Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Four: In Which Jessie Comes To Land

The next few days were filled with slow, stilted and overly-polite conversations with Captain Goodenough, seasoned with a lot of concerned, pitying looks, and a firm admonishment to not go off wandering again. Especially to the room where I'd seen the black boxes. The concern was acceptable, but the pity and condescending admonishment, the way he treated me as if I was bone china, as fine as the Doctor's cup, was not. To escape the looks, I slept.

If I dreampt, I couldn't tell you what about. It was all images. Fire. Water. A pair of kind brown eyes. The safety of an embrace, the heat of a human being holding you as you shook. Salt and ice in the lungs, coking, choking...

When I woke next, really woke, it was because the ship had stopped moving. For a lurching second, I was afraid it was because I had crashed again, that I wasn't feeling the bob from side to side because we were going down, down, down instead.

But no, there was a faint shift to the side, the bounce of the hull ricocheting softly off of something else.

I lay perfectly still in the bed and opened my eyes, and ears. The round windows of the room were wide open, and I could hear the creak of ship's boards and ropes, the sigh of breeze, the soft, plaintive cry of gulls. It sounded like a manufactured soundtrack. But the salt on the air smelled fresh and real.

The air was refreshing and crisp and something deep inside of me unwound.I felt my shoulders drop down and the muscles release slightly. Somehow, I seemed to be fitting back inside my skin properly. It had just needed a thorough drying out before i could shrug it back on.

Where were we? The curiosity overrode my sullen wish for nothingness, and I jammed my feet into my sneakers, donned the brown too-large jacket and made my way to the cabin door.

Light, yellow and piercing, lanced at my eyes. I winced. I wished for the sunglasses that were somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, with the rest of my purse. I shaded my eyes with my left hand and looked around. The same cabin boy that I had terrified before (how many days ago? I had no idea) was sitting on a crate by the door, looking completely and thoroughly bored. He shot to feet when I emerged into the daylight, popping up onto the balls of his feet.

"Captain!" he shouted, face a cross between that same anxiety, and a pride in having done what I assumed was his guarding duty correctly.

"Thank you, Mr. Fletcher," Captain Goodenough's unmistakable voice said from above us and I looked up. "That will be all."

The Captain was leaning over the railing that encircled the roof of his cabin, wearing what appeared to be his best uniform. The frock was an appropriate navy blue, and his vest and breeches a spotless white, hemmed all in with gold embroidery, buttons, and epaulets. It was not at all the slightly grubby, mussed and wrinkled affair that I had seen him in these past few days. He even had on pristine white gloves, and his hair, flying everywhere in the softly scented breeze, was pomaded into a sort of ridiculous bouffant of spikes and whorls.

JBF indeed. I didn't often swing in the direction of dudes, but if I was feeling more inclined and less like salt-crusted and shocky, I might have been in danger.

The cabin boy – Fletcher – beamed with pride, bowed so low his nose almost hit his knees, and scarpered away.

Captain Goodenough accepted something from someone standing behind him, out of my line of sight. That something turned out to be a truly ridiculous hat. It was black, but folded in half like a taco, the pointy side poking out to rather uselessly shade only his nose. The long sleep and the warm sunshine and the breeze smelling of salt and sea, but also vegetation, grilling meat, and the perfume of flowers made me feel generous. As Captain Goodenough walked down the stairs to stand beside me, I left forth a small, underused smile.