Living on Writer's Block

Little Jiminy was the first to fall to his knees at his captain’s side. 

“Cap’n, cap’n, are you alright sir?” he asked pointlessly. “Stay with us, sir, and we’ll get you help, promise!” He leapt up then and ran to find Wilhelm, who came hurrying as soon as the distraught Jiminy explained in rapid and not-so-coherent words what was happening. Wilhelm quickly ordered a few of the crew to help him get the two unfortunates to the Osprey where he had more supplies available. Lee stood nearby, watching over his shoulder, and at the navigator’s words he quickly interjected.

“If I may, sir, I’d like to join you all, and it’d be an honor to help carry the cap’n to your ship.” He waited hopefully for Wilhelm’s reply, looking down seriously at the two still forms on the deck.

The aristocratic gentleman looked him up and down quickly, and nodded. “Right, but be quick, young man, these two are mighty bad off.” Lee nodded eagerly and immediately bent to the captain’s body. He and a few others from the crew of the Osprey carried the two unconscious people to the side of the ship, and after a good bit of puzzling and finagling, they managed to get the comatose bodies onboard without further injury. The navigator quickly had the crew-members carry Samuel and Ramona into the captain’s cabin, and then he had Jiminy and Lee both stay to help him. The trio worked long hours over their captain’s many grievous injuries, after Wilhelm hurriedly diagnosed Ramona with severe exhaustion from her tortures; they laid her on a spare cot brought up from below, and let her sleep on in the corner as they labored devotedly over the captain.

… .. . .. … 

Many days later, Ramona finally regained consciousness. Her eyes blinked open slowly, and searched the sun-filled room idly for a long moment as she waited for the past few days to return to her. When it did, she shuddered at the memory of the tortures and of the void she’d felt, and then she blushed hard as she remembered that Samuel had carried her. She started to push herself up, but with a sharp cry she quickly sank down again, and bit her lip against the pains wracking her still desperately weak body. She paused as she sank, leaning back on one elbow, and put her head forward, heaving several quick gasps against the pain and willing herself not to cry out again. Her teeth tightened on her lower lip, her jaw trembling as her eyes remained squeezed shut. Slowly she let herself down onto the cot, and laid her head back on the thin pillow crafted from an old flour sack, her lips parted in agony. Her chest heaved as she fought to calm her body’s nerves, willing away the pain. Her hands found the thin wool blanket and twisted her fingers into it, fists shoving hard at the cot. After an eternity her breathing evened steadily, and she grew calm again, eyes still closed, focusing on regaining control. When at last she could ignore the pain, or at least bear it, her eyes fluttered open and she looked around the cabin, her hands relaxing their anguished hold on the blanket. Her brows lowered fractionally in confusion before she puzzled out that she must be on the Osprey, since this was clearly no cabin from the Matron’s ship, and she couldn’t be anywhere else, given the gentle motion beneath her, barely perceptible after so many years spent practically living on the sea. A voice from across the room startled her. She looked over quickly.

“Good to see you awake at last, Redhawk,” said Samuel from where he sat in his cot, propped up on thin, slightly smudgy pillows donated by a few of the crew. 

“H-have you been in here, too, this whole time?”

He nodded. “They got me worse than I realized. According to Wilhelm, they weren’t sure I’d last another day. But I did, clearly; and so have you, it appears, missy.”

“Don’t call me missy, please,” she said quickly. “Just because you had to carry me doesn’t make me a missy.”

Samuel’s lips curled faintly in amusement. “And I hope you heard my apology before I did that. I didn’t like it any more than you did.”

“Small comfort, that,” she replied with a smile. “I just hope it doesn’t have to happen again.” She sighed, but it ended with a sudden sharp groan. Swiftly her fingers twined themselves harshly in the grey wool blanket, her nails digging through the material into her palms.

“Steady on, Redhawk, you’re alright,” Samuel said. “You’ll be alright. Just breathe, remember? Just breathe.” He turned his gaze lazily to the wall beyond the foot of his bed again and leaned back, shutting his eyes apathetically.

“How —” she choked, glaring out of half-opened eyes at him, “— how — would you — know,” she managed to force out between tightly clenched teeth, her voice shaking with barely restrained emotion.

His eyes opened again, glaring at the ceiling as he recalled the first day he’d shaken off unconsciousness. “I got a bit of a dose of the stuff myself, Redhawk. I woke up a good bit before you and immediately had to learn how to fight back that pain. So —” he shot her a bitter smirk, “Yes, I do know about it.”

She stared at him, still fighting the pain, tensed against the cot as her breath caught in her throat. 

He glanced over at her again, and a faint glimmer of concern showed in his blue eyes as he watched her struggle yet again with the pain. “Easy, lass, remember —  there’s nothing really hurting you. Focus on what you know is there, what you know you can feel. It’ll be over soon, I promise. Breathe, and focus on what you can feel outside the pain.”

She rolled her head to face the ceiling again and closed her eyes, focusing on what he’d said, focusing on the feeling of her skirt wrapped around her legs. She focused on the feel of the thin wool blanket on top of her, the rustle of the cot beneath her as it changed shape to fit her into a gentle, cradling hollow. Finally she drew a shuddering breath and relaxed again. She drew another deep breath, and another, and then slowly opened her eyes, in control once more. She looked over at him slowly, wary of firing the nerves again.

“ So — what’s your plan now, Samuel?” She swallowed hard, keeping her voice level.

