//------------------------------// // Underway // Story: Washed Up // by ambion //------------------------------// Though he was unconscious to the fact, Flotsam fell quite naturally – if rigidly – into the eyes forwards, attentive vacancy of a subordinate under scrutiny. It suggested everything of tactful obeisance and gave absolutely nothing away and if asked about what the implied metaphorical something was would meet it with uncomprehending obstinance. His head had the cloudy, choppy-weather ache of a hangover, his bandaged back legs itched something terrible and the presence of the First Mate at the edge of his periphery made for confusing, butterflies-in-stomach sensations. The butterflies had a mind to kick and slap and be generally rather thuggish with everything they could get at in there, but on his face none of it would have shown. He refused to recognize the agitated lust for the pegasus and very privately in his head wished the butterflies would go skirmish with that instead and spare him the turmoil. Images of last night flashed hotly, darkly behind his vision. Captain Nauticaa sat at her desk with the appropriate counter-expression to complement his own, which is to say she wore the authoritative, slightly imposed upon, formal, displeased-on-general-principles, hard-about-the-eyes expression of any individual who deals with subordinates on a regular basis. It was a time-honoured tango. The words hung in the air still, though several moments had passed. The actual chair Nauticaa kept was forgettable, the short-coming of someone truly spartan in their stylings, but the broad, scored desk more than sufficed as a trapping of her office. Charts were rolled out under paperweights, delicately inked and inked over with nonsensical notations and symbols from where Flotsam stood. Some of the marks in the wood itself could have been the scars of swordplay, half-tucked away down there. The words still hung in the air. Flotsam could feel the Captain’s scrutiny bearing down on him. Not unkindly, but terribly, woefully exacting, like measuring scales that he sat inside of being swung about with. Her eyes flicked down to his legs in the only motion anyone had made for a while. “Curious,” she said. Just that. Nothing else. Flotsam broke the spell. Or perhaps fell into it. “Captain?” he hazarded. Nauticaa was a dark, dark piebald, green and grey-black blurring together, a vision of colours that might be found by diving into the ocean, deep as one’s lungs could hold then staring down deeper still. It was the colours of ghostly kelp forests and silent things. “You got yourself into trouble and out of it again. End of story.” She waved a dismissive hoof. “The ship’s filly will tell you what to do today. Tommorow we’ll discuss your arrangements.” The words jumped. “Arrangements, sir?” Now the Captain just look put-upon. “Have you put any thought about what you’ll do when we come into port?” Flotsam’s face had been perfect instinctive schooled ignorance* before, now it must have become easy to read because Nauticaa continued, saying, “I suggest you consider it now. I mean to have us in port within three days. We’ll speak about your situation tomorrow.” The Captain softened by minute degrees. “Do you remember anything, yet?” Flotsam let his eye rove the charts. Somewhere in there was a tiny theoretical point that could be called Us here in the ship and another one, equally abstract called Where we’re going. If there was some clue as to the position of either, he couldn’t see it. “No, sir.” Feeling that wasn’t enough, that she didn’t deserve stubbornness and the conversation had moved on he added, “Sometimes there are moments, a second where I nearly do, but it doesn’t stay. Everything I remember is here.” Only then did Nauticaa seem genuinely at a loss for words. Flotsam hadn’t met the Captain all that much in his limited time aboard her ship, didn’t feel he’d really gotten to know her, but for the impressions she tended to give one this seemed a rare enough event for her. “The filly will find you when I send her. Have some coffee in the meantime.” “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” And that was that. Flotsam bowed out and blinked into the glittering, twinkling-ocean sunlight. If he’d been antsy going in, antsy about his teaser of a tryst with Harpoon, well…that didn’t bother him so much now. What was the Captain going to do, put him off the ship? The thought put things in perspective. Around him a smattering of ponies worked at arcane things, checking lines, scuttling above and below decks. A few danced about the, stunted, out of place, ugly improvised mast. Not danced danced, it went without saying,** but rather checking this, considering