Reborn From the Cosmos

Miniarc-Bad Tidings 08

“Hey, fancy pants.”

Maxine was coming to intimately learn the effects of prolonged stress on the body. Rey, the nightmarish whaler, followed her back to the tavern she’d made her temporary home and continued to hover around her, a constant stream of words with little meaning and no connection flowing from her mouth. It was all the merchant could do to listen to her without showing signs of her growing frustration. She’d nearly offered a tribute to the saints when the woman left. Little did she know, her reprieve wouldn’t last long.

Somehow, she made an impression on her reluctant acquaintance. To Maxine’s dismay, Rey was waiting for her when she went down for breakfast the next day and she hadn’t strayed far since.

She wasn’t overtly unpleasant. The people of Graywatch had no understanding of manners or decorum but Rey treated her well; she had a tendency to demand Maxine’s attention, but she was polite, or as polite as could be expected in the city, and was careful not to actually obstruct what the merchant was doing.

She also didn’t steal or break anything. No objects anyway. A few people had been broken but half of the trouble Rey got in was the whaler defending herself. She had something of a bounty on her head; no one with good sense would target her but for the stupid, she was an impressive trophy. Mix in a few grudges caused by the woman’s thoughtless destruction and there were always a few willing to try their luck.

After the first day, Maxine was relatively convinced that she was in no danger from Rey. Unfortunately, the primitive part of her brain didn’t care for evidence or reason. The whaler had an unnatural air about her, a wrongness that made Maxine’s skin crawl and stomach clench.

Then there was her volatile nature. It went beyond recklessness or a bad temper. Rey seemed to lack control. She felt without reserve and she acted on those emotions without restraint.

It didn’t apply solely to anger, though she hit others with startling frequency. When she was happy, she laughed uproariously and grinned that horrific smile of hers. When she was down, she bawled her eyes out or became a sullen sack of meat that couldn’t be bothered to get up from whatever part of the floor she’d dropped on. If for the average person emotions existed on a spectrum between scant and extreme, Rey’s went from one extreme to another.

Maxine didn’t trust Rey’s self-control even the slightest bit. And no matter the favor she seemed to hold, one day, those volatile emotions would be turned on her.

Maxine wasn’t a Graywatch native. She couldn’t calmly live her life with death hanging her head, or, less metaphorically, sharing dinner with her. Each day, it became a little harder to tolerate Rey’s presence. Forcing herself came with consequences.

The first thing to suffer was her sleep, her nights riddled with horrible nightmares of a thing with too many eyes staring at her from inside her head. Then came the incessant snacking that wasn’t good for her waistline. The one that angered her most was the twitching. Every time Rey called out to her, she jumped. It seemed she’d done it so much that her body couldn’t stop, some part of her fluttering or jerking without her input every other moment.

For five days, she’d had to endure the unsettling feelings being close to the whaler evoked. She still dropped what she was doing and forced an indulgent smile to her face when Rey called out to her again, looking up from the table she’d commandeered on the tavern’s bottom floor. “Yes?”

Rey didn’t look at her, her focus wholly captured by the black-and-white cat she was gently stroking, laid out on the filthy floor without a care. It wasn’t a widespread belief but there was a significant number of people in the city that practically worshipped the beasts.

Maxine didn’t understand all the context behind the situation, but she understood that the city had once suffered a horrible pest problem; one that went beyond the normal nuisances that came with living in larger settlements. Where the people of the city failed to contain them, the felines had stepped in. As such, there was an abnormal amount of cats roaming the shore. The people who saw them as guardians and good luck charms made no attempts to curtail their number, some going as far as to encourage their propagation.

It was jarring watching someone she considered closer to a monster than a person play with a cute animal but Maxine did her best to put the strange dichotomy out of her mind.

“How come yer so eager to impress this Tome girl?” the whaler asked as she started rubbing the cat’s belly. It yowled at her but slowly relaxed into the touch.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve asked ‘bout her plenty different ways, but ya never say anything bad about her. Can’t believe there’s someone out there without a single mark on their ass. So, yer probably kissing it, yeah? Yer the skippy type that jumps at every bubble in the sea but ya don’t seemed scared of her, so that’s not it. She paying ya? Save yer life?”

“…I don’t owe Lou any compliments if that’s what you’re asking. I suppose if I had to answer, I have nothing bad to say about Lou because there’s nothing bad to say.”

“Ehhh.”

“She isn’t perfect.” Far from. Maxine wouldn’t claim to know Lou well but from what she had witnessed, the noblewoman was petty, callous, and immature. If measured against the moral bar that was the saints, she would be found severely lacking.

Yet, Lou was no villain. She had undesirable traits, but she kept them to herself and her loved ones. If the merchant had to sum it up… “Lou is good to the people she’s close to, to me, and cares nothing for anyone else. Someone like that may not be admirable but they’re hardly a villain.”

