I love tormenting Tenshio. It never gets old for me. It's his innate dignity; it creates this constant temptation to see how far I can push him before he breaks. He won't though. He's already been tried. He couldn't have gotten his position is he wasn't truly a remarkable character to begin with.
Anyway, I have made the poor fellow be terribly seasick. Naturally. Also, Pidguyok, the husky that sings Pointer Sister songs, has decided to join the company, Fushi being too weighty to ride in the ship. He's taken the high road, one might say. So now the dialogue has been greatly enlivened, a benefit Tenshio is not in a position to appreciate. All he knows is that the husky insists upon calling him "Your Honorable Reverence" and in cases of great emotional import, "Your holiness." Clearly the husky is no respecter of denominations.
I'm learning and writing at the same time, so my confidence in my ship scenes is not terribly high. I write the story forward maybe one or two paragraphs and then go back five pages and rewrite. Then I spend hours reading up and going off on nautical tangents.
Excerpt:
Pidguyok cleared his throat. “I’ll tell a story,” he announced into the silence.
“Oh no,” groaned Angutiriyok.
“Why?” cried Okrarpok.
Corazon lowered her head and put her paw over her snout.
“Pipe down, peanut gallery,” Pidguyok intoned. “I, the loquacious one, speak.” He looked levelly over the little group huddled close to the fire and then winked at Gilly, whose head had lifted as he had spoken. “Once upon a time…”
“Why not some other time?” interrupted Aksarpok with a grin.
“Alright; last week,” said Pidguyok, deliberately obtuse. “Last week I was taking a little stroll along the beach when I came across the most marvelous thing.” His blue eyes lit up. “It was a four speed, dual quad posi-traction 409!”
“I knew it,” muttered Angutiriyok.
“You don’t even know what that is,” snapped Okrarpok.
“It’s a car,” said Pidguyok solemnly. “A damn fine car; and nothing can touch her.” He cleared his throat and then continued. “So I decided to take my shiny 409 out to watch the Yankees play ball…”
Gilly let out a giggle.
“…’cause they are some damn fine Yankee doodle dandies, and I wanted to see them,” continued Pidguyok, his eyes dancing. Gilly’s shoulders shook as the giggles took hold again.
“So I stuck a feather in my cap and called it macaroni, which is the cheesiest.”
Gilly would have fallen sideways off Tenshio’s lap, convulsed with laughter, if he hadn’t caught her. Tenshio lifted an eyebrow in mild surprise. The rest of the dogs were watching, their faces now lit up with understanding.
“And then I said, Take me out to the ball game! Take me out to the crowd,” he declared passionately, to Gilly’s continued giggles. “And who cares about cracker jacks and all the goop? ‘Cause I’m just a cheeseburger in paradise, just a big hunk of meat with lettuce and tomato and Heinz 57 in my shiny 409.
“Only I stepped on a pop top, cut my heel and had to cruise on back home,” he continued mournfully, to Gilly’s delight, “so now I’m just singin’ in the rain. I’m laughing at clouds, so dark up above, ‘cause they can’t touch my shiny 409. The End.”
Gilly sat up and clapped wildly. “Again!” she cried gleefully. “Do it again!”
“See!” cried Pidguyok, vindicated. “Somebody likes my stories.”
Excerpt: (still working on this scene.)
That night, Gilly slept curled up against the husky’s broad back while the ship rolled through the long swell left from the storm. The trailing clouds of the storm mingled against the sky with the greens and blues of the aurora australis, creating ragged streaks of neon color and darkened cloud. Between these were scattered the cold, white light of the stars.
The seas moved in their layered, ponderous routes below. Dense and freezing waters of the lightless deep crept slowly over the sea floor, seeping into crevasses, compressed by the weight of water above, sifting through the miles of choking, barren debris. Above that flowed the vast currents that swept in from other oceans, ancient water ways carved within the sea itself. Within those currents floated cumbrous, blinded creatures, scenting the water with wide and toothless mouths, miles of moving water above them, and miles of moving water below.
On the thin, cracked surface of the ocean the wooden ship was tossed in the waves that still carried all the energy of the storm that had been unleashed on it. Tons of water heaved up, marbled in white and then fell, sinking back into itself, until the cycle rolled it forward again. It was a chaos of moving water and wind; a chaos that played itself out within the laws that girded its nature and its reach.
Only Kaito remained above deck. He stood at the stern of the ship, his breath making clouds of streaming white that the wind caught up. He had changed and the clothing that lay against his skin was dry, though the outer layers were already frosted over with salt spray. The sails had been trimmed back to make allowance for the storm, but as the wind began to lose its wildness, Kaito unfurled more and more of the canvass to catch it. His hands were sure and strong on the slick ropes.
Tenshio woke often, sick even in his sleep. Each time he woke, he thought he had merely dreamed of the ocean. Groggy and dulled, it was a moment or two before the constant motion, sound and smell made his reality only too evident.
In that moment of realization, it seemed to him that it was his calm and quiet house that was the dream. In the world of freezing water and winds, surely that well-ordered place, the rooms within bathed in golden light and surrounded without by mist and mountainside, could not truly exist.
He thought longingly of his clean white bedding, and of the smell of cedar, rich earth and river rocks that filled the air. He recalled with perfect clarity the instruments he used to read the stars, oiled and calibrated by his own hand, each in their polished wooden cases and slid into hidden cupboards.