He looked up at the ceiling, eyes keenly studying the woodwork, drawing a breath thoughtfully. “I don’t know. To be quite honest, you were my only client, so I don’t have an official trade anymore. I’ll have to think about that one for a while.” He looked back at her, one eyebrow raised. “What about you? You can go back, now, since the witch is gone. Porthaven’s probably got a lot of places an enterprising girl like yourself could make a good living in.”

She sighed heavily. “I don’t know. Porthaven, as promising as it may be, is full of bad memories. I don’t really want to stay; but I don’t know where I’d go, either.”

He chuckled humorlessly. “Maybe it would have been better in the long run just to let things run along as they have been the whole time. I could keep capturing and selling slaves, you would still have a place to stay —”

She interrupted quickly. “No. Nothing would be improved by that, we’d still both be miserable.”

“We?” One black eyebrow leapt up at the word.

“Well, I would. I hated working for her; I hated seeing the slaves go through her service, coming out like wraiths in less than a month, dying within the year. They used to be free people, and in such a short time they lost everything.”

Samuel nodded in agreement. “I have to agree; we would both be miserable. I hated my end, too. That’s why I tried to take only the bare minimum, and only the weakest, so you might not take them. After that I usually set them free, in secret; actually, ofttimes I set them up in a house with some land and money; give them a chance to make a living.” 

Ramona looked at him, eyebrows raised. She tried to hide her surprise. “I — didn’t know you did that. I thought you were heartless, like the others.”

He laughed drily. “As much as I pretend to be, I’m not. Does it surprise you that much?”

She paused to think. As far as she remembered the most recent waking hours of her life, she couldn’t say yes. He’d proven himself in possession of a heart when he tried the first time to help her escape, when he protected her in the fight at the tavern, when he launched the attack and nearly died saving her, and when he’d sacrificed the last of his strength — strength he could  have used to recover — to carry her up the stairs. “I suppose not,” she said slowly, “at least, not after yesterday. Or, no — how many days has it been?” she asked suddenly, realizing she did not know how long she’d been out.

“For you, about a week. A day or two longer, actually. I don’t think it was just exhaustion, either; I’d bet the Osprey that those poisons had something to do with it. I was out for about three days, which is ‘highly irregular’ in Wilhelm’s words.”

Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. “How would you connect that to the poison?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were cleverer than that, Redhawk. The old man darted me with some of that … stuff before I killed him, remember, I told you.”

Ramona groaned. “You’re right, I’m stupid,” she said tiredly. “I don’t know how I didn’t see that.”

“By the way,” he said suddenly, “what happened to that witch? All I know is that she threw a fireball at me and then I fell over. Next thing I knew, you were shaking me awake.”

Ramona’s eyes sparkled at the memory. “Oh, I meant to tell you after we got out — I still don’t fully understand what happened. I was actually the one who pushed you out of the way,” she said, blushing faintly, “and when I did, the fireball hit me instead. But, it didn’t hurt me, it kind of just tickled, deep in my shoulder.” She carefully reached up and touched the joint in question reminiscently, her eyes resting idly on the window at the back of the captain’s cabin. “Then, it kind of spread down my arm and into my fingers, and the next thing I realized there was a red fireball in my hand.”

Samuel straightened up a little, intrigued. “You mean, you absorbed it?”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “I suppose so. I didn’t really stop to think what had happened, I just did what I saw her doing; I threw it at her. She got thrown back out the window and fell into the sea. That’s all I know.” She fell silent, trying not to think about the two minutes of horror that came before that witch had fallen out the window.

Samuel sat back, looking at her critically. “Interesting. I wonder —” he shook his head. “Never mind.”

Ramona looked over curiously, but did not press the point. Suddenly she jumped, and stifled a groan at the sudden pains shooting over her, as there was a knock on the door. 

“Come in, Gide,” Samuel said calmly. One corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. Ramona turned her gaze to the aristocratic gentleman coming through the door with a tray in his hands.

“Ah, good morning, Captain,” he said, in precise, clipped tones, only vaguely marred by the roughness of a pirate’s speech. “Oh! And greetings to you, young lady,” he said in surprise, when he saw Ramona awake. 

She nodded cautiously. “Are you a doctor?”

Wilhelm glanced at Samuel, and they both began chuckling gently. “Me, a doctor, miss? Good heavens, no,” he said, turning and placing the tray on a small cabinet near the foot of Ramona’s cot. “I have some small skill with a needle and thread, and I can amputate limbs, and I can set broken bones. I am no doctor. A ship’s doctor and a landsman’s doctor are two very different things — the former so crude in his operations that many would hesitate to call him a doctor, including himself ofttimes.” 

“I see,” she said in a subdued voice as Samuel and Wilhelm continued to smile in amusement. 

“Now dear, would you like some food?”

She glanced up. “Food?”

He sighed a little. “Yes, dear — food. You know, for eating?”

“What is it?”

“Stew. Some of the world’s finest, according to the crew.” He held out a bowl toward her. She took it carefully and looked hard into it, at the small chunks of meat and carrot and potato bobbing in the thin, opaque broth. Small green shreds of herbs floated in it, and the smell rising on the steam was — 

“Heavenly,” she said, taking a bite and immediately going wide-eyed with disbelief.

“That’s what they’ve said, miss,” Wilhelm said over his shoulder as he handed the captain a bowl as well. Ramona tucked in eagerly, spooning up the broth carefully to avoid losing a single drop — and to avoid moving too fast.

Wilhelm watched until every last bit was gone. “It’s effective at hiding sleep medicines, too,” he said suddenly as he took the bowl from her. 

Her eyes widened. “Sleep — m-medicines? But — NO! I —!” She suddenly felt very sleepy. “How — could you,” she ground out, glaring up at the captain, who sat watching her impassively. Then all was dark once more.