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

 

[Giibi Bibi]

And now Giibi's other hand came to clutch Rook's belt, and then but a second later both started vigorously patting his side, and next came a moment of indecision as she couldn't decide which hand to point with, and then she figured it out and pointed with her right hand and clutched—again—with her left.

"There-there-there!" Giibi whispered excitedly. She'd spotted the rabbit as Rook had, but as of yet nothing surreal or strange about it stood out. It just looked like dinner to her.

"Looks like dinner to me!" she said, her thoughts immediately becoming words. "I wish I had a knife! I could just pounce on it and stabby-stab! I could still pounce on it but then I'd have to bite it and I don't wanna bite it yet because I'm a good girl and I don't bite. So maybe you could—"

She examined the conspicuous haul Rook held and pointed with.

"—crush it with that big box you got?"

She apparently didn't put too much thought into what that might do to the prospect of the rabbit being dinner.

Rook

 

[Rook]

The words spilling out of the gremlin gal's grapehole nearly went in one ear and out the other. Poor Rook was still trying to regather his thoughts and sense of reality as he stared at the hare. Her request for him to crush the lost critter did finally click and he just gave her a firm frown stare as he adamantly shook his head NO. There were valuable, breakable things in it for one (including food stuff) and for another that was too brutal a way to end a life. He would lose his right to call himself a part time hunter if he ended a hare that way.

But while Rook was giving Giibi the silent no and disappointed rejection of her cruelest idea in sometime, fate had other ideas. Goblin like ideas.

Rook always carried a dagger on him for a multitude of reasons. Thing was just a great tool when something needed cut by the edge or drilled by the tip or lightly bashed by the pommel. The Shallows were dangerous as well even for someone as familiar with her streets and alleys as he was.... And in this moment it had potential as a tool of the most sinister kind if wielded by one with green girly grit.

Rook's dagger had it's hilt sticking out towards Giibi right in front of her eyes. The pommel shiny from polished care. His hands trapped by the crate. All she need do was reach out and accept destiny.... And there was nothing anyone could do to stop her....

Giibi Bibi

 

[Giibi Bibi]

No, said Rook through wordless gestures.

"Oh come on, you gotta give me something, I'm hun—" And then out came the dagger, for as soon as Giibi spotted it, she "borrowed" it (do you really need to ask permission if you're just borrowing it for a teensy, tiny second?), and the little spark of frustration in Giibi's eyes was replaced immediately by eagerness and cunning. "Hehehe, now that's more like it!"

The time for whispers was over, and the time for fetching supper was now! But she had to do this right. Had to do this smart. Rabbits were tricky little critters, even if this one looked totally oblivious to Rook and her didn't mean that it was oblivious!

Dagger in hand, somewhat certain Rook might try to hold her back with another shake of his head, Giibi hurried, and pounced! She dove right at the rabbit, hair and dress fluttering wildly in her flight. The whole calamity ended with the table falling over sideways, Giibi ending up in a heap on the floor, and something darting off through the house.

"I MISSED!" she exclaimed. And she had a little scratch on her face, the faintest sliver of blood from her tumble.

Rook

 

[Rook]

Betrayed by fate. Betrayed by his own tool. There was nothing Rook could do as Giibi embraced her destiny. Out came the blade and so the hunt began.... And it wasn't going well from the start.

The table that was knocked over had some of their vases and jars on it. The piece of both now lay all over their hard packed dirt floor from the intensity of their fall. The table itself likely being the goblin's saving grace from having clay shards dirtying up her dress. Clay vessels that were thankfully empty but still saw hours of Rook's time now melted away from the gathering to the making all done by his hands to cut their costs.

His heart sank a bit at that but he couldn't focus on it for long before he was involved directly in her chaos. The hare darted between his legs and caused him to begin tripping. The heavy crate full of very breakable objects in his hands as his balance was thrown off. He had to scramble and think quick if he wished to save months of hard work and nearly shorted pay from going completely to waste.

So his eyes darted around for a solution. A singular one presented itself to him and with a frown he threw himself into. His back slammed into the wall and the crate into his body. A very audible "OOOOOOF" escaped his lungs as all the air in him was squeezed out like paste through a tube. His very being turned into an impact cushion for the contents of the crate. Jars and other things of clay and glass and wood rattled violently, but none of it echoing an act of breaking.

