Open Log: Big Blue Wet Thing

[goingtobeunwell]

Terrors waking that morning will find a few things amiss with the ship: 1. it's hot and humid inside their cabins, and 2. the ship itself is rocking.  Swaying, in fact, as though the ice beneath them has melted and the ship is moving. Which it is, actually, and quite quickly too. 

The holes in the side of Terror have been repaired, the rigging put up on the masts, the dual wheels of the helm moving as the ship races through the waves on its own. Up above the sun is shining brightly. 
H.M.S. Terror is sailing once more, destination unknown.

Comments

[wishiwasatree]

"I wonder if they're good parents," she says to herself, still watching closely as the whales come to the surface and dive again. "The kind that stays with their little ones. I bet they are. They don't seem like they'd abandon their kin. There's got to be...how many you think, travelin' altogether?"

[bestsir]

"Ten or twelve there, I think," Harry says. "I think they must be as good to their young as a cow to a calf—more so, perhaps. I've heard stories from whalers of mother whales destroying the boats that pursue their little ones, and of old wounded whales who escape the harpoon and retaliate in ways that suggest a powerful grudge. It's enough to make one wonder why we hunt them."

Harry is no closer to being an environmentalist than Strange is to being an anti-imperialist, but seeds of doubt have, perhaps, been sown.

[wishiwasatree]

"Money," Trixie answers plainly. "People do a lot of terrible things for money, Mr. Goodsir. When those creatures lose whatever gold's connected to them, then maybe they'l be safe from our likes."

She watches their tails slap the water, a little wistful look on her face, for a while longer. Then she remembers the balm, and brings her purse to her lap to rifle through.

"Skin's redder than an goddamn apple."

[bestsir]

"Oil, baleen ..." He considers. "Perhaps there will be better materials, someday."

When she remarks on his colouring, he looks at her in bewilderment for a moment before glancing down at the backs of his hands. "Oh. Oh dear. I must look like a cooked crab."

[wishiwasatree]

"You look like you'll be hurting like one," she tells him, finding the balm and prying the tin cap off. "Put this on your face and neck, and maybe you won't face too much of the sun's fuckin' wrath tomorrow morning."

[bestsir]

He does as he's told, wincing a little and cursing his own foolishness in his mind.

"I've never seen sun like this in my life," he admits sheepishly. "Scotland isn't so grim as—as you might now think, but it's never like this."

[wishiwasatree]

"It's not hot like this where I'm from either," Trixie tells him, smearing a bit of the balm on her fingers and getting the tops of his ears. "I'd like to see Scotland. The real Scotland, not that gloomy fuckin' place you brought us too. Must be beautiful."

[bestsir]

Harry didn't know that one's ears could get sunburned. He's grateful for Trixie's attention in that regard.

"It is very beautiful there," he says, wistful. "I was born in Anstruther—" he pronounces it Ainster, "—across from Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth. It's a fishing village—the shore was my playground when I was a boy. Rock pools, sea birds ... I suppose I've always loved the sea and the animals in it, all my life."

[wishiwasatree]

Trixie chuckles quietly, smoothing his hair back and putting a dollop of the stuff on the tip of his nose. She then closes the tin and sets it back into her pocketbook.

"I can see it now, little curly-haired boy chasing after fuckin' gulls and bringing home pockets full of shells. Why, you looked like a boy earlier, running around the deck, shouting and the like."

[bestsir]

He blushes a little, though it's quite impossible to distinguish that from the sunburn.

"My other despaired of us all," he says with a laugh. "We were always bringing home some nonsense or other ... We managed to tame a seal at one point. We fed it on milk and fish, and it would recognise us as we approached, and bark more loudly than you can imagine."

[wishiwasatree]

"Normal children would find some stray dog, or a barn cat," Trixie remarks teasingly. "Fuckin' rabbit, maybe. Your sainted mother."

She opens the drawstring pocketbook and fishes out the biscuits and marmalade sandwiches she'd packed earlier. She hands one to him and begins to eat the other.

"Did you name it? The seal?"

[bestsir]

Harry accepts the food with a surprised murmur of thanks, only then realising just how hungry he is.

"We named him Triton, after one of the Greek sea-gods," Harry says. "Later there was a golden eagle that John acquired from a friend in the Orkneys, and in our flat in Edinburgh, a dog, a cat, a monkey, a hedgehog ..." He stops. "We didn't particularly endear ourselves to our landlord, it must be admitted."

[wishiwasatree]

"Sounds a mess." She chuckles at the thought in between bites of the biscuit. God help whoever had to clean that place.

"So what did you find today? Any new friends?"

[bestsir]

"Nothing to keep aboard," he says with a laugh, "except for some fish on which we shall probably dine later. There was a jellyfish—a Portuguese man o' war, a remarkable thing. It has a body like an inflated air-bladder and, and its longest tentacles were some twenty feet long. Imagine. Miss Sabriel helped me get it back in the water—it is famous for its sting, which can be lethal, so I thought it best to send it on its way."

[wishiwasatree]

"Sabriel's a good girl," Trixie nods, smirking at the thought of the two of them wrestling a massive jellyfish back into the water. She's sorry she missed it.

"Maybe next time I can help you." If he wants the company, which he probably doesn't. "I ain't particularly knowledgeable, but you'll find me willing to learn."

[bestsir]

Trixie has inadvertently stumbled onto one of the most direct routes to Harry Goodsir's lasting friendship, and quite possibly his heart.

"Would you? That would be wonderful!" He almost bounces with enthusiasm. "Tomorrow morning? I shall show you how to cast and pull up the nets, and I should like some help in cataloguing what I find."

[wishiwasatree]

"I should be able to get out of helpin' with the morning meal," Trixie says, feeling like she might have just made a mistake. She has no idea what the fuck she's doing.

Well, that was how it started with the fucking accounts too, and the banking, and she wound up doing both of those things well enough to stay employed.

[bestsir]

"There is no hurry," he says. "But I would be very glad of your help and—and of your company."

[wishiwasatree]

Trixie blushes, and she can't blame it on the sun.

"Can't wait to see what we haul out of the sea." And she means it.