NaNoWriMo - Chapter dos
The completely unedited (as in I haven't even read it) 2st chapter of my NaNoWriMo novel!!! So if there are any errors, I will be going back to fix them later :D!
Chapter dos
It was his third day on the ship.
The sun hung like a gold coin on a string of light; it's brightness contrasting with the permanently scarlet sky. It was like a sea of blood that washed over the globe like the waters of the ocean; it's waves crashing down on every shore. Majet said that it was a good sign. It was a sign that blood would be spilled soon. Iryce didn't think that was a good sign, but when he told Majet that, Majet just laughed.
“You're a pirate now; you can't hide from blood forever.”
Those were the exact words that haunted Iryce. He didn't want to have to face blood; in all honesty it made him a little queasy. He had enough trouble healing wounds without wanting to vomit; he wasn't actually expected to kill or something... was he?
He leaned over the balcony of the upper deck; his gaze falling down upon the clouds below. Supposedly, there was one point in time where being up like this would be impossible; that's what Captain had said anyways. Captain always seemed to know what he was talking about. That's probably why he was the Captain.
He reached forward towards the sun, placing his hand in a way that looked like he was holding the sun in his palm.
A chuckle sounded behind him. Iryce didn't even bother turning around; he'd already gotten used to being surprised on the ship.
He already knew it was Majet.
“Whatcha trying to do boy?”
Iryce didn't respond; he brought his hand back down to his side, turning away from the rail to face Majet. His fingertips glided against the dark wood of the railing. It was his protector, and at the same time his cage. It was what kept him from falling off; what let him glide along in this freedom; on this ship. At the same time it was his cage; what kept him from ever leaving and moving on in life. He was on this ship forever; there was no question about it.
“You might to want to go down to the basement. You won't want to be up here much longer; be gone in about... three minutes.” It wasn't a suggestion, but a straight-forward order.
Iryce didn't even bother asking why.
As he walked away, Majet added in, “Don't go down to your room. Go to the actual basement. Oh, and don't make any noise or turn on any lights- ”
This must be some kind of weird pixie catching technique...
“-unless you want to get killed.”
... or not.
Iryce could only manage to grunt before quickly heading off. He wanted to get far away from the black haired fiend. Yes, Majet had been demoted from human to fiend. It was probably because of the sharp teeth.
Captain only had one eye.
Mucirsi couldn't talk.
The chef was kind of freaky too.
Iryce tumbled down the last few stairs on the staircase as his foot caught hold of a slightly raised ledge. His hand barely missed a painting as it scraped against the wall, cutting along a golden chair-rail. If being a sky pirate didn't end up killing him, all this fancy, sharp, and ornate stuff that seemed to haunt every room would.
The sounds of many men walking overhead could be heard. They sounded like they were running around; their feet pounding hard as if trampling across a fire.
Iryce started running. Down the next staircase, through another hallway, down a minor staircase, through a door, take a turn, through a door, down a dark hallway, and there, finally, was the door to the basement.
He ran in, slamming the door behind him. He pulled down the string that flicked off the bald lightbulb that hung overhead. It was the only light in the vast space, something he found rather strange. For such an extensive room he had expected there to be more light than this.
Then again, it was just a basement.
He rummaged through the dark; trying to navigate his way the best he could through all the boxes. He stumbled a few times as he tried to walk around. His hand burned as the thick layer of dust that caked the surface of everything buried itself within the cut.
He pushed himself behind a wall of boxes; his back leaning against something sturdy.
He couldn't hear anything; the ship seemed dead.
For a while, he didn't move. The cut in his hand still burning from the amount of dirt that had gotten into it. Iryce strained to look at his hand in the dark, but the room was blacker than night, and nothing could be seen.
He slowly lit the opposite hand with a green light that flickered across his fingers and around his palm. It was small and weak, due to the fact that he was too scared to light up fully. Majet had told him to turn off the lights. Even though this technically wasn't something to turn off, the fact that his was a life or death situation, he decided it wasn't a good time to get technical.
Not that he actually knew the situation.
His eyes swiftly switched from his hand to something else that had caught his attention.
