Chapter 9 - On the Tip Of Everyone's Tongue Part 2

Foreword - Part 2 of our chunked chapter experiment - please respond in the comments/reviews on how you feel about this kind of word count/pacing so we can make the call on if this is going to be a regular thing or just a one (well, four) off.

A whole hidden port - one that was clearly ancient work, too, which easily placed the habitation of this island back thousands of years. Holliday was tempted to veer off his current objective just study that.

Was the Wheel, as Pew called it, truly the work of the Dacey family or was it just yet another one of those things where it fell to the name just because they were the only ones from the culture that built it left to lay claim? Would Meryl have some manner of record or even an oral history of its construction? Oh, there were so many questions, so many things to prickle at his scientific curiosity…

He bit his lip as he forcibly turned his mind back to a narrower, more focused objective.

His site of interest, for the time being, was the boat. No matter how much he wanted to just… go wild investigating these ruins that had managed to hide just outside of his line of sight for all the time he'd spent on this island. Hell, he'd even poked around the ruins of the town on Stonecutter and never suspected that the islands could be hiding something as big as this!

Later. Later. They'd held up for the last thousand years or more - they could hold up for however long it took to solve the mystery of the unknown arrival.

As Holliday walked down the stone docks behind Pew, trying not to get distracted by how well they'd held up despite their obvious neglect, he saw the boat.

It was… well, rather ordinary, at a distance. A bland intersection of unconventional color choices in the black body and two… wait, no three red sails on what looked like a fairly standard sailboat, but little oddities started tickling at his mind as he drew closer and was able to see how the lines started going against expectations, combining influences in ways he couldn't pin down as archaic or modern - though such classifications rarely meant much in the world, especially when the jumbled aesthetics of pirates came into play.

"How would you describe a vessel like this, Pew, if you were talking to another professional in your field?" Holliday asked, tapping his pencil against the page of his open notebook as he measured the ship in his mind's eye - about ten meters, from tip to stern, it looked.

"Hm? Ah, simple yacht, distinct tumblehome, raked transom - modified hooker of some description, definitely designed for minimal crew, though I wouldn't chance it without having a hard familiarity with her quirks unless I was short of any other choice," the fishman said, clicking his tongue as he ran a webbed hand over the hull. "Still, good solid craft for unsteady waters, though not something I'd call fully reliable in a proper open ocean storm unless you had a good hand at the helm. Can't speak anything much to the interior except that it sounded relatively complex - too small a space to admit a fellow of my size."

"Condition?"

The rap of knucklebone against wood rang out in a way that even Holliday could tell was a good sign. "Solid enough - wouldn't call her a new make by any measure; she's got the sound of seasoning in her boards too strong for that, but she's a good craft without any flaws I can detect."

Which was saying a lot, considering the many years of experience Pew had in his line of work, Holliday thought as he added that to his notebook. "So there wouldn't be much reason for it to run aground?"

"Hm. Meryl did say that girl was in a bad way when she found her," Pew said after a moment's thought. "So that might account for it. Or…"

"Or what?"
"I've heard of people showing up at sea before, not knowing a lick about sailing despite being nowhere near land," the fishman said. "Found a couple myself over the years. Usually they're dead, but the survivors… well, they never seem to account for how that happened in the first place, if they're in any state to talk about it at all. Rarely ever the proper salt type either. Crewmate of mine always summed it up as 'the Blue Seas version of cloud drifting'."

One of the traditional forms of execution among the Sky peoples, and easily the cruelest, for how long it could take for death to come. Well, that was certainly an ugly prospect for too many reasons, even if there wasn't any Outsider interference.

"If that is the case," Holliday replied as he jumped up onto the deck of the boat. "This 'Raine' is a lucky soul indeed."

"Aye."

The cabin space clearly wasn't quite made with a man of Holliday's height in mind, though that metric was a matter of mere inches rather than anything insurmountable, and even that let up once he was past the companionway. Someone closer to Pew's scale, on the other hand, would have found it entirely impossible to enter the cabin at all.