Rook slowly slide down the wall until he was in a seated position with the crate safely in front of him. Little blips and dancing dots of lights all over his vision as every breath hurt yet was required. He was silent as he could make as much noise as he could feel upset right now. Both would have to come later. For now he had saved today and tomorrow for them and that was all that mattered.

As he went down the hare had found itself near the kitchen. It stood up on it's hind legs and side eyed the green girl who had failed to murder it. Tauntingly it looked at her. Still alive. Still standing tall. Definitely going to make a mess of Giibi's kitchen and eat all her food now.

Giibi Bibi

 

[Giibi Bibi]

"That's okay, that's okay, we can get more of those," Giibi said, hearing the results of her little oopsie, the breaking of the jars fallen from the table. She got up and fussed with her dress, straightening it, dusting it. She brushed some of her now wild hair from her face.

Then she heard Rook's butt hit the floor and she glanced over, "Oh! Quick thinking! You saved the thing! That crate you're carrying—heeeeyyyyyy, wait a minute, you brought home presents and you didn't tell me?"

Maybe she would have inquired further, but out of the corner of her eye she spotted the hare looking out of the corner of its eye and just begging to become dinner, sitting out there in the open like that.

Quietly (as though it would make a difference) she said to Rook, "Ssshhh, stay right there, I'm gonna get it this time! It's already in the kitchen! Ready to be cooked!"

Dagger in hand, she started to stalk the hare, as menacingly as she could, giggling some, and saying under her breath, "Hehe, nowhere to go now, little hopper!"

And she feinted left as though trying to juke some human attacker (or lawman), and, certain in the supreme brilliance of this move, pounced then from the right! She howled ferociously as she flew through the air, one arm out to grab, the other ready to stab.

Rook

 

[Rook]

Rook was in a bit of a daze as he sat on the floor. His body hurt. His mind hurt. His sanity hurt. It was too much hurt for one young man to handle and get right back up onto his feet.... At least that was what he was telling himself. His chest and breathing weren't back to normal and his knees and ankles were screaming in protest over the half tripping. His back had yet to weigh in but that was clearly because his ribs were yelling over it.

All in all, he was suffering from pain too bad in the moment to do a thing as Giibi went on the offensive once again.

As the greenie went in all sneaky like and attempted to juke the beast, she was met with failure. Either the hare was too smart for such a trick to work as it broke down her entire thought process in the instant their eye met. Peering as deep into the future as it did into her soul in that moment.

Or it was just too simple and reactive of a creature for trickery to be effective. No thoughts to cloud its judgement in the moment as instinct alone ruled its actions.

As Giibi darted left the hare remained frozen as if in terror or boredom. When she suddenly moved right it bounced away from her to the left further into the kitchen. The goblin girl would find herself missing her prey in her pounce. It going into the kitchen in a panic realizing how close it was to death. A panic that saw it knocking things over. Immediately her kitchen, her sacred space, was a mess. A place not even Rook was allowed inside without some form of tribute in hand.

The young man watched the skirmish followed by the sacrilege then frowned. He quickly found a safe spot for the crate nearby then got back onto his feet. Everything protested till he was standing then began to move. They all calmed down realizing he wasn't in as bad a spot as originally thought. Seemed he just needed to walk it off a bit, although he was more power walking to make sure he wasn't about to spend his next week fixing the kitchen back into shape.

Giibi Bibi

 

[Giibi Bibi]

"NO NOT MY THINGS!" Giibi shrieked, panicking at the panicking rabbit's panicking all over her meticulously arranged kitchen. Now the Hidey-hole was a rickety old hovel in the Shallows and didn't have very many nice things about it, truly a humble home for humble folk, but the kitchen was Giibi's pride and joy—everybody felt better no matter what when they had some decent food in their belly! But now the rabbit had caused a calamity, a ruin of pots and utensils and sacks and everything she had stashed and hoarded and arranged. And it was all a mess, mess, MESS, and she hated messes!

"Rook it's getting away!" she yelled amidst the clamor, even as she thrust the knife wildly at the darting rabbit, racking up impressive miss after impressive miss. "It's getting away and destroying everything at the same time! THIS IS THE WORST DAY! I'm gonna stab it and skin it and cook it and eat it and—AAAAAHHHHHH!"