A little yellow light was dancing in front of his eyes. Literally, it was dancing.
It was a little person no bigger than the palm of his hand if it could even be considered that size.
Pixie?
It danced in front of the green light; swirling and flying around his hand.
He could hear banging from above, and it was getting louder. That meant it was getting closer.
Captain had told him to catch that pixie.
Majet had told him if he moved he'd die. Iryce didn't want to die.
Captain didn't have to know he saw the pixie.
The light in his hand disappeared, and with that the pixie did too.
It'd flown away; it's light fading away into the blackness of room.
The image of the dancing pixie traveled through his mind; the dancing female pixie. She reminded him of one of those dolls you saw through the glass window of a toy shop as you walked along the streets of town. One of those little dolls that little girls idolized and cooed over.
The sounds of people above him didn't fade out, and soon Iryce had fallen asleep.
---
The man tapped his foot against the hard wooden floor of the library. The library held vasts amount of books that no one ever read. They were just there for one person and one person alone, and he was the one who had written them. They were his studies; the things that he'd discovered; his theories; his hypotheses; his works.
They ranged from nature to human nature, psychology to physiology. Any topic imaginable to the human mind had been covered, discussed, and written about several times by this man. When he wasn't writing, he was reading what he'd written. It only reassured him that everything he wrote down was right. Without that reassurance, the man would be incapable of functioning on a continual basis. His purpose in life would be ruined and his sense of usefulness would not exist.
The scholar leaned back in his chair so that it balanced against the back two legs; his feet rested against the dark wood of the table in front of him. Personally, he hated wood, but his personal opinion didn't matter to too many people. People didn't matter to him, so he didn't loose anything in the situation.
It was all in the pros and cons; the gains and loses; the winning side and the loosing side.
Right now, Captain was winning, so until things started declining he was staying.
Though, on that thought, it was confusing to the man on how he would transport all these books out of the ship if such a thing to occur; not that such a thing would ever occur. The books were floor to ceiling. A ladder had to be used to get to a middle ledge that led to another ladder which led to the top. On the top were the most important books to the man; the ones he never wanted anyone touching without his permission. Most people, especially on board, would be too lazy to climb up a ladder, walk a little ways, and climb up another ladder. Granted, they would also have to look through all the books, which had no sort of organization on them.
He rather liked his system; it gave him the peace he needed to work effectively.
The work he did was tremendously gruesome compared to that of the average writer. An average writer who made any profit at all had a telephone like system in which they spoke into, and the words the person said were transferred onto a screen in front of them.
Of course, the man didn't work that way though. No, he used a typewriter from centuries before that couldn't even allow him to edit if he messed up. There was a Voice Writer, as it had been so conveniently named, on board, but no one ever used it.
Captain said that if you typed everything like they did back so long ago, that it'd look so much more historical when it was found years down the road. It'd look like it was typed by someone far past their era; someone smarter that stood out.
It was enough to convince the greedy scholar; everyone was smart enough to know that the man only wanted recognition.
Hinges slowly squealed with lack of use as the doors to the library opened. They'd been locked much earlier, due to some trouble up on deck. The scholar wouldn't dare let his books get ruined over some worrisome fighting.
He couldn't even tell what the fighting was about. He was just granted with the knowledge that he was on the winning side, had a place to stay, food to eat, and as much writing materials as he required. It was enough to make him happy, and as long as he was happy he could really care less about the world.
His brown eyes narrowed at the screen in front of him. It was mapping out the course of their travel, and it showed him exactly where they were heading to, how long the trip would be, and generally it gave him some idea on why they were going there.
He had no idea why they were going there though. They'd taken a turn, and he had no idea why.
His chair slammed to the ground as he finally turned to face whoever had walked in.
Captain, go figure.
Not only Captain though, but a few worthless men behind him carrying the new kid around.
The kid couldn't even fend for himself, how tragic.
“Why the change of course?” was the first question that came from the scholar.
Captain didn't even bother answering the question; instead, he motioned for the men to place the boy on a nearby couch. They did so, leaving afterwards.