The cabin itself was… humble. Homey, almost, if not for the disarray in its contents, though little seemed to be broken. A few bits of broken glass and twisted wire lay near the middle of the floor, obscured by a fallen throw pillow, seemed to be the sum of it, so…

Well, it wasn't much of anything yet. But it, and the lack of blood, did speak to a lack of violent struggle. One broken object - a pair of glasses, Holliday realized as he checked a garbage can near the door and found more pieces of the same wire and glass - was an easy accident.

With this kind of space and set up, he'd say that this was a vessel meant for medium length trips for a group of one to three people - skipping between relatively close islands or relatively short ventures out into open ocean. If he'd encountered it on a more civilian minded island, Holliday wouldn't have hesitated to dismiss it as a mid-grade fishing boat partially converted to mundane living space.

But as it was… no, there was no dismissing it just yet. Not while there were so many details left to suss out.

Looking through the cupboards to the right of the companionway, he could see there was no fishing tackle, though a few life jackets - again, at the kind of scale that prevented anyone with more than his height and body shape from making use of them -, a life-preserver, and a pristine pre-packaged first aid-kit were stored neatly enough to count as 'practical' and 'intentional' safety measures. Beneath them were items more conducive to survival within the cabin - extra blankets, pillows, and two sewing kits - one for sail repair while the other was clearly intended for more mundane use.

Another door revealed a toilet; again, with no fishing tackle, though he would have honestly been concerned to find such things in such a room.

So not a fishing vessel, Holliday noted down in his book as he closed the door and turned his attention to the rest of the interior, trying to keep the environment in situ as he moved through it.

There were two clear sleeping areas; one that sat directly across from the set of cupboards alongside the companionway, tucked in along the lines of the ship in a way that meant any potential sleepers to have to carefully scoot themselves feet first into the place if they wanted to sleep - though a curtain rod that also seemed home to both occupied and empty coat hangers offered a touch of privacy -, and a bunk bed built up along the lines of the starboard bow, facing another set of cupboards and what looked like a large bookshelf.

Between them was a combined galley and mess area, with a collapsible table placed as comfortable as possible in the middle, even as other features of a not-well-organized living space crowded the area further, which included another - if somewhat smaller - bookshelf.

The bookshelves had the most potential, in Holliday's mind, but it wouldn't do to neglect the rest of the space in his enthusiasm.

The galley was well stocked, he noted as he moved carefully through the space - noting the only thing really out of place in it being a couple nearly empty pill bottles with water damaged labels laying down in the sink -, its cupboards nearly full with what looked to be shelf-stable foods; the brands were unfamiliar, as were the dating systems attached, but canned soup was canned soup regardless and there were no signs of any being used within recent memory.

Holliday pocketed the bottles for inspection later - better lighting would offer much better chances of making out the blurred ink.

The same could be said for the drawers, though not quite with the same confidence. The silverware was well organized, the cutlery seemed to be fully accounted for, and most of the rest - dish towels, simple medical supplies, small tools, and such were perfectly ordinary for a 'normal person's living space… at least up until he found the drawer full of electrical-cords-that-weren't.

Holliday couldn't quite decide, as he tested the physical properties of one of the cords in hand, if it would have been stranger just to find a drawer full of obviously cut cords of a more conventional make. These… well, they looked to be intact, even if he couldn't make even the first - well, alright, a second - guess as to what they actually were.

They'd certainly had the right tensile strength and rubber insulation to be electrical cords, but the metal ends were shaped oddly and often branded with an odd shaped trident symbol pressed on some that seemed to indicate… some sort of multifunctionality?

Whatever it was, the symbol wasn't familiar, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that they were clearly meant to interface with something, a theory that was confirmed when he slid an extruding metal piece from one cord into the hollow addition of a different one - which, when looked at as a whole, seemed to be some sort of extender - easily and then decoupled them with just as much effort.

