Iris Harper

This is a very late entry connected to the writing prompts of the Saucy Wenches Podcast and it continues the story of Aleera and captain Jack.  The words for this prompt were mage and forest.

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Maelstrom

The stunned silence lasted only a moment. Jack broke into a headlong run back towards the bridge, all the time yelling at the top of his voice "Turn to port. Turn to port now! Sharp! Fast! Damn...!"

The instructions, copiously peppered with expletives, were sharply cut off as the ship did exactly what the captain wanted. It lurched to the left with all the grace of a rusted tub and a heart-wrenching groan. Aleera was tossed hard against the railing, the air leaving her lungs in a startled gasp. She would have been fine, had Dr. Jarvis not also lost his balance. The bear of a man hit her with the whole of his bulk before falling back gracelessly on his backside, but Aleera, caught between the railing and the huge man, toppled overboard and managed only a brief scream before landing in the water with a splash.

"Aleera!" Paul Jarvis was on his feet immediately, peering over the railing into the dark, still water. Another graceless lurch of the old ship almost sent him flying over after her, but he held on.

"Person overboard! Aleera overboard!" he bellowed, and tried to pull off his boots.

Distantly, he heard people take up the cry, running feet approaching, and more yells. The blood was rushing into his head and throbbing in his ears, and he felt close to panic. Can Aleera even swim? He wasn’t sure. He had never asked her. He had brought his daughter into the middle of the ocean on a damn leaking tub, and had never asked her if she could swim!

He managed to brave another lurch of the ship on one foot while disposing of his second boot, and was about to leap into the water when a heavy hand on his shoulder stopped him. He turned with the full intention of throwing a punch at whoever tried to stop him, then paused. Even so worked up, he could not swing at a woman. Even Tilda.

Tilda was the ship's cook, and she was the kind of cook who was a walking advertisement of the merits of her craft. She was a lively, huge woman, impressively nimble for her girth, and walked with a swagger that came from years spent aboard rolling decks.

"Ay wouldn't be goin' off doin' that if ay' 're you, matey. We don' know what is in them waters."

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This is a very late entry connected to the writing prompts of the Saucy Wenches Podcast and it continues the story of Aleera and captain Jack.  It is not, however, direct answer to a prompt, since I found I had to write an entry far too long to be able to include the next to promt words in the story. This entry is a bridge, of sorts.

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Questions

"Jack! Jack, you bloody rascal, where in the blazes are you?"

The booming voice pulled them out of their reverie and Aleera suddenly looked around for a place to hide. Too late. A boar of a man was approaching them at a fast pace that all but shook the deck. He was easily six and a half feet tall and almost as wide. Not fat, though, just plain massive. He was dressed in khaki overalls with lots of pockets, and he carried in his hand a thick roll of papers with lots of text and not many pictures. In his hand, they worked as menacingly as a baseball bat in the hand of someone nicknamed The Wrench. 

His eyes narrowed as he saw Aleera and Jack, and he half raised the roll of papers, pointing it accusingly at the captain.

"Listen, you no-gooder. I do not want to see you with my daughter, especially not in remote places! Alone! She is not one of your port wenches, so be having no funny thoughts, or I will..."

"Dad, it is not what you..." Aleera tried to interrupt wanly

"Isn't it? Ah, so maybe you were just chatting about the weather then! You are far too young to go fooling your dad, Aleera, and I have known this rascal since before you lost your milk teeth, so I know what I am talking about."

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This is my writing prompt for June for the Saucy Wenches Podcast and it continues the story of Aleera and captain Jack. Yay, I caught up!

The keywords for the prompt were rabbit and popcorn, and let me tell you, they were not easy to fit into this story. I felt a bit forced with popcorn, but hopefully the result is satisfactory.

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In the Stillness

Aleera leaned against the wall next to Jack and the two stood there, in silence, glancing at the strange horizon, for what seemed to be too short a time to grasp all the implications. She tried to take in what her eyes were seeing, but her mind seemed incapable of understanding, incapable of normal, logical thinking. Indeed, what good was logic in this madness?

"How... did you guess?" the captain's voice, coarse and chipped, pulled her out from her stunned reverie

"No land." as he turned his face towards her, frowning, she elaborated "No land on the horizon. We were supposed to pass close to a port today, my father told me... some small intermediate place, around noon. He wanted to pick something up or meet a colleague or something... so he was going to ask you to go on land for an hour. He told me that. But there was no land..."

"And that made you make such an improbable guess?" he seemed dubious

"Well... not only... I..." she paused, bit her lip and looked away

"What?" as she remained silent, he repeated, more forcefully "What?"

"Leave me be!"

