There was a somber, yet lively, spirit which coursed through the crowd of sailors, explorers, adventurers, and hooligans. Most of the sailors weren’t dancing because of the work they’d just been put through, but they were drinking, as anyone could expect them to do. Emilio eyed the group carefully, seeing who was taking advantage of his gifts, who looked uncomfortable, and who was watching, like himself.
The words Cesar Luna spoke earlier in the deep purple light cast in dusk echoed now in Emilio’s mind. A saboteur was among them, and it was Emilio’s job to fish them out. There was no telling what an agent of Luna might do. A man like that, with ambition and ruthlessness like that, was a bad actor in any situation. However, he is also a coward, and a bit of a fool. Anything that was done in his name would be duplicitous, and rambunctious, but ultimately scatter-shot. Emilio was certain he would be able to undermine any level of interference the minor noble hoped to achieve. In his ever vast ruminations Emilio almost missed the beginnings of a concert.
A dark complected girl began singing and dancing and clattering a song Emilio knew well. He hummed along with the growing chorus and ate his pear in a contented humor. The singing stopped briefly, but was filled in later by a fiddle and a flute. Two sailors had been begrudgingly convinced in bringing out their instruments. Now that they played a delightful ditty, which clung to the night air like cloth to a babe, they seemed rather happy with themselves. The girl who started the whole engagement merely walked off, however, settled into a crowd of onlookers. A small circle had formed around the fire, where the playing was happening, and several men and women began dancing. The shadows played through the cracks of the human bulwark, and were cast across the dark, damp wood of the deck.
Emilio watched the shadows flit across the floor as the sailor sat closest to him lost the hand, slammed his fist against the table. A bottle of rum nearly fell off the edge, but Emilio managed to catch it by the neck as it approached the floor. He set the pear on the table and stabbed it with the knife. Uncorking the bottle with his teeth, Emilio chugged a mouthful of the liquid. “Calm down, sailor,” he mumbled as he placed the bottle back where it stood. The man groaned in agreement and chugged from the bottle himself as another hand was dealt. Emilio retrieved his pear and began cutting another piece.
He returned to watching the shadows play over the bow of the deck as he chewed on his fruit. His vision shook and his mind twitched when he noticed a swift shadow glide across to the port side of the ship. It quickly launched itself over the banister and into the ocean. It was difficult to remain focused on it in the dark, with his mind unable to truly distinguish what the fleeting figure was. After it went over the side Emilio looked at the rest of the crew realizing no one had seen it, and rightly so since the thing moved so fast. Emilio jogged across the deck and approached the port bow, leaning over the edge. All he could see were the white lined waves of blue crashing under the strength of the ship. He cut another piece of pear as his disappointment set in, and he began to doubt himself. He looked over the vast sum of water, toward the outlined mountains cast before the beaming moon; it’s reflected tail skimming across the tumultuous surface of the sea. Emilio felt like that light now; being caught between one world and the next, phasing in and out breathlessly. The melancholy could have brought him to tears if there were time. Emilio turned back to the ship and sighed into the cluttered air. The sounds of the crowd came in and out like waves do, crashing against his ear one minute, receding the next. The Dread Captain got a chuckle out of that;
“an ocean within an ocean”. Across the silent darkness, however, toward the helm of the ship, Emilio could make out something else; something calm, something contented.
It was a girl, her short hair trailing with the wind behind her. Emilio spat a seed over the edge of the boat, considered the girl as she stood looking over the vastness. He felt a kinship with her then, their solemnness cultivating a union of the minds. He couldn’t see her face, but he could picture it, in manufactured and imagined isolation. He imagined a soft smile set under bright eyes. He could read the thoughts on the back of her head. She was looking for something.
Emilio approached in a swaying saunter, the height of the slope making him lean a little forward. He was busy peeling another piece of the pear, so he could not see if she anticipated him. He leaned on the banister next to her, staring out at the nearly invisible ripples of the waves beyond. He prepared for his statement by slanting his body toward her, still leaning on the thick wooden beam. The moon sparkled in her eyes and Emilio was almost caught off guard. He was able to snap his gaping mouth into a sly smile before she really looked at him.
“Are we boring you?” He asked with a dry humor.
All at once, the young woman's face crinkled into mirth. She gave him a slow tease of a once-over as if seeing him for the first time, stark blue eyes fixating not on his face, but his chest. On a woman, such a stare would be forward to the point of lewdness, but her gaze was distant, as if remembering something. Finally, she spoke, her lips turning up into a full smile.
