too quick and unheralded for her to anticipate, and her nose became intimately familiar with the wooden surface of the deck.

“Stupid dog, don't you know 'Fend starboard' means push something so the boat goes right? I thought we went over this!”

She cringed.

“Tan your hide Mikko, it's what you get for whirling the poor thing around the place like a Sphinxian dervish. It's a wonder she knows which way starboard is!”

Winona could hear the vitriol in the captain's tirade, even if the words themselves were hard to follow. So it was with some trepidation that she listened to the hooves approach her from behind.

As the hollow thuds of hard hoof on ungrounded wood came closer, Winona's anxiety rose with its progress. She propped herself back up with the pole, noting the rough texture of the wood as she used it for leverage. Before her fears could be vindicated or allayed, the pain in her head returned with a vengeance. Absent since before she met Solitaire, the pain had faded from her perception, but now made up for lost time mercilessly. She yelped, trying to give vent to the pressure and hurt, but falling far short of any relief.

Winona could feel her legs going out from beneath her, and she gripped the pole in her paws, trying to arrest her downward progress. She failed, not even noticing the splinters that pierced her fingers, the fire behind her eyes occupying her sole attention now. Letting the pole go, punctured paws scrabbled at her head, having no effect even as her knees gave out and the deck rose abruptly to meet her.