KingSweet

New Year, New Era

            “Here” Obsidarian said when the laughter faded.  “It’s time I gave you these… a dead man’s standard means nothing.”

            My first mate took a deep breath before unwinding the strips that had bound his hands for years.  They were symbols of Mají’s crew; all of us had worn them.  The crimson and black showed our allegiance to him, while the third color, unique to each crew member, was for loyalty to ourselves.  Obsidarian wore grey with his colors, Jumé wore royal blue, and I had worn hot pink, the same color now on my flag.

            Obsidarian’s bindings were filthy with age, stained with sweat and faded where they had been exposed to the eternal summer sun.  He placed them gingerly in my hand, fingertips lingering in a last goodbye before he stepped back.  His lips were pressed tightly together and he took a moment before speaking again.

            “If my captain would be so good as to give me her colors; I’ve seen them on the boy, Flint.  A crew should match, and a first mate leads by example.”

            I caught myself staring at his hands, the backs of which were as pale as old scars.  My own hands still bore the tanned lines from my bindings, and I had been cast out of the crew within a year.  Obsidarian had been with Mají for almost three years.  He hadn’t taken those strips off since he joined the crew, and the sharp contrast of his ebony skin made the lighter color hurt my eyes.

   I shook my head slowly in an attempt to clear away some of the confusion.  Flint wore a hot pink strip of fabric tied about his forehead like a child playing ninja.  It looked alright on him, with his boyish smiles and over exuberant enthusiasm, but on Obsidarian… he would look a fool.  Yet the man had a point.  My crew didn’t match.  Flint wore his band, the rest of the crew wore Mají’s bindings, and Sparx; Sparx didn’t have a standard of any sort.  I needed something to show their loyalty to me while still permitting the men to keep their self-respect, and instilling the old fear into rival crews.

            I turned away from Obsidarian silently, placing his former bindings on one of the many plush furs on the floor.  I then opened the chest of cloth strips that sat beneath my flag.  Last year, my hot pink had been at the bottom of the chest, out of sight, rejected, forgotten, now hot pink littered the top.  I picked up the first strip of my color and draped it over my hand.  After a moment’s thought, I grabbed a second one as well. 

            The black was next, the dark and dangerous to contradict my feminine color.  The strips I picked up were slick and rough, as if they’d been torn from a proper Jolly Roger. 

            It took me a moment to find the final color.  I dug through the box, searching for the smoky grey associated with my first mate.  But it wasn’t there.  I already had the perfect color, faded and worn soft by constant use.  I took the grey strips Obsidarian had given me, folded them in with the others, and stood to show him.

            “In my crew,” I said softly, “pirates will bind their hands with cloth to pledge their service.  I have chosen black and hot pink for myself.  You are free to choose a third color to call your own, for we are the elite, and may stand alone in our achievements.”

            I held my hand out, offering Obsidarian his new colors.  The smile on his face was radiant, the relief palpable, and his eyes… there was something I’d never seen in his eyes before.

            “Thank-you”.

            He left before I could respond, deftly rebinding his hands on his way to the door.  I retreated to the chest once the door shut, sinking onto the fur covered floor to contemplate the colors before me.  I had my own color to pick out.  Mají had doubled his, with two strips of crimson and one of black.  I didn’t fancy doing the same thing, but that made the decision all the harder… or that’s what I tried to tell myself.