What that thing or, more likely, things were, however were unclear and Holliday quickly figured he'd reached the end of that avenue of exploration fairly quickly.

Tucking the cords back into the drawer from whence they'd came - and in a mess just as tangled up as he'd found it, so he doubted his little dabbling would ever be noticed there - he turned his attention to the bookshelf above the sitting area.

It was a much more mixed range of subjects than Holliday had originally expected for its location; only three or four of the books seemed to cover the subject of cooking, while the rest were far more eclectic, running across subjects and genres at seeming random, with thick books on the various theories on art and literary construction and how the two married in the medium of comics intermixed with tarot decks and guides to reading them before jumping into the land of fiction proper, with graphic novels of varying subjects and levels of obscenity bumping shoulders with more mature mysteries and tongue-in-cheek fantasies rendered in safely solid text.

There were also non-fiction books, some of which looked rather promising; a few geographic and historical studies of the semi-legendary 'New York' so many Outsider works would name and reference off hand, complete with extensive photography were extremely tempting pieces to add to the collection of 'things Holliday was just borrowing for now with an absolute promise to bring it back, honest', as were the books on archeology and mythology touching on cultures and locations that, once again, were either referenced only obliquely by other sources he'd encountered or been omitted altogether.

He had to restrain the urge to make some manner of undignified noise of delight at the treasure trove. Pew's ears were too good to even dream of such a thing going unnoticed.

But, as much as Holliday's fingers itched to crack open one of those archeology books, he had a mission to focus on first - one that had been noted early on as potentially time limited.

The bunk beds revealed nothing, except perhaps a taste for tie-dye bedsheets, animal print throw pillows, and complex patterned woven blankets that, while appealing enough on their own, clashed severely when shoved into the same space. He wasn't going to even attempt to make sense of the plush toy collection occupying the top bunk.

There was a small space that seemed to serve the part of a nightstand, where a clock-radio sat in an off-kilter not-quite pride of place and more of those strange cords lay there, apparently waiting for some kind of purpose.

Holliday flipped back to the page where he'd covered the drawer of cables and added the note 'spares?' to it.

Finally, he turned his attention to the last set of doors.

The first was a wardrobe, seemingly half picked clean of clothes, likely thanks to Meryl collecting some necessaries for the girl when Pew had first brought the boat to its current resting place - that, more than anything else, seemed to point to it being Raine's boat, given that all the clothes left to be of a consistent size and…

He made a face at a garish orange shirt emblazoned with the words 'Let's Play Dead' over a grinning possum while a mustard yellow one announced that the wearer was 'NERVOUS' in solid black bold caps.

…style.

Closing those doors, he opened the ones next to them. Again, he was presented with something not quite his area, but - he noted as he opened up the lid of the record player - a bit closer to it.

The collection of disc records - classic vinyl and prismatic, with the strange legalese and white-black bars that marked Outsider goods scribbled across the bottom of their back packaging - was almost as much of a treasure trove as the books of New York were because, though he would personally rate the books as the more valuable prize, there was much more of a market for Outsider music… particularly if the medium it was preserved in was free of damage.

After all, the cleaner the sound on the original, the better quality its 'pirated' duplicates would be, and the more people would be willing to pay for them.

Of course, the number of people who could make proper use of the prismatic type was limited, with whatever technology required to read them being difficult to find intact and so far impossible to reproduce by anyone less than the likes of Vegapunk, but there was still a market among collectors who collected such things simply for the sake of owning something rare.

…though, again, he was forced to admit that the tastes of the person who had assembled this collection were a bit… beyond him for the most part, though Holliday could hardly fault some of the choices - he was more of a Woody Guthrie man himself, but Johnny Cash wasn't bad listening either.

Taking a bit more time to flip through the music library - he made a note of the poor organization after the tenth surprise Chicago album appeared - without too many more notable discoveries, he turned to the bottom and final cupboard.

