Private Tales Home Port Hustle

[Rook]

"Get those barrels unloaded now you slimy urchins!"

Rook grunted as he helped heave another barrel of oil up from the bowels of the ship he had called home for months now. Crucial to the nightly activities of Alleria's merchants and scholars alike. The ship, like so many more, had set sail up the strait to the Nahas Ocean to hunt down the large beasts of the open depths for their precious blubber that they turned into the stuff that current filled the heavy object he was pushing up as another pulled one after another. A task that was feeling more and more endless every passing moment.

Everything stunk. The ship. The product. The crew. So did he as he worked with and around them all. A scent he had grown familiar with to the point of forgetting it even existed.

When they had started there was a thin thread of light across the horizon. As the last of their product was unloaded the light now dominated the entirety of the sky. He felt exhausted after months of hard labor... but it was finally at an end. The time for pay and time for rest finally arrived. It was going to be a good day!

=========

Rook counted the coins handed to him by the ship's quartermaster. He frowned then counted again.

"Problem?" The older man said as he scribbled in his books.

"It's short." Rook said still frowning.

The quartermaster looked up and used the end of his wooden quill to count the coins. "All there. That is your pay."

"This isn't what was agreed on, and we made enough barrels for the extra pay." Rook said firmly back.

The quartermaster looked up at the younger man. Firm and annoyed in equal measures. "After taking out what you owe us for room, board, and meals with the extra that is all you get.... Or do you got papers to prove me otherwise?"

Rook wanted to sneer. There were no papers. How many of the crew could even read or write? He could but no one signed up by making a contract. The quartermaster knew it and so did he. Nothing he could do.

The young man pocketed his pay as the quartermaster waved him off and went back to his work. He called out for the next crew member to enter. The next to be ripped off after months of hard work procuring a product that had already been sold and was being loaded up into various carts and wagons. Lots of people moving barrels and crates with oil and preserved meat....

Rook had an idea as he noticed it. He looked around the quartermaster's table. No one was paying much attention. Quickly he walked over and picked up a crate nearly too large and heavy for him to carry on his own. Then he began walking. He was going home. It wasn't theft. He was owed and he was just taking him part in goods instead. Bottles of oil and cloth wrapped meat. He had mouths to feed and keep a roof over the heads of after all.

=========

Rook pressed up against the door and made a hand free enough to open it up. Then he quickly grabbed the crate again before pushing with his hips. He entered his home again after months at sea. Familiar yet different at the same time. A smile crept over his face. He smelled of whale, salt, smoke, and blubber as he walked towards the kitchen.

"I'm home.... Everyone still alive?" Rook said first with cheer that turned into fear at the end. By Alliria he hoped they had survived without him home for months.

 

[Giibi Bibi]

"SSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" came the sharp hiss from behind Giibi's curtain.

Then on the tips of her tippy-toes she crept out from the curtain and glanced left and glanced right. Like a stalking hunter in the midst of sneaking up on her prey she tip-toed toward the kitchen, making quite the mighty effort to look here in that little nook, there in that little cranny, eyeing and spying any little hiding place she could. She tip-toed over to Rook, spinning around with a surprising and silent grace to check behind herself before spinning around again and coming to a stop before him.

She looked up to him and put a finger to her lips and did it again, quieter this time: "Ssshhhhhhh!" And then she elaborated, "It's still here."

Giibi had yet to even notice the large and obvious crate Rook had brought home. But she did notice something else.

"Also, you smell like a big fish," she whispered.

Rook

 

[Rook]

The sound of utter fear crept out from behind a curtain. The goblin was sneaking and on the look out. Rook knew what that and those cryptic words meant.... Also her last comment should be addressed. He had gone nose blind as he sniffed himself after she said them and couldn't find anything wrong. The crate jingling as he lifted it slightly.

He looked at Giibi with a frown. "Giibi, is there a spider in the house again?"

It had to be. She always got weird about spiders. They were always small, harmless, and doing them more good by eating the actual pests like the ants, roaches, and beetles. They got out of control when the spiders weren't in the house no matter how hard he tried to kill them using every method he learned and could afford. That magic scroll of pest removal the college sold was too expensive. Who had a spare handful of silver to waste on vellum and ink?!

He began to look around the place in search of where the poor little friend of the house might be hiding away from the frighteningly frightened green girl no doubt climbing up his body by this point to avoid touching the same floor that the poor creature might be touching.

Just home after months and already a crisis he had to handle.

Giibi Bibi

 

[Giibi Bibi]

"No, no, not a spider this time. A rabbit." Giibi grinned, flashing her fangs, so fit for munching, nibbling, and other assorted activities. "That's right. A rabbit. An actual rabbit. I don't how it got in here, but I know something better!"

Though she was excited, she maintained her whispered quiet and her considered composure, certain that too much commotion might scare the hare out of the Hidey-hole. All the while she kept close to Rook's side, one hand clutching his belt as though they were both hunters stalking prey in the low light of dusk or pre-dawn.

"I know what's gonna happen to it! How's a good rabbit stew sound?"

Still, with her focus so intent on the rabbit that might or might not be in the home, Giibi had yet to notice the extremely obvious crate. Her Gram-mama might've said "if it was a snake, it would have bit you", what for being so oblivious.

Rook

 

[Rook]

The man froze up when the green girl mentioned a rabbit was in the house. IN. THE. HOUSE.

Rook slowly turned his head to look at Giibi. His expression blank from how dumbfounded he was to hear her tell him this. A rabbit in the house. IN. THE. HOUSE.

The Shallows were built upon marshland outside of the walls of Alliria proper. Over decades if not centuries the squalor had grown outward like an ever creeping vine choking out the local biome. Streets and buildings and filth had replaced grass and water and mud.... Well the mud was still there because of the streets and filth. There was no way a rabbit had gotten into their house in the middle of the Shallows unless it was purposefully released there by someone, wasn't a rabbit but some magical being, or was a ghost. Only chance it actually could happen was if they were on the very edge of the Shallows near where nature managed to poorly clinge onto life.

Rook was about to say something to Giibi. He needed to say something to the goblin. Tell her that there was no way she saw a rabbit in the house. She was seeing things again and needed to sleep or eat or drink something because she forgot to do that some times....

Then something moved in his line of sight. Something horrid. Something surreal and unnatural....



He froze. Right there under one of their tables was a marsh hare. It looked exactly like the ones they would go out into the marsh and woods outside the city to hunt when they were really desperate for food. His mouth hung open as he just sort of blinked.

It was still there....

He vaguely motioned in its direction with his heavy crate of goods.

"A rabbit...."

Giibi Bibi