Aleera tossed her head angrily, causing her dark hair to flail like a whip. She looked suddenly furious and somehow guilty, and pushed herself off the wall as if about to stomp off, but then didn't. There was really nowhere to stomp off to, not now. Instead she stepped forward, to the railing at the nose of the ship and away from the man, and glared accusingly at the still pattern of waves below them. So unsettling, so strange. Ironically, that still sea had done better job than any medicine at settling her stomach. No tossing and shaking, no up and down. The ship was moving, yes, but it was a calm movement in a sea of stills. Yet you had to look close to the ship to realise that the waves were not really waves at all. In the distance, by her some trick of the movement or a haze on the horizon, the sea seemed in movement, seemed proper. Close by... it was all wrong.

"Nevermind." Jack's voice broke the silence "You guessed. It was perceptive of you."

"Oh, please, don't patronise me. I am not five, and you are not my dad."

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This is my writing prompt for May for the Saucy Wenches Podcast and it continues the story of Aleera and the so far nameless captain. While it is rather late, I do want to keep my word and write each of them... so I will start where I stopped.

The keywords for the prompt were smug and calculator.

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A Miscalculation

Captain Jack cursed under his breath, but not quite as low as to not be heard by the whole of the command cabin. He stared at the readings on the screen, then at the old-fashioned map, and cursed again. The navigator and the two unlucky sailors were staring at him with wide eyes, like schoolboys afraid that this time they have really displeased the teacher.

The captain took a deep breath and forced himself under control. Cursing solved no problems, really, and those three unlucky boys were not to blame for what they had seen. Indeed, he was the failing one, for not noticing it before them. He forced himself to calm his features and nod to them in a vague, trying to be approving, manner.

"Well done, boys. Dilan, please run and fetch me Dr. Jarvis. And... keep quiet about that. We don't want panic."

The sailor nodded, all too eagerly, Jack thought, and ran out of the cabin, stumbling in his hurry and hanging on the door to keep his balance. In the best traditions of comedic convention, the door choose this moment to click open, swinging ponderously aside with the young sailor still hanging on it for dear balance. It revealed the puzzled face of Aleera Jarvis, accompanied by the rest of her body. Jack had to admit that there were worse sights to see... and he had seen a few of them this morning.

She had avoided him ever since their little exchange on the lee side of the boat, when her stomach was still not used to the sea-rhythm of life. She looked better since, and he strongly suspected the fish following the ship might be in danger of starving. But she also seemed to hold a grudge against him, for reasons he was not all too sure of. And now she had the worrying expression of a mouse that had just outsmarted the cat. If she was planning to get back at him for some imagined offence, she had picked a very bad time.

"Ah, miss Jarvis!" he quickly cut in with a forced joviality, before she could even open her mouth "I was actually sending this unfortunate young man to fetch your father. Would you be so kind?"

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This is just a short silly something I wrote quickly today (at work!) at the prompting of Tami and Bre from the Saucy Wenches podcast. The writing prompt was barnacles and pineapples, and let me tell you, those were not easy to combine! I didn't edit it much, just in case I get dissuaded and don't post it. I hope you like it.

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Barnacles and Pineapples

"Excuse me!"

Aleera elbowed space on the lee side of the old, rattling barge and bent over the rail just in time to offer the fish some easily digestible food. She sighed, and wiped her mouth with a linen handkerchief, staring at the old wood planks of the ship below her in a desperate attempt to not look at the water. Water! That was the whole bloody problem! She was not good with water. Oh, if it just stayed put, in a tub or basin or something, it was fine. Even a lake was fine, so long as she didn’t actually have to swim in it. It had another shore, you could see it, and it was smooth and calm. She could deal with it.

But not that! Bloody water from horizon to horizon and those big swelling monsters of waves, and the smell! And that was their idiot father’s idea of adventure! Cramping them on an old barge with a lot of other people and collectively offering regurgitated food to the fish! Hi-ho, great fun indeed!

She stared at the wood moodily. There were some weird bumps on the sides that looked a bit as if someone had built a ship out of this fruit that her brother liked so much... how was it called now? Ah, yes, pineapple. Like a ship built out of pineapples. Maybe that was why it was shaking and rocking so bloody much. It had to drag all those clumsy pineapples around.

“Are you okay, ma’am?”

She spun around, ready to deliver a piece of her mind to whoever had dared ask such a stupid question, but then paused. It was the captain. She was aware that she should be at least as livid at him as she was at her father, the old fool, because this was his “mighty ship”, after all. But something in his gaze stopped her sharp words from coming out.

Indecisive, she stammered “I am fine, just fine. I... I thought the fish are hungry, that’s all.”

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