The hare in utter desperate actually jumped at Giibi and rebounded off of her face, its powerful hind legs launching it to some unknown corner (she never would have seen it, she had her eyes closed in the fraction of a second when the rabbit was flying at her). Giibi fell back onto her butt, both her hands behind her in the attempt to cushion her fall, and there was metallic clatter.

She had dropped the dagger.

Rook

 

[Rook]

Just got home after months out at sea and everything is chaos. The kitchen is a mess with many broken things. The table that got knocked over likely had scratches on it and might even need some fixing. The jars and vases on it were just gone now. Too much of their food was on their hard packed dirt floor and he wasn't a fan of eating dirt. Happened too often when he had fights picked. And then to top it all off the last scene saw his goblin girl on her butt with his dagger sliding out of her hand and bouncing a short ways from her on the floor getting it into a state of needing cleaned and polished again.

Rook just stopped caring about what was real and what was not. The hare literally had gotten itself into the air by using Giibi's face as a springboard. The creature flopped around like a hemp bag in the wind. Thinking after witnessing that wasn't worth the effort and wouldn't be good for him anyways. So instead he just moved on instinct as he rushed towards the kitchen. He leaped forward and caught the hare mid flight out of the air and came falling hard onto the floor rolling into furniture.

Loud crashing followed and some more mess being made as well as blood spilling from little cuts awarded to him for his action. His body hurt and no doubt would find himself bruised. But despite everything the hare was tightly held immobilized in his arms against his chest.

The poor creature frozen as it hoped not moving would make the chaos go away. Rook didn't have the heart to tell it that the chaos was still here and she was not going to forgive the mess made.

"Caught it Giibi." Rook said as he sat up and held out the hare for her to see in a way it couldn't escape him. He was a little surprised to find it was a large hare. Might be the biggest he had ever seen.... Where did Alliria find such a creature and how had she convinced it to enter their home?

Giibi Bibi

 

[Giibi Bibi]

Giibi clapped her hands to her cheeks and gasped, and then in the very next moment, of course, grinned. "Niiiiice caaaaatch," she said. "The least it can do is politely become dinner, hehehe!"

She scrounged around with her hands. "Now where'd that knife go? Ah! There it is!"

Giibi picked up the dagger and advanced toward the presented hare, and she giggled, and said, "You messed up!"

No fuss, no mess, quick and clean, she slew the rabbit, one hand on the scruff of its neck to help hold it steady and the other hand with the dagger doing the job. That stew wasn't going to make itself, after all.

"That stew isn't going to make itself," she said, speaking her thoughts aloud. And now she looked straight to Rook, asking, "Hey, where'd you put that box full of presents?"

The crate, of course, hadn't moved. It was just behind her.

Rook

 

[Rook]

Everything went from green to red in too short a time for Rook to process. What he had expected was for Giibi to take the hare from him or perhaps find some shred of mercy for the poor thing and have him let it go out in the swamp. Instead he got a flurry of words followed by a sudden glint of lantern light off polished metal. Then sprays of warm crimson.

The man just sat there growing number and dumber as this whole situation continued to play out. He just released his hands after some point and let the goblin gal have her prize.

After a bit he did finally process what she had said at the end. He stood himself up and did his best to wipe himself cleanish with what he hoped was a cleanish rag.

"Right, the crate. My pay from the whaling trip." He moved over and picked the heavy thing back up. Into the kitchen he wandered with it and set it on the table. He began to pull out the contents as he spoke and moved the wrapped parcel or jar when he said what it was. "Got things to sell and things to use and things to eat. Smoked and salted whale meat. Raw blubber. Jars of whale oil. Whale bones. Smoked whale blubber. A lockbox-"

The young man paused as he looked at the lockbox he just set down on the table top from the inner most section of the crate. It was the fanciest lockbox he had ever seen outside of the home of one of the merchant lords. Intricate designs adorned the outside along with inlays of precious metals. The hinges and latch and lock also made of a harder but no less precious metal as the inlays. Some kind of strange scribbles or script was drawn around the lock.

And it was heavy. Heavy like it was full of gold or gems or both.

Giibi Bibi

 

[Giibi Bibi]

Giibi spun around on the spot as Rook made his way to the crate and her eyes lit up like it was the first time she had seen it. "All kinds of goodies! Ohhhhh, and that's why you smell like fish!"