This, he sensed, contained something big, something world changing, something…

Opening the doors, he found himself staring at the underwhelming contents.

There were more books here, along with a few boxes of what looked like… card and board games? Holliday could have dug into them more to find out what they were or how they were played, but he didn't want to push his luck any further than what he already had with the time he'd already taken.

Pulling aside the folded cardboard, rolled mats, boxed kits, and the many books that all seemed to belong to the same series by the consistency of their binding - Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Guildmaster's Guide to Ravinica, Ravenloft, Mythic Odyssey, Monster Manual, Tome of Foes, Guide to Monsters - how many books did one need for the monsters in this game? -, Practical Guide to Dragons, Practical Guide to Dragon Riding, Guide to Everything - how many guides, practical or not, did one need for this game?! -, followed by the seemingly superfluous Cauldron of Everything and a few more that he didn't even want to even try to make sense of at this point…

He blinked. He stared. Just to be sure, he opened the plastic containers to make sure that there wasn't some sort of… distortion or trick to what otherwise looked like clear plastic.

There wasn't.

Forget the question of how one game needed that many rulebooks; who in the nine circles of hell needed that many dice?

There had to be… hell, thousand or more in the collection, just based on the sheer bulk of it. And, yes, maybe it made sense to a collector interested in such things, but… dice? Resin plastic dice?

Well, there were a few - perhaps two or three - metal and stone sets, now that he was digging a little bit more just to make sure that he hadn't lost his mind in the last minute, along with a few novelty ones that either had unconventional symbology or eccentric shapes attached. And…

No. Absolutely not.

Holliday almost broke when he found the means to make even more of the damn things packed in a couple boxes behind them, complete with roughly thirty different - and, as he discovered, leaking - bottles of glitter.

"Owner… of boat…," he croaked out as he put his pencil to paper again, very much trying not to look at bright shiny flecks now sprinkled all over it. "…possibly insane."

Pew's barely muffled laughter from outside was no comfort to Holliday's nearly shattered nerves.

Author's Notes

Part 2 of our chunked chapter experiment - please respond in the comments/reviews on how you feel about this kind of word count/pacing so we can make the call on if this is going to be a regular thing or just a one (well, four) off.

Raine's boat is meant to be a sort of kludge of Galway hooker and long-distance sailboat/yacht; not very large, but a solid option for a starting boat. Most of the description is just lifted from Wikipedia articles - I don't know much about boats, even after spending about around three months trying to educate myself on the subject in prep for this fic.

Some of Raine's book collection,

10 books on the subject of New York, 3 of which are dedicated to various Subway Series (baseball) and 1 is dedicated to the Subway.

At least 5 different books on mythology (Norse, Aztec, Celtic, Egyptian, Greek for sure) and 5 different books of fairytales (1001 Nights, Grimm, Aesop's, and others)

A few books on archeology (Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese)

6 separate tarot manuals and 7 separate decks (including the Tarot of Pagan Cats)

And in that last drawer - a whole lot of DnD supplements (mostly 5e, but not entirely) for someone who isn't that good at it (the crystal math collection is even worse).

There are obviously, other books present, but we're just going with what's either funny or most immediately relevant to Holliday's interests. If any of the other books become relevant or are directly mentioned in the text, they'll be named.

The music collection is an eclectic mix but mostly classic rock with a heavy dash of punk and metal with a few oddball inclusions of swing, country, and the Space Jam soundtrack.

Holliday, for his part, prefers country/blues and plays slide guitar on a dobro.

Related, the reason why we chose to have the vinyl and CDs referred to as 'disc records' or 'sound discs' with the distinct category of 'vinyl' vs 'prismatic' was mostly trying to get a bit of weird culture separation there between Outsiders/'real world people' and locals. Also to reinforce the unevenness of the tech levels and how there's a limit to what most people could probably manage to reverse engineer from Outsider technology.

Vegapunk being the named exception because he is always the named exception.