that, three-quarters complaining that this was what they were stuck with and one-quarter grateful that the damage hadn’t been worse. He tended to stand well back from ponies at work. He knew most of the crews’ by now, now that he thought about it. There was Moon Tide, an earth pony, water-at-night blue with a paler mane and tail to match, she made a better effort at hygiene than most of the crew himself included, if the block of yellowed soap she guarded jealously was anything to go by. She’d made a big deal of giving him the loan of it after the storm, to “scrub up nice,” then managed to be moody that he used “too much.” She’d been in prime position to speculate on the matter, as she’d insisted she watched the whole thing, and even that hadn’t put a damper on her sulk for long. There’d been a too much shine on tooth and in eye as he, as she had put it, “scrubbed up.” Granted, it’d been a bit of scrubbing on the decks with a bucket and age-browned brush, hardly privacy, but still. Above in the riggings was Parrot, jungle-green with exotic flashes of blue and yellow stripes along her barrel and on the edges of her wings. A crimson bandana hung loosely around her neck, showing off an easy smile. Like her namesake she seemed to prefer climbing to actual flight. She nodded her head earnestly as Moon Tide directed her on knots and things. One that preferred to go along with the others and follow orders, Flotsam thought. Then there was Sea Bed, a blue-black unicorn. He didn’t know much about her – she tended to be below decks more than most. She’d never given him grief, by lewdness or otherwise, but something was chilly about her. She and another pony were tying down a load of timber, some of it salvaged from the damage, some of it the reedy, thin banana-curved stuff they’d harvested on the island. The other one took a moment’s thinking to remember the name of: Hop Scotch. Another earth pony, this one a pale brown. Now that he thought about it, he’d only ever seen her at night before, maintaining watch with a little oil lantern. She was slight, wore a cap and a ridiculously cliché eye patch precisely because it was cliché and had once told him there was a trick to it, but what that was he couldn’t remember. A fair enough one to talk to, she seemed to give a token of thought to what he had to say and would make some conversation when it was otherwise quiet and dark, but he preferred not to be caught alone, in part due to the filthy innuendos she occasionally seeded the conversation with. Flotsam thought about “getting caught alone,” with Harpoon and quickly shook the thought aside. Not so quickly that he didn’t relish the pleasant tingle for a second, mind you. At the wheel and having a fairly easy job of it for the moment was the last pony working in sight. Windlass, who was big and staunch and had oddly gentle, attentive eyes for someone otherwise so mean-looking. She stared forwards with the look of a pony capable of keeping attentive to a dreary task for hours on end. He brushed his way below deck, met the rush of disconcerting darkness – it would be twinned by the blinding rush of light when he came up again – determined to get a decent meal into himself before he was called for anything. He suspected, head and hoof be damned, he was going to find himself with more work than usual today. Surprising himself, agreed with the idea, even welcomed his recompense. He’d do the same, nothing official, but a light punishment of sorts, a chance for whatever hapless recruit that had made the mistake to have a few unhappy hours to really learn the lesson of it. Flotsam startled in the dark. He recognized the moment for what it was. He strained, groped after it, but he might as well have tried to grab water in his hooves and lost it. When he came back from it he felt a little woozy, took a second to blink his eyes and head a little clearer and remembered what was certain. If there’d been another pony in that exact spot with him, and if they’d had their night vision in full swing already and if they had good eyes at that and if been looking for it, they might just have seen strange little flashes, like mirrors flickering, for an instant catching the light of very tiny – or very distant – comets. But that was a lot of ifs and not one of them had been realized and so the entire moment passed without the slightest bit of awareness on anyone’s part. What a shame. It might have helped them to notice that, later on. For the moment though, Flotsam walked, half-feeling, half-remembering his way along the narrow walls to the galley, possessed of a simpler, more tangible concern. Well, that and the whole Rivaplút thing. “Food,” he mused to no one under his breath. “Food and coffee.”