Rabbit and knife in hand, she bounced over excitedly, and trailed Rook into the kitchen as he set it down and popped it open and began an inventory of his pay. Giibi, half-listening and half-not, had set the rabbit and the knife down on the slim counter and scurried off to her room quickly to fetch something. Hardly gone a second, she came back with strips of linen bandages (totally not stolen) and as Rook spoke aloud the crate's contents she fussed about his little scrapes and cuts, saying softly to herself, "Oooo, ouchies and cuttsies, here we go, patch that up, make that all bet—"

A lockbox.

Giibi paused in her mending and stood on the tips of her toes, all the better to see the lockbox, regarding it as her eyes shimmered with green wonder. And then she announced, "You got a box in a box!"

And she looked up to Rook then and asked, "But how are you gonna open it? Is there a key? DID THEY FORGET TO GIVE YOU THE KEY!?"

Rook

 

[Rook]

The lockbox was beautiful.... It couldn't be real right? Fake gems and just a fancy outside while the materials were actually low quality. They surely wouldn't place a valuable box inside of a random crate that clearly anyone could have picked up and taken off with.... Right?

As Giibi spoke, Rook just stared at the shiny object in front of him. He was owed pay. They had hired him to be part of the whaling crew, but he had also helped out the ship's carpenter in maintaining it as well as helping with other odds and ends. Extra work that none of the others took on that was honest and should be given extra pay for. But even if all he took was this box and not the whole crate it would have been far more than he was owed still.

But they did owe him and were trying to cheat him.... Not his fault they had left a valuable box inside some random crate. He just picked up the nearest full one to him. He didn't know it was in there so it wasn't really stealing if they had put it in something he was owed....

Rook looked over at Giibi finally and gave her an awkward smile. "Aye.... They forgot to give me the key.... Guess I'll see if it is open then or if I need my tools."

He reached down to try and open it up. The lid refused to budge. It almost felt like it got tighter the more he tried to open it and a growing sense of rejection was in the back of his head. Was like one of those nights he got drunk and had tried to flirt with a girl.

After trying for a bit, he looked over at Giibi again. "Going to get my tools. Why don't you give it a try?"

The young man left to get his stuff and left the box unguarded with the goblin girl.

=================

The quartermaster was in a panic. The crate was gone. The crate was gone. The one that contained his share of the goods. The best oil and meat and bone and ivory. The one that contained the true cargo: a lockbox full of coin, gems, and spices. Payment for their employer for the less than legal and moral goods they had taken on the first half of their trip from Alliria to Dornoch. Payment and a list of the next order of said goods to be prepared and shipped out on the next trip. A box that had been hidden for the entirety of the trip to avoid it being stolen by any number of the sticky hands that made up the crew.

He was going through everything hoping, praying, he had forgotten to put it in the crate. It had been made to look really fancy. A mistake if you asked him, but they had said it needed all of those things for the enchantments upon it.

Magic! He found it to be more trouble than it was worth. Supposedly it would make the lockbox impossible to destroy or open without using magical tools. The only way to get into it the key around the captain's neck as security measure. The same captain that would gut him the moment they found out the lockbox was missing before any excuse could be made.

It had to be found or a river of blood would soon flow down the streets of Alliria and Dornoch alike.

Giibi Bibi

 

[Giibi Bibi]

"Yeah! Go get your tooly-tools! We gotta get this thing open."

Rook departed for just that purpose, and then Giibi, eyes alight with avarice, giggled and grinned and said to herself, "Unless I can get it open first! Hehehe! Then I get first dibs on the goodies!" She seemed to catch herself, and said sweetly, "But I'm a good girl! I won't take everything! Just a reward. A little reward. Because I got it open first."

But she fiddled and fiddled with the lockbox, her tongue sticking out in her concentration. The lockbox's unwillingness to open didn't inspire her with annoyance or anger, but only seemed to entice her eagerness more. She took the lockbox into her kitchen. Metal and wood clattered as her hand swept across the counter and snatched at ladles and spatulas and knives and spoons and she tried all of them in various ways and none of them really didn't much of anything.

She shrugged and then slammed the lockbox hard onto the counter next to the rabbit, the carcass bouncing a bit from the force of impact. Nothing else happened though.

Giibi put her hands on her hips. "Huh. But there's gotta be a way." And she yelled, "ROOK! The lockbox is being mean! It won't open even though I've been so nice to it!"

Rook