"Our pious captain honors me with his concern." Her head tilted slightly as she regarded him aslant. "Or was it himself he was looking to entertain?"
Emilio could not remove his gaze from her own. Even as she partook in uninterrupted viewing of his body, the captain could not return the favor. There was an entrancing quality of her eyes dancing with the dim, crackling firelight; awash in the rage of the ocean beside her.
It was a confluence of aesthetic ravings which led to Emilio experiencing a notable shudder. He sighed as she asked her question. She was like a cobra, feinting before the lethal strike. He was suddenly bit by harsh fangs of embarrassment and quivered for a moment in weakness. That all went away, though, as it always does. He prevented any of the usual trappings of an amateur; he didn’t fidget, didn’t stir. His hands faithfully made their way around the rest of the fruit as he carved apart two pieces.
“I don’t think…” he dared look at her again. She looked darker then, as the lamp above them had gone out. Emilio glanced at the metal thing on the post, then back at the girl. “Would you hold this?” Emilio extended his hand out toward the girl, breaching the short gap between the two offering the pieces of fruit coupled with the knife which cleaved them. The heavy knife fell between her hands, and stuck into the sodden deck. He checked where it fell, and the girls hands, before getting about to his business.
Emilio cleaned his sticky hands on his blouse, and then brought the lamp down from it’s holdings. It’s hatch was curiously open. As he produced a matchbook, Emilio glanced back over to the horizon, it’s parade of lights bumping along with the movement of the boat.
Striiiicccckkhhhhhhhheee
The matchlight fluttered between Emilio’s hands as he brought it down to the candle. “What was I saying?” Emilio asked as the flame caught, and the lamp grew brighter.
"Something about me being lovely in the moonlight, I am sure." The woman's smile had not yet faded as she held out the dripping fruit for him. When he all-too-quickly noticed the knife missing, she shrugged and glanced to the floor where the blade lay.
"So sorry about that. Your burden was so slippery it quite ran away from my hands."
Emilio blinked at the light with an incredulous smile. He tried his best to ignore the depth of her words; the implications, and connotations, and denotations; all of it washed away in his relief as he closed the clasp on the lamp. He hung it back up.
Floating past the innuendo, he headed straight for the sentence he’d striven to say. “Right: I don’t think entertaining one or both of us is mutually exclusive.”
Embarrassment crept up beside Emilio, but he swatted her away. He hoped the girl wouldn’t look past the surface letters of the words. The pirate brought his calloused hands to those of the girl’s, making a bridge for the fruit to cross. Emilio bent to lift the knife, silently offered one of the pieces as he rose.
As if it would be that easy.
The audacious young lady lofted an innocent brow at the gesture, promptly pulling her comparatively small, delicate fingers away from him. She didn't seem quite as eager to dirty her clothes with the juice of the fruit as he'd been, her hands tactfully disappearing behind her dress. The line of her lips simultaneously quirked into a smirk as she leaned forward just the slightest bit, her lips parting.
And then she just remained there, all patience and expectation under the warmth of the lamplight.
Emilio physically recoiled in the slightest of fashions, taking a breath in with it. His head slanted back acutely, his eyes ran along the rim of her soft lips. Thoughts flooded through his mind and it all climaxed into a soft chuckle. He brought the pear slice to her mouth, stuck it between her teeth.
Emilio leaned back against the banister, crisply bit a chunk from the fruit he still held. He chewed with a silent satisfaction. “What’s your name?”
"Mm." The woman savored the fruit in her mouth, her eyes closing. If she heard his question, she ignored it, taking her sweet time chewing the simple piece and humming between swallows. "I know this fruit."
Her eyes were somehow brighter as her gaze turned back to him. "Fruits are like people, you know. There may be different kinds of each that are easy to tell apart, but every orchard has a local flavor you only recognize once you have partaken of it.
"Take this pear of yours. You think it is just another fruit Sintra has provided? No, I know the farmer. This is Herbeto's stock. It has... this very earthy taste, warm, full for a pear. If you're lucky, his orchard might still be there. He lives a few miles from town, has a lovely steading and that same bad habit of wiping everything on his hands off on his clothes. Don't know how his wife gets the stains out."
The smile on her face then was a private one. She finished the rest of her pear with a slow sort of reverence before she finally seemed to remember his question. Perhaps too much like him, she leaned against the railing and regarded him with a relaxed slump of her chin.
"I am Catarina, by the way. One of the rare and fearsome Santoses that scour the sea and fend off pirates in our attempts to do good and fair business."
