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 Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 5:40 pm
“Cap’n, where we goin’?”
The voice was remarkably loud and carried well on the sea air, punctuated by the shrill, obnoxious screeches of seagulls and the gentle bumping noises of boats at port. Its owner was small for such a big voice, and by the look of the harassed-looking woman towing him by one wrist, she thought so too.
“We’re going down to the ship,” Katrina answered, pointing out through the maze of masts to where an enormous wooden vessel straight out of the 1600s floated, creaking loudly with each rise and fall of the sea. She didn’t carry any goods, but the sixteen men behind her were more than loaded down with a week’s worth of provisions. The boy followed her gaze to the ship and blinked, mouth forming a wondering ‘o’ and bright green eyes widening in awe.
“Really? That’s ship?”
“That’s her, Melchy. The good ship Ghost.” She smiled when Melchy shivered in anticipation, his ears and tail twitching with what she had come to recognize as excitement. Then Melchy grinned and started to run, tugging on her hand.
“Come on, Cap’n! Let’s go see it!”
“Her.”
Melchy pulled up short. “Her?”
Katrina nodded. “We call our boats ‘she’ and ‘her,’ Melchizedek.” The pirates behind her all nodded in a chorus of ayes. Melchy blinked.
“…go see her, then?”
“That’s right.”
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Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 10:56 am
"Huuuuurry," Leviathan whined, tugging on Sable's pant leg. The young boy had finally convinced his father to take him down to see the ocean (it had taken many hours of pleading) after Rook had let him watch a pirate movie. Hearts. Rook didn't even care the movie was rated PG-13. As long as it kept Leviathan out of his hair, the Nobody was game. Sable was going to have to speak to him about that.
But for right now, he had to follow the small child running down to the piers, shrieking gleefully. He wasn't sure why Leviathan was so enamored by the ocean, but had a sneaking suspicion he had 'lobster armor' on his arms and very wave-like hair. He'd have to ask Juno about it whenever the man came over to visit the boy. "Leviathan! Wait up!" he called, unnerved by the idea of the boy racing around the docks. He was two, he couldn't swim!
Leviathan, however, was unphased by the water lapping at the wood. He quickly out-maneuvered his father, not quite ready to have his father spoil his fun, and darted down another pier. Laughing and not really watching were he was going, he collided with another being and toppled backwards. "Ow!" he exclaimed, blinking as he sat up.
...whoa.
Sable came running down about that time, fumbling over apologies as he knelt to help Levi up.
Scowling, Levi pushed his father's hands away and picked himself up, brushing off his shorts before looking at the boy. "Hi!" he greeted him, a wide grin on his face. He walked closer, inspecting the kitty when he realized just what those men were.
"AARRRRR!" he screamed in delight.
Sable looked bewildered, before finally glancing up at the boy's guardian...guardians? Oh...my. "I'm r-really s-sor-ry ab-bout him," he stuttered. "No manners."
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Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:16 pm
Melchy was quite unprepared for a spontaneous collision by what looked like a kid wearing half a lobster. He squalled loudly when he was run into, ears going flat and tail puffing up ridiculously as he prepared to confront whoever...whatever...had just attacked him.
He blinked, swallowing an angry growl when his assailant first greeted him and then screamed at him. Ar? Melchy wasn't entirely sure what that was supposed to mean. Taki growled at him like that; was the boy trying to play dinosaurs? His tail smoothed and started to twitch as Melchy tried to figure out what had just happened.
While the boy puzzled, his guardian seized the oppurtunity to snatch him up and keep his claws away from the little boy who had knocked him over. Leviathan's shout had perplexed her just a little bit less than it had perplexed her ward. Here was a child who had apparently grown up on a steady diet of pirate stories.
"Oh, he's all right," she said with a dismissive wave, turning back to glare her men into continuing their walk down to the ship. One of them remained behind, contriving to lounge as he stood, eyeing the man and child who had intersected them.