“I need you to watch him for me.”
“What am I, your babysitter now?”
The Captain laughed. Everything the scholar said seemed to be a joke to him. From anyone else, that would probably bother the scholar, but it didn't bother him coming from Captain. It wasn't because Captain was his authority. Authority had laughed at him before, and it angered him to a great extent. It was because nothing seemed to bother Captain. Captain didn't seem to ask questions that he didn't know the answers too; didn't make orders that people were incapable of; didn't make plans without thinking things through.
He was so god damn happy though, and that bothered the scholar a lot.
“When he wakes up have him heal that cut on his hand.”
With that the Captain walked out, shutting the creaky wooden doors behind him.
Captain loved wood.
Now, the room was silent again.
---
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Pound. Ring. Repeat.
It was the sound Iryce woke up to. The small clicking sound, followed by a louder one, a ringing of a bell, and the continuation. It was a slightly aggravating thing to wake up too.
He sat up from the couch, seeing a man not to far off typing furiously on some kind of machine. He hadn't seen anything like it before, so giving it a name was something rather hard for him to do.
“Heal your hand.”
It wasn't exactly a nice voice to wake up to either.
Iryce looked down at his hand, flinching at the site of the half-complete job he had done before. It was something between the mix of a scab, a scar, and a cut; it looked terrible. It was practically black from all the dirt that he gotten up underneath it from touching all those boxes.
He hadn't even bothered to check what was inside of them.
He picked at his previous work with his other hand in hopes of getting the grime out from underneath.
The man had turned around and was partially facing Iryce now. “It doesn't take all day.”
“I have to clean it first.”
The man chuckled as he rolled his eyes as the younger male. He watched closely as Iryce began healing the wound. At least this time, Iryce actually had time to heal it, and he didn't have to rush it as he had previous times.
It felt as if doing it the normal way was just an agonizingly long process.
The man had stood up; his form hovered over the couch as he curiously watched the boy below.
“You need to work on that a bit.”
Iryce looked up. “I know.”
“Just making sure.” The man walked away, heading back to his machine and typing again. Once finishing with that sheet of paper, he placed another one in. This time, when he'd finished it he'd placed it in a new pile, separate from the rest.
“Why am I here?” Iryce questioned loud enough for the man to hear.
The man could only offer a shrug of his shoulders; he didn't even stop typing.
Jerk.
“How did I get here?”
The man had stopped typing, and had now turned around to glare.
Iryce decided he had a scary glare.
“If you could please find some other form of entertainment other than bothering me I would greatly appreciate it. Now, unless you have an amazing question that won't be deemed pointless by me, then you may speak. Other wise, be quiet and do not ask questions.”
He'd turned back around and started typing again.
Iryce had gotten the message; now what would he do for entertainment in a library.
He stood up, walking to the opposite side of the room from the angry man with a foul temper.
His eyes scanned over the books, looking for familiar phrases that he recognized.
One phrase appeared along the spine of all the books.
“What is... Becky... Oxin?”
The typewriter had stopped typing again, this time followed up by a deep sigh. “First off, the correct question would be 'who is Beki Axen?, and secondly, you pronounced it wrong. That would be me by the way. Most people in this hell hole call me Beks though. I guess Beki is to sophisticated for them.”
The machine was going again.
Then it stopped.
“Can you not read?”
Iryce could tell it was a rhetorical question, and by the way the Beki, Beks, said it, it sounded more like a statement.
Beks was giving Iryce a disapproving glance as he scanned the much shorter individual up and down. “You really are pathetic, you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Just making sure.”
He grabbed Iryce's arm, pulling him along back to the machine. He hit a few more buttons before pulling the sheet out, and adding it to one of the piles. He entered another piece of paper, pushing Ircye down into a chair before sitting down into one himself.
“You are going to be the best reader in this hell hole. Looks like Captain brought me a new toy.”
Ircye wasn't sure whether or not he was scared because of Beks, or the fact he had just been called a toy.
---
The doors to the library squealed once more as they slowly opened, and then shut once again. Beks looked up, rolling his eyes as Captain walked in once again with two men behind him.
