stow it all away

Woomy had been someone else besides a navigator, long ago. They had been a starry eyed astronomy student in university, then a prestigious wayfinder when it turned out few people in the real world didn’t need to know the positions of stars in the endless cosmos, unless they were traveling. 

Wayfinding was a necessity for any seafarer, especially merchants. Especially the uber rich ones with deep pocketed clients, the ones that needed to be certain they were paying for the cream of the crop and absolutely no less, but always ended up leaving their management team to cut costs and pocket the remainder with barely any oversight. Woomy’s flashy university degree and penchant for upper-class flattery was the ticket they needed to get a job for cheap without looking so cheap. Woomy had something besides school and library visits to put on their resume, as well as on-the-job proof of their expertise. 

Trouble was, pirates needed that expertise, too. Pirates needed a navigator almost more than they needed the heavy chests of gold, barrels of fresh citrus and newly printed pinpoint accurate maps of the world’s oceans and seas. Woomy was the only kidnapped creature taken from that merchant boat, but long after the orange peels were tossed overboard, and the gold-stuffed chests were emptied to pay for repairs, and the outdated maps curled and tore with age and overuse and water damage, Woomy remained a pirate. No longer a captive, but a crewmate. Paid, respected, given a place to call home. No, Woomy wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else, especially not where they came from.

Blahaj the shark toto, in relation to all this, was a footnote of a footnote. Blahaj had been a cabin boy jumping from ship to ship, looking for a place to sleep. When he found none, he just slept in the ocean, and Woomy caught a glimpse of him bobbing like an otter in the flickering light of their oil lamp when they were making sure their star maps and headings were in order. Woomy had themself slept through it, but the crew told Woomy later that Blahaj just floated off into the open ocean when they pulled the anchor back up, and everyone had their hands full when it had happened, and by the time anyone had tried to get down there and help him he was so far out to sea that nothing he was shouting could be heard at all. The crew brought it up in a drunken night around the cooking fire every so often, until Woomy had proven themself enough to get on a more prestigious vessel and leave all of them behind. 

Now, Blahaj was here again, looking flabbergasted and embarrassed. Woomy should have surmised this was likely not a point of pride in Blahaj’s swashbuckling career, but in their defense it was the most memorable thing they had of him. 

“Oh. Dammit.” Blahaj slumped with a sigh. “I thought everyone forgot that.”

“I’m not everyone.” Woomy shrugged. “Oh, chin up. When you were doing that I didn’t know which side was port and which was starboard. You don’t have to be the sharpest pin in the cushion to hold a map steady.”

Blahaj cracked a small smile at that. Woomy turned back towards the stars and away from the sun as it began to skirt the horizon, lifting their astrolabe to their eye once again. 

“By the way, if you fix that broken flagpole, our captain might let you bunk for the night. I’ll put in a word for you.”

Blahaj looked up. “Alright, I’ll get to it.”

Woomy laughed. “No, no, not now, it’s almost time to–” but Blahaj was already jogging to the nearest net ladder and clambering up. Woomy watched him scale the mast like a gymnast for a while, then remembered they had to use these star coordinates for something and rushed off to do their own work.

Woomy didn’t see Blahaj again until dinner, when they were going to the kitchen to drop off their plate and found him on the floor, scrubbing the rest of the crew’s dishes and cutlery. The two paused to regard each other, and the reputational difference between them. Then Blahaj’s eyes glazed over, and he went back to scrubbing. 

Woomy, in turn paid Blahaj no mind as they passed him by, got another brush and began washing their own plate, then another one, then another, until they could feel Blahaj’s eyes on their back. When they turned to look at him, Blahaj quickly looked away. 

Woomy had spent their fair share of time on the stinking cot that Blahaj would have to endure if he’d been left to himself. Woomy had their own bed now, with sheets and a pillow. If Blahaj laid on it first, it was plenty big enough to share for the night.