"What on earth washed up on these shores now?" he asked balefully, betraying the thick accent that Katrina lacked, an accent that would undoubtedly make the small child's day. Katrina glanced over at him, frowning, and set down Melchy, who immediately scampered over to stare at Leviathan.
"Hi! Who you? Why say arr?" he asked, all at once. Katrina sighed heavily and looked at Sable with a slight smile.
"Katrina Chandler, captain of the good ship Ghost, at your service, sir."
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Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 8:22 pm
Leviathan wasn't alarmed as Melchy puffed and flattened his ears. Not much alarmed the toddler, as it were. He just watched boy and his mother curiously, waiting as paitiently as he could for the woman to put the boy back down. He wanted to play! He couldn't play if the other kid was way far away like that.
Levi began squealing with delight as the one remaining man spoke, clapping his hands as he stared up at him. "Arrrr!" he yelled gleefully, quite pleased at least someone understood what he was going on about. About to ask him why all his friends were substantially less pirate-y, the toddler was succesfully distracted by the black cat scampering over to greet him.
"Hi!" he cooed happily, turning to face the other boy. "I Levi!" he exclaimed proudly, unable to pronounce his full name. "Who you?" he asked, before realizing he hadn't finished answering Melchy's question. "Arrr!" he said again, pointing to the men shuffling away. He looked up at the woman. "Arr?" he asked, tipping his head to one side. Why didn't Melchy understand?
Sable could only stare for a good few moments. This had got to be some joke.
"...S-Sable Hazard," he replied, too stunned to say much else.
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Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 8:33 pm
Katrina looked down and watched Leviathan enthusiastically giving what he obviously thought was a proper pirate greeting to her cat. Melchy didn't seem to get it, and Katrina decided immediately that she needed to expose the child to mainstream culture as soon as possible. Just so he would know what people expected him to be like. Then she turned back to the stunned young man who seemed to be the boy's guardian.
"Pleasure to meet you, Sable Hazard," she said, giving a short bow, "is your child half lobster?"
Probably one of the more unusual things she'd said, but life didn't get much weirder anymore. Hawkiss kept an eye on Melchizedek and Leviathan, keeping his mouth shut. If his Cap'n wanted his opinion, she'd ask for it. For now, he was just going to watch the kids.
"I Melchy!" the cat-boy announced proudly, deciding just to give his nickname because it sounded a lot like the other child's. Katrina seemed to miss Leviathan's questioning 'arr', but Melchy decided to just play along and see where it went. "Arr!" he said brightly, holding his hand out like he was holding a pistol. Hawkiss had taught him that game in a bout of Navy and Pirates playacting. Melchy liked being the Navy.
Katrina coudn't have ended up with a child less inclined to piracy.
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Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 9:03 pm
That was probably one of the oddest things Sable had ever been asked in his life. Working in a laboratory for the past six years, he had indeed heard some very strange things such as '...why is there a desert in the middle of the lab?' and 'i don't suppose you know how the acid ended up scoring the ceiling, do you?' both of which had to do with the Nobodies residing there, but that was beside the point. For the first time in years, Sable was rendered completely speechless.
"N-no!" he finally stuttered. "He's human!" Though clearly, he was not. "Well...I'm not sure what Juno did to him," Sable admitted shamefully. "Other than steal his heart to replace with a fake one," he added, sighing.
Leviathan smiled brightly as the other boy finally responded to his 'arr's and...held his hand out? Levi tipped his head to one side. "Whazzat?" he asked. Leviathan was not well experienced when it came to playing pretend. His brothers liked to sit him down in front of the TV or a coloring book and that would be the end of it. "Wanna play?" he asked, not really concerned with what the boy was currently doing. "Oh, I know! We esplore!" he exclaimed pointing to the beach.
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Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 8:05 pm
Katrina had been asking a lot of unusual questions recently, such as, ‘Exactly WHY the kid is upside-down in the window?’ and ‘What do you MEAN you want him to use a cat-box?’ Oh, and ‘Why the HELL did my cabbage hatch into a cat?’ It hadn’t occurred to her that her question was odd enough to render someone speechless. She waited very patiently for Sable to regain what composure he still had. But it turned out his answer didn’t mean anything to her anyway. Stealing hearts was metaphorical, wasn’t it? She frowned a little bit, trying to figure out what Sable meant, and then just shrugged.