Captain picked a few papers off of a now sleeping Iryce's stomach before the men carried him out. His eyes scanned over the paper before looking over at Beks. “The alphabet?”
“He can't read.”
“At all?”
“Not a bit; you sure know how to pick them good.”
Captain laughed, walking over to wear Beks sat. He picked up a stack of newly typed papers, “I thought you would be interested if he healed for you.”
“It's easier to write on something you've seen up close.”
“You seem strangely excited.”
“I don't get excited.”
Captain looked up from the papers only to see Beks glaring at him. He grinned, setting down the pile of papers where he had picked them up from.
“You're interested at least.”
“That I am.” He turned back to his typewriter, his fingers lightly touching the tops of the keys. He always did that when he was thinking; it was as if barely tapping the tops of the buttons just enough to make them click, but not enough to make them type, was enough to get his train of thought going. “He'll get better at it the more he practices.”
This seemed enough to please the Captain. It would be great to finally have a healer on board.
“Back on the subject of his reading. Could you teach him a few more languages then just the basics?”
Beks quirked an eyebrow. “What would be the need? I'm already a translator. He'd be terrible for trade anyways; he's way to young.”
There was a glint in the Captain's eye that made Beks cringe. Captain never told anyone anything; he had yet to explain the change of the ship's course.
“I don't need him for trade.” He grabbed a piece of paper, and started scribbling down a list of languages.
He was confused. How was he supposed to teach a kid who couldn't read one language a bunch of languages that he couldn't speak himself. Well, he was fluent in most of them, but some of them he'd barely even considered needing.
“You're ruining my paper.”
“I'll get you more.” The pen clanked as it hit the table; the sheet of paper making a light swoosh as it was slid across the table over to Beks. “You think he'll be able to learn these?”
“He fell asleep after trying to learn the alphabet.”
“Oh well.”
“You have a lot of faith in this kid?”
“Not really.”
“Just making sure.”
The clacking of boots as Captain left was gone in an instance.
Beks stared at the door for a minute, his fingers tapping against the table. Suddenly, his toy didn't seem as exciting anymore.
Chapter dos
It was his third day on the ship.
The sun hung like a gold coin on a string of light; it's brightness contrasting with the permanently scarlet sky. It was like a sea of blood that washed over the globe like the waters of the ocean; it's waves crashing down on every shore. Majet said that it was a good sign. It was a sign that blood would be spilled soon. Iryce didn't think that was a good sign, but when he told Majet that, Majet just laughed.
“You're a pirate now; you can't hide from blood forever.”
Those were the exact words that haunted Iryce. He didn't want to have to face blood; in all honesty it made him a little queasy. He had enough trouble healing wounds without wanting to vomit; he wasn't actually expected to kill or something... was he?
He leaned over the balcony of the upper deck; his gaze falling down upon the clouds below. Supposedly, there was one point in time where being up like this would be impossible; that's what Captain had said anyways. Captain always seemed to know what he was talking about. That's probably why he was the Captain.
He reached forward towards the sun, placing his hand in a way that looked like he was holding the sun in his palm.
A chuckle sounded behind him. Iryce didn't even bother turning around; he'd already gotten used to being surprised on the ship.
He already knew it was Majet.
“Whatcha trying to do boy?”
Iryce didn't respond; he brought his hand back down to his side, turning away from the rail to face Majet. His fingertips glided against the dark wood of the railing. It was his protector, and at the same time his cage. It was what kept him from falling off; what let him glide along in this freedom; on this ship. At the same time it was his cage; what kept him from ever leaving and moving on in life. He was on this ship forever; there was no question about it.
“You might to want to go down to the basement. You won't want to be up here much longer; be gone in about... three minutes.” It wasn't a suggestion, but a straight-forward order.
Iryce didn't even bother asking why.
As he walked away, Majet added in, “Don't go down to your room. Go to the actual basement. Oh, and don't make any noise or turn on any lights- ”
This must be some kind of weird pixie catching technique...
“-unless you want to get killed.”
... or not.
