//------------------------------//
// Take the Position 
// Story: Washed Up 
// by ambion 
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Flotsam had been left to stew. He recognized the tactic, but even knowing that it did little to alleviate the anxiety. The Captain’s quarters were strangely silent, somehow distinct and apart from the rest of the Mother of Mercy, though in truth it was all around him. A window looked out on the calm ocean. He stared at the loose, chaotic, recurring patterns of light and swash and felt he could almost see the division in his own mind, almost see the blurred boundary where his newly acquired memories connected to the rest.

The cabin itself gave away little of the Captain’s personality. The main of it, where he stood now had a plush carpet under hoof, old as it was rich and meticulously maintained. A weapons cabinet held two impressive swords, each the twin of the other. They shone with their upkeep and looked absolutely like they were not to be crossed. 

Spread over and pinned to the Captain’s desk was a map. Daylight, cut into sections by the window laid itself in a series of rectangles across its surface. On the map lay small things: coins of a make and value unrecognizable to him. A small tool, made of brass, with sharp little nibs and an angle the use of which felt he could puzzle out given time with it. Various little tokens marked what he figured must be ports of call.

And, in the centre of it all: a compass. He brought up it in his magic. The glass covering was yellowed with age but, as he rocked the device the arrow inside righted itself diligently as ever.

“North,” he said aloud, almost transfixed as the needle teetered and tottered across the line finally to settle on it perfectly. Though, he realized, that wasn’t the direction they were sailing. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Something brushed past Flotsam. The compass fell in a clatter atop the coins below, chinking and scraping loudly amidst their own. 

Captain Nauticaa took her seat. First she stared down at the map; she could come to him after.

Then, after a sweltering time, she did. There was no smile. It’d be weird, on her. But there was an air of total control about the Captain. Relaxed and, if anything, bored. Or weary. “Flotsam.”

“Yes M’m.” The clicking of his hooves to attention was reflex. That it drew her gaze only left him feeling embarrassed. 

“Do you remember your true name?”

“No.”

“Do you remember how you came to be in the middle of the ocean?”

“No. I, uh, don’t. No.”

“Do you remember how it came to be that you needed rescue?”

Flotsam recalled his burning, shrivelling lungs. The plunge of water. But that had been the beginning of things, so to speak. Not the end of them. “Sorry. I don’t.”

“So,” Nauticaa put her hooves together under her chin, leaning forwards over the table slightly to do so, “just what can you tell me, exactly?”

Flotsam tried over a few things in his mind. None sounded very good. He tried to work up saliva in his dry mouth, then pressed on with it. “I’m very grateful to you and your crew and your ship for saving me.”

Nauticaa regarded him for a moment. “It’s a start.” The chair groaned under her as she slid it back. She went to the cabinet – its two shining weapons magnets to the eye – and opened a lower cupboard. Out of it came a decanter and two glasses, which she set between them. 

“Water?” she offered. 

“Thank you, ma’am.” He took a good, long draught of the stuff and a sighed a misty breath of satisfaction.

“There are some things I will tell you, Flotsam. Namely that this ship does not revolve around you and your mystery. As much of a curiosity as it is to us all, accommodating you and your doubtless need for answers will never be a priority with me. Do you understand?”

“Oh, uh, yes! Yes of course.”

Nauticaa nodded. “Good.” Here what might just have been a hint of something slipped into her voice, if one could imagine that. “As it is, Flotsam, you present certain difficulties to me. And while you’ve given me no cause to hold any personal sentiment against you, there’s no denying that you’re an unnecessary complication to the smooth running of this ship.”

The bewilderment must have been plain on his face. 

“Sex,” sighed Nauticaa. “I’m referring to sex. The male sex, presently. You understand where I’m going with this?”

Much to his anxious confusion, he did. 

The Captain indulged in another half-glass of water. “You are, from one way of looking at things, a commodity here. From another perspective, you’re a trophy. From another still, an indulgence. Worst of all: a status symbol. I can’t have that.

“The reality is this: without putting a hoof wrong you can’t not be a problem here. For that you have my sympathy. Truly, you do. But you will do every possible thing you can do to avoid actively or even passively enabling this situation to be messier than it is, understand?”  

Flotsam nodded before he could properly speak. “Yes, ma’am.” His mouth had gone dry again.

“I see that you do. Good.” She stood and brushed past him again. “Come here,” she ordered.

A curtain door separated the mainstay of the Captain’s quarter’s from her more private space. She slipped through with a whoosh of stirred air. Flotsam glimpsed, past the Captain’s dark colours, her bed. 

The curtain fell unceremoniously over his back as he stepped in.

And then he was right next to the bed. As was she. “Whatever you want to call the nature of it, the fact of the matter is you are indebted to me. And a crew expects a captain to collect on that, in full. To do anything else would give them cause to question me.

Relaxed, cool, in control, happy. Flotsam was none of these things. None whatsoever. He could feel the Captain’s critical eye roving over him critically, taking the full cut of his jib. 

All his jibs, whatever they were.

He was jolted by a sudden knock. Not to himself, thankfully, but to the wall of the Captain’s quarters. A flat and resounding and surely loud enough impact to be heard by any of the nearby crew, should they be listening.

It dawned on him that of course they would be. And one revelation deserved another: that was the point of it. The Mother of Mercy would hear what it expected to hear. Who would believe otherwise?

The Captain gave a few more intermittent knocks, some blush inducingly firm. Only for Flotsam though. Nauticaa’s emotion was never naught but serious and stoic. “Now, Flotsam, you’ll do pushups.”

The absurdity was overwhelming him. He obeyed from sheer bafflement. One. Two. “How many?” he grunted as he pressed out a third and settled more smoothly into his stride.

“We’ll see how you are after the first one hundred. I expect sweat and a certain degree of exhaustion. It doesn't hurt to impress the crew."

There was a definite flash of wry amusment in her features that time, all the worse for the sensibility of the plan. Flotsam grit his teeth and bore down for the long haul. Yo ho ho he muttered silently, and the first beads of sweat gathered on his forehead.