“Mine’s half-cat,” she said with a shrug. “Looks like a lobster to me, and that’s no insult, sir. Lobsters are very well-adapted creatures.”
“Cap’n, you’ve put yer foot in yer mouth,” Hawkiss remarked, turning from where he was still standing, watching the kids, to look at Katrina.
Melchy looked puzzled when Leviathan didn’t seem to understand what he was doing. It was even more peculiar when Levi asked him if he wanted to play. Obviously he wanted to play! What else was the hand supposed to mean? Weird, he decided, but his eyes lit up when Levi suggested exploring the beach.
“Okay!” he said brightly, ears flicking upright and tail lashing in excitement. “We go under th’docks like buccaneers!” he said, pointing enthusiastically and puffing up when he used the special word Hawkiss had taught him. Buccaneers were a special type of pirate, Hawkiss said. They snuck around and stole things when no one was looking. “We go before they see,” he added in a hushed voice, pointing at Leviathan’s dad and his captain.
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Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 11:05 am
Apparently, Katrina did not understand the severity of having one's heart stolen. Fortunately for the pirate captain, Sable did not wish to exert the pure effort it would take to explain something so complicated to someone who probably didn't have the same scientific education as a high schooler. He sighed. "M-maybe he i-is half-lobster," he muttered, feeling a bit defeated.
"Yeah, yeah!" Leviathan agreed eagerly, bouncing up and down, despite the fact he had no idea what a buca...buca...bucaneer was. Curiously, if one was paying enough attention, one might notice the waves started to become a little larger and come in a little faster the more excited the boy got. He nodded at Melchy's second suggestion, putting a finger to his lips. "My daddy scardy," he told Melchy, keeping his voice low. "Would say no," he added with a sage nod before slowly starting to slink back the way he came. He waited for Melchy to follow until he found a spot close enough to the ground to jump.
It was more like a flailing-fall, and he landed on his feet, but fell back in the sand. Fortunately, it was soft and wet. Leviathan shrieked with joy, rolling around happily before sitting up. He shook himself and looked to Melchy. "Look!" he shouted, giggling as the waves seemed to come up to lap his feet and the shells littering the sand. "Shells!"
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Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 10:05 am
Huh.
Katrina looked thoughtfully at Sable, realizing once again that even speaking the same language, there were dreadful gaps in human communication. She sighed softly. "There always seems to be a language barrier," she remarked eventually. "So tell me, Sable Hazard, what is your field of expertise?"
Somehow, she couldn't picture him in anything requiring physical activity.
Melchy scampered after Leviathan as soon as he started running, hiding a smile about Levi's scaredy father. "Cap'n strict," he answered with a shrug. "Likes watch me. Would say no too," he added in a whisper, fully aware that sneaking away would be difficult. But when Levi jumped off the dock, Melchy followed him immediately. He landed on all fours, in a sort of crouch, and jumped back up, tail straight out behind him for balance. Then he scrambled after Levi again, yowling and dodging way from the wavelets that seemed to be visiting the other child. "Shells..." he said, picking one up. "Cap'n says shells was aminals once,” he said. Then he picked up five and stuffed them up his sleeves. "'S'treasure," he said to Levi, lowering his voice conspiritorially.
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 12:44 pm
Sable blinked. "E-excuse me?" he stuttered, not sure what she meant by her remark. They were both speaking English, so that surely couldn't be it. "Oh, w-well, um, I-I'm a r-reas-search assit-tant. From the C-cabbage Patch." He stopped, unsure whether he was at liberty to say any more about his profession. It was all very top secret things, you know, and he didn't feel as though carelessly blabbing those things was a very dignified thing to do. "I-I'm g-going to assume y-your child c-came from a cabbage?" he asked, feeling safe in such a question. The boy was half cat, after all.
There was no way one of the pirates...sprouted him, or something.