“Doesn’t care about others, eh? So, she smashed a city for giggles?” Rey giggled herself as she grabbed the cat by two legs and stood if up, softly roaring as the beast teetered on its hind legs.

“That’s…I can’t imagine her doing such a thing unprovoked.” Though she also couldn’t imagine how the situation could have gotten so bad. Harvest had managed to go several centuries without large scale conflict. The kingdom was practically founded on the concept of coexistence. Or, if one were to put it in a rude way, avoiding problems.

The crown ignored the pirates that harassed its villages, hiding the seasonal raids under the rug of inevitable banditry. They ignored the fanatics in the north that had no respect for royal authority; her father once shared with her that they didn’t even collect taxes from Victory. Everyone ignored the foreign invader that had stolen a piece of the kingdom, excusing their fear with vague ideas of tolerance and necessary evils.

Why someone didn’t think it was wise to turn a blind eye to the woman that dominated one of the strongest families in the kingdom and had a close connection to a foreign state suspected to be incredibly powerful, both in resources and military strength, was beyond her. She found it hard to believe that anyone involved had used the appropriate amount of caution, concern, or discretion.

“Better hope that stays true.”

“What do you mean?”

Rey snickered. Maxine hated that laugh. There was something sinister in the other woman’s joy. As if she was seeing the same scene but laughing for darker reasons. “There are some that aren’t suited to blood, yeah? The haunted. Start hearing things and seeing faces. The ones that don’t throw themselves into the sea get quick with a knife.”

Maxine opened her mouth to refute the possible future, but something held the words back. When she examined it, she found the feeling rooted in memories of Kierra, specifically, the causal hints of her comfortability around death and violence.

The elf was undoubtedly the strongest influence on Lou and she wouldn’t be the one to discourage her from having a bloodthirsty attitude toward those who made themselves obstacles. The kingdom could only pray that the vicious woman didn’t encourage it.

“Yer tying yerself to her crew, which I get. It’s a good thing when the captain is the baddest thing on the sea. But that kind of rep comes with a cost. Taking out a whole city makes for a whole lot of grudges. If they can’t get to the boss, they’ll settle for the lackeys.”

“…you make a good point.” One Maxine had thought of already. Her strategy had many pitfalls. Retaliation barely made it onto the list. Between her last name and Lou’s developing reputation, no one would dare risk direct confrontation. There was no accounting for the mad or the madly stupid, but they generally lacked the resources of what Maxine considered proper threats.

Her biggest concern was offending one of her patrons. Before she heard the news of Quest, she would have put her concern about offending the pirate captain first but now she wasn’t sure.

“Course I do. I’m smarter than people think. Most shipmonkeys are idiots so all yous fancy pants landies think anyone who sleeps on the sea is stupid. But the things in the deep are crafty bastards. Got to be smart to find them. Smarter to catch them. Got to flip your head around, turn your eyes. Can’t pierce the skin. Got to drag ‘em up, hollow ‘em out. Twist their fins so they can’t walk…”

The whaler continued to mutter to herself. When the eyes on her arms opened, Maxine slowly stood and walked over to the counter on the other side of the room. As a respectable establishment, it was too early for the bar to be open, but a man stood there, ready to serve water and juice. She met his eyes and he, moving just as slowly as she did, brought up a basket of flaky pastries from underneath the counter.

He didn’t usually kept treats around but after Rey’s second outburst in as many days, they’d happily complied with Maxine’s request. Jack had proved himself to be something other than a nuisance for once. Rey’s moods were frequent and recognizable. Artor was something of a family friend, which meant he was one of the few people who knew how to soothe the troubled mind and he’d passed along the secret.

“Rey, are you hungry?”

The first time Maxine had seen the things on the whaler’s back shift noticeably, lifting the shoulders of her shirt but remaining invisible, she’d needed to fight the urge to hurl. The worst was when Rey got excited. It brought to mind images of insects skittering beneath her skin. Now, the sight still made her sick, but she easily brushed the feeling aside.

Eager hands accepted the basket and shoved one of the pastries into a mouth that stretched far too wide. The groan of enjoyment that escaped the woman would suggest she was eating a delicacy but the strong, fishy smell that exploded once the outer layer was pierced would dissuade anyone with a working nose from the idea. Maxine didn’t know the details of Rey’s transformation, but the changes to her tongue had to be the most unfortunate.

“Wen are ‘e evin’?” Rey asked, spitting out crumbs and chunky green paste. Maxine wondered if the owner would have to burn the floor to get rid of the stench. It would be terrible if it seeped into the wood.

“Tomorrow…and you have yet to pack.”

“Eh? Ya packed for two, didn’t ya?”

“Pardon?”