Emilio finished the pear as she spoke about it, trying to find the flavors she mentioned. They didn’t quite ring out clearly to him. He couldn’t tell if it was his unrefined palate, or the subtlety of the flavors. Either way, he tucked his feathered Damascus steel dagger back into the cuff of his boot.
Emilio couldn’t help but chuckle at what he assumed was a joke. “Catarina,” he said as he inhaled the fresh sea air, “you won’t be doing any of those things on this trip.” His mouth curled into a tenuous smirk. In a flash of inspiration he spoke again, “Back to the pears, though. Pears and people,” he remarked. “The difference between pears and people is that people can lie. I’ve never known a pear to pretend to be a bean. But a person can pretend to be all sorts of things, can’t they?” Emilio almost betrayed his intention by the inflection of his voice. There was a perturbed inquisitiveness to it, which he immediately picked up on. It’d crossed his mind here and there as he spoke to Catarina, concerning where her allegiances lay. He wondered briefly if she knew Luna, and how he could figure out if she did.
Emilio decided to cover it up with his wit. “Unless, of course, you think that pear’s just an impostor. In which case I may feel better about having eaten it.”
She laughed easily enough, shaking her head. Something about her, though, had changed. Her casual posture was just a bit stiffer, her voice just a touch sharper. "You just don't know your fruits well enough yet. They can tell surprising lies about themselves--just more subtley."
She licked her lips, gaze returning to the sea. "But this is not a voyage frought with danger, correct? So why worry about intrigue, unless something is on the captain's mind? Where 'righteousness' abounds, condemnation is sure to follow."
Emilio followed her gaze out to the purple seascape. He did a double take when she said her last words. “And do you think I’m condemned? Or bound to be?” He asked with a faux humor.
"Have you forgotten your words already?" Catarina straightened up from the railing, chin proudly jutted upwards. Her pale fingers brushed the lacey yoke of her dress, as if about to expose her bare chest to the world. "I've made my penance! Have you?"
Then she was all mirth, dropping her hands to her hips. "I thought we were following a holy man, marked by God, no less, to Morocco. If I was mistaken, then perhaps we are all of us condemned."
He was caught. Emilio avoided eye contact during her impression to save himself the humiliation. Instead he looked back at the dampening party. In truth, he had forgotten. Those words meant nothing to him, and they cost only his breath. He would have said anything to flee the port and be exactly where he was now.
“You needn’t concern yourself with that, Catty.” He said with an ill conceived patronization. “The mission we head towards is not a religious one. The hardest thing you’ll have to deal with is keeping up with the sailors, missing your parents, being lonely. For some others it won’t be so easy. Some of us may not make it out alive.” With that Emilio’s mood shifted, to something deep and personal, something he couldn’t say.
He retrieved the reins of his confidence and used it to put a stop to the conversation. This girl was too insightful for a slightly tipsy engagement, he’d need to retreat. “At the end of this you’ll be sent home with a sack full of real. And then you can build yourself a new life. Doesn’t that make you happy?” He pushed himself off of the banister, stood up straight, and took another glance at the girl. She wore simple clothing, but it held some sophistication in the figure as well as it’s colors. He wondered who she was. “It should.” he said finally, and walked off toward the rest of the ship.
“Goodnight,” he called behind him in a defeated haze. It was ironic, since the reason he’d approached her in the first was to rid himself of that feeling. Things like that simply couldn’t be helped.
"You play a poor game of pretend." Catarina's voice bit from behind--of course she wouldn't be quieted so easily. "But if it rests your mind easier tonight, I am not here because I believed you. Silver cannot buy Sintra back, and those with nothing cling to the slightest hope, even when it is a false one. I will be watching you, Captain, so speak not of death by loneliness. Perhaps I will even visit your dreams."
Emilio made his way to the captain’s quarters, set directly below the bow. He was stopped as Epu sauntered up.
“Everything’s clear. Locks on all important areas.” The American said in Spanish.
“Good” Emilio responded, discontented. “Make sure the women and children have places to stay. Tell Leonard to do a patrol after everyone’s asleep.”
“He’s already on it.” Epu said quickly.
“Alright then. I’ll be off to bed, wake me if anything happens.” The Dread Captain Scar opened the wooden door to his quarters, managed to get inside by the grace of the door frame. Before Epu slipped away Emilio pulled on his shirt sleeve, remembering something important. “When you were downstairs, did you see anyone unfamiliar? Perhaps skulking?”
Epu thought for a moment, shook his head. “They’d be here if I did.” he responded jadedly.
Emilio nodded in agreement, “Goodnight, Epu.”
“Goodnight, boss.”
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