Leviathan had to wonder why Melchy called his lady 'Cap'n' and not 'mommy'. Juno wasn't 'mommy' either. Were there no mommies in this world? Were they just a figment of imagination in the duckies world? How terribly disappointing!
Leviathan looked up as the other boy yowled and frowned. "Don' be sissy!" he called, remembering one of the things Rook would yell to him. "Is o...oce...water!" he said, opting for the easier word. He blinked as the cat started to speak, tipping his head. He picked up the nearest shell and peered at it carefully. "Animal?" he echoed. "Nah uh! Animals ain't treasure!" he called, nevertheless stuffing them into his pockets. It couldn't hurt to save them for later. Or, better yet... "We gotta bury 'em!" Like real pirates did! "With X!"
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 5:45 pm
Katrina just shrugged when Sable didn't understand the first comment, deciding that it really wasn't that important to begin with. She tilted her head to one side, realizing that this man was one of the people responsible for her problem.
"So you're one of the men behind this infernal custom, then?" she asked, her expression pleasant and her tone light despite her words. "Because I really hadn't expected, first of all, to find a cabbage in the hold, and, second of all, to find a cat in the cabbage. Is that how things are supposed to go, or are you working on fixing that?" She was still completely pleasant, even joking a little, because she would never give up Melchizedek for the world. All the same…it had been an unpleasant surprise.
“I’m toying with you,” she apologized quickly, aware that the young man might easily find offense and think that she was insulting his work. “I couldn’t have asked for the kid, but I wouldn’t give him up for anything.”
Melchy flattened his ears at Levi called him a sissy, altogether too aware of what Cap’n and all the rest of the crew thought about his water aversion. “Not sissy,” he growled, tail lashing back and forth. “It’s waaaateeeer,” he meowed, and then tilted his head. “Is too treasure!” he insisted. “Mista First Mate say ever’thing pirates touches is his treasure!”
Bury them? What? Melchy frowned a little bit, not entirely understanding what Levi was suggesting. “Bury?” he asked. Cap’n never said anything about burying treasure, and neither had Hawkiss! “Okay…” he said, crouching down and looking up at Levi. “You show how. Be cap’n. This time.” The last two words were almost but not quite underscored with a growl. Melchy was still captain of whatever situation he was in, regardless of whether or not he understood what the strange lobster boy was saying to him.
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 7:23 pm
"It's not me," Sable squeaked, looking absolutely terrified. He took a step back, swallowing as his mind raced a million miles a minute. The young man wasn't offended or insulted, he was simply scared out of his wits. He just worked in the lab and was only starting to see the 'cabbage children' in the world for the first time. "I-I just w-work in the l-lab! Beh-hind the scenes!" he tried to explain, anxiously pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "I-I d-don't know w-who finds h-homes for the children!"
He didn't relax until the captain flat out admitted she was messing with his head. "Oh...um...I see," he said slowly, adjusting his glasses even though they hadn't slid down yet. "Well...I d-didn't ask for Leviathan either. I h-had to take him e-even though I already have two charges." He shrugged, chancing a tiny smile. "I wouldn't g-give him back either."
"Water ain' scary!" Levi called, shaking his head. "Don' be such a girl!" he added, once again remembering Rook's words. "Don' think your mista's right," he said, inspecting a shell closely. Melchy was a pirate and he was touching all the shells, but they still didn't look like treasure. Treasure was supposed to be shiny and pretty and worth a lot of stuff. That's why everyone wanted it. Shells, they being scattered all over the beach, could not have possibly been wanted.
Oh well. "Yeah. Bury 'em," he confirmed, remembering the pirates on the movie his brothers let him watch. He crouched down next to Melchy, dropping the shells to the sand. "I captain," he purred, starting to dig through the sand with his hands. He started putting the shells in and pushed the sand back to the way it was and drew an 'X' over the sand with his finger. "Your turn."
