Something I Can Do

Onboard the Beauty
57 Spring 218

The first leg of their journey had been eventful, to be sure. Four soldiers were killed in battle, one executed (prematurely) during an interrogation, and something happened to the Inquisitor. The man was most certainly dead but exactly how it happened – or why – remained a mystery.

The aftermath of the attack on the small port village created a general sense of unease on the ship. From what they could judge, it appeared an enormous creature was responsible for much of the destruction. Back aboard their vessel, plans were made, shifts assigned, precautions taken… but all of it felt mostly like security theater, just a comforting illusion that their actions would make a difference. If a titan-sized beast decided it wanted to scrap their little ship, well… a few extra planks of wood and rope knots seemed unlikely to stop it.

Still, as the crew went about their tasks, Ethan felt like dead weight. It was like traveling with his little army of survivors for the first year or so of their initial journey, before Last Harbor. Everyone had ways of contributing except him.

As he walked around the ship, he helped with small tasks here and there, but for anything more complicated it took the veteran seamen more time to describe the task to him than to do it themselves. After a few hours, Ethan decided to try a different approach.

He found York in the kitchen doing an inventory. The cook was as thrilled to see Ethan as he was anyone else who trespassed into the sacred chamber of his culinary haven. Ethan made a halfhearted attempt to assist with the inventory but he knew that was a lost cause even before he offered. The dwarf didn’t know Ethan and even if he did, York seemed the type to mistrust any eyes but his own when it came to the important tasks.

Ethan found more success regarding the reason for his visit, however. It took some haggling but eventually he convinced York, arguing that Ethan knew himself to be a shit pirate but a less-shit cook.

The dwarf was still apprehensive about leaving Ethan alone to tend the kitchen and craft the evening meal, but Ethan had one last card to play. Sensing York to be a man similar in character to the foods he prepared, Ethan used simple, unimpressive speech; he thought back to the most popular plays performed by Talith’s theater troupe. The plays and scenes that were viewed as “cliched” by the city’s elites often resonated strongly with the more common folks. Drawing from this he suggested “Plus, after all the time you spent making food for others, it seems about time that someone made a meal for you…” He smiled, twisting his face into a picture of kindness.

His words resonated perhaps more than he even intended as a strange misting of what looked like tears appeared in the shorter man’s eyes and, clearing his throat, York finally conceded to make his way to the top deck to help the others with preparations. It almost sounded as though his voice cracked just the slightest amount as he barked out a final curt list of orders, demanding Ethan ‘clean whatever mess he made’ but that may have been Ethan’s imagination.

Ethan stood blinking awkwardly for a short time after York left, pondering the possibility that everyone in the world was carrying something that, once poked, would bring to the surface a heavy weight they were bearing in secret.

Then, he got to work.

The food for that evening’s dinner was nothing special. Ethan was not a chef. He only knew a handful of foods to prepare but one of them just so happened to be the ship’s most ample provision: potatoes. In fact, few people could claim to have cooked more potatoes than he had over the past year or so. This experience, combined with a basic knowledge of vegetable preparation, allowed him to make a meal that was (at least) satisfactory.

The potatoes were larger than the ones he was used to. There was not enough time to bake them as he normally would, but he was able to help speed the cooking process by using some cooking nails. Ethan was very conscious of all the meticulously maintained cooking utensils; there was not a spot of grim, dirt or rust on any of them. Whatever he used, he would indeed need to clean and dry… thoroughly.

The sounds of the feet and heavy objects being moved about both above and below him eventually faded and he fell into a trance as he went through the ritual of preparing a meal. And while most of the work was done with the cadence and rhythm that flowed like waves beneath the ship, there was some time that went missing altogether. Because even in this unfamiliar kitchen, standing in a room that shifted and swayed with the currents beneath his feet, Ethan worked with his eyes closed, his hands guided by his other senses and his mind lost to an unconscious dance.

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YMDT

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Something I Can Do