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Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 7:13 pm
Katrina momentarily regretted what she had done, but to be completely honest, she hadn't expected the young man to have a heart-attack. Honestly, he reminded her of a certain pansy neighbor of hers: terrified of swords. Except, this one was terrified of...well...everything, apparently. She sighed heavily when Sable seemed to relax, mildly disappointed to see that the man was still tense and up-tight about her. She wondered if it was the garb or just that she was a stranger. She didn't meet many timid people, and he honestly perplexed her.
"You have more than one child?" she asked curiously, looking at Sable. The man didn't seem like he could discipline a rabbit, let alone a rambunctious toddler. But perhaps he was different in private. "I have only Melchizedek and the crew, although they're more than enough trouble." Trying to put the man at ease, she herself relaxed and leaned against one of the dock's heavy pylons.
"I's wet an' cooold," Melchy insisted, but his ears went flat and his eyes narrowed when Leviathan called him a girl. "I'm no girl," he hissed and was about to add one of his loud pirate curses, but he stopped, reminded of the heavy cuff across the head he'd get if Katrina heard him. Instead, he just spat angrily at Leviathan, growing even more irritated when the boy contradicted Hawkiss. "We's pirates and you ain't so who's smarter?" he singsonged, adopting the mocking tone Cap'n often used with the crew when she put them in their places.
The anger, of course, was gone in an instant as Levi showed Melchy how to bury his treasure. He quickly scooped out a hole and deposited the five prettiest shells into it before kicking sand over them and scratching the same sort of shape over them that Levi had. "Why's X?" he asked, tilting his head to one side. "Pirates don' bury. We take wif us," he added, maintaining his superiority complex from a safe distance.
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Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 12:47 pm
Sable took a deep breath. It wasn't Katrina's fault; the poor man would settle eventually. It was all strangers that frightened him, and the large group of men she was traveling with didn't exactly put him at ease. The frail man just sort of shrugged. "I d-don't mind too much. R-Rook and S-Saint a-are alm-most grown." They didn't require even a fourth of the attention Leviathan downright demanded.
Leviathan rolled his eyes. Melchy was a bad pirate; didn't he know anything? "Shu'up!" he told the cat, waving him off. His brothers weren't pirates, but they knew what they were doing too. "X is fer diggin' it back up," he scoffed. Duh. "So we's can find it again when is time to dig!" He shook his head. Clearly, he was going to have to teach the other boy all about pirating. "Bury it so no one takes it!" People were greedy like that.
"Then, when they think ya don' have it no more, you take it wif you." Levi nodded sagely and kicked at the waves lapping at his feet. Now he was bored. "Okay. So now what?" he demanded, giving Melchy a studious look. Pirates must do something else worth playing, right? They were pirates. It was practically a law they were interesting and fun to play with.
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Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 1:46 pm
What an age difference between the rest of Sable’s children and this one, if the other two were almost grown! Katrina was curious as to why, if someone had already raised two children, he would want to raise another, but she assumed that it was just something peculiar about this man. She almost shrugged but stopped herself and kept her expression indifferent. Then she realized that Sable was barely in his twenties. How on earth…? “Beg your pardon, Sable Hazard,” she began in a soft, lilting tone of voice, “but you don’t seem old enough to have grown children.”
Melchy snorted, pointing at the waves lapping around Leviathan's feet. "An' wha' about when water takes the X away?" he mocked back, drawing an X in the path of the waves and making a self-satisfed noise when the lapping waves that were altogether too eager to come and visit Levi washed it away. "We keeps our gold in differ'nt places," he said, but then he shrugged. "Maybe someday Cap'n'll take you on th'boat, an' we can show you," he said with a smile, and then tapped Levi on the shoulder and bounded off under a dock.
"C'mon," he crowed. "Le's steal a boat!” he screeched.
The screech brought Katrina straight out of the conversation and into the real world, and she looked around for her young charge. He was nowhere to be seen. Katrina swore and turned to berate Hawkiss, but her first mate was already overseeing the loading of Ghost. Katrina kept up her litany of pirate curses, some of them colourful enough that her crew avoided using them, and looked around. "Where in the bloody hell could that kid have got?" she snarled, furious.
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