Iryce could only manage to grunt before quickly heading off. He wanted to get far away from the black haired fiend. Yes, Majet had been demoted from human to fiend. It was probably because of the sharp teeth.
Captain only had one eye.
Mucirsi couldn't talk.
The chef was kind of freaky too.
Iryce tumbled down the last few stairs on the staircase as his foot caught hold of a slightly raised ledge. His hand barely missed a painting as it scraped against the wall, cutting along a golden chair-rail. If being a sky pirate didn't end up killing him, all this fancy, sharp, and ornate stuff that seemed to haunt every room would.
The sounds of many men walking overhead could be heard. They sounded like they were running around; their feet pounding hard as if trampling across a fire.
Iryce started running. Down the next staircase, through another hallway, down a minor staircase, through a door, take a turn, through a door, down a dark hallway, and there, finally, was the door to the basement.
He ran in, slamming the door behind him. He pulled down the string that flicked off the bald lightbulb that hung overhead. It was the only light in the vast space, something he found rather strange. For such an extensive room he had expected there to be more light than this.
Then again, it was just a basement.
He rummaged through the dark; trying to navigate his way the best he could through all the boxes. He stumbled a few times as he tried to walk around. His hand burned as the thick layer of dust that caked the surface of everything buried itself within the cut.
He pushed himself behind a wall of boxes; his back leaning against something sturdy.
He couldn't hear anything; the ship seemed dead.
For a while, he didn't move. The cut in his hand still burning from the amount of dirt that had gotten into it. Iryce strained to look at his hand in the dark, but the room was blacker than night, and nothing could be seen.
He slowly lit the opposite hand with a green light that flickered across his fingers and around his palm. It was small and weak, due to the fact that he was too scared to light up fully. Majet had told him to turn off the lights. Even though this technically wasn't something to turn off, the fact that his was a life or death situation, he decided it wasn't a good time to get technical.
Not that he actually knew the situation.
His eyes swiftly switched from his hand to something else that had caught his attention.
A little yellow light was dancing in front of his eyes. Literally, it was dancing.
It was a little person no bigger than the palm of his hand if it could even be considered that size.
Pixie?
It danced in front of the green light; swirling and flying around his hand.
He could hear banging from above, and it was getting louder. That meant it was getting closer.
Captain had told him to catch that pixie.
Majet had told him if he moved he'd die. Iryce didn't want to die.
Captain didn't have to know he saw the pixie.
The light in his hand disappeared, and with that the pixie did too.
It'd flown away; it's light fading away into the blackness of room.
The image of the dancing pixie traveled through his mind; the dancing female pixie. She reminded him of one of those dolls you saw through the glass window of a toy shop as you walked along the streets of town. One of those little dolls that little girls idolized and cooed over.
The sounds of people above him didn't fade out, and soon Iryce had fallen asleep.
---
The man tapped his foot against the hard wooden floor of the library. The library held vasts amount of books that no one ever read. They were just there for one person and one person alone, and he was the one who had written them. They were his studies; the things that he'd discovered; his theories; his hypotheses; his works.
They ranged from nature to human nature, psychology to physiology. Any topic imaginable to the human mind had been covered, discussed, and written about several times by this man. When he wasn't writing, he was reading what he'd written. It only reassured him that everything he wrote down was right. Without that reassurance, the man would be incapable of functioning on a continual basis. His purpose in life would be ruined and his sense of usefulness would not exist.
The scholar leaned back in his chair so that it balanced against the back two legs; his feet rested against the dark wood of the table in front of him. Personally, he hated wood, but his personal opinion didn't matter to too many people. People didn't matter to him, so he didn't loose anything in the situation.
It was all in the pros and cons; the gains and loses; the winning side and the loosing side.
Right now, Captain was winning, so until things started declining he was staying.
Though, on that thought, it was confusing to the man on how he would transport all these books out of the ship if such a thing to occur; not that such a thing would ever occur. The books were floor to ceiling. A ladder had to be used to get to a middle ledge that led to another ladder which led to the top. On the top were the most important books to the man; the ones he never wanted anyone touching without his permission. Most people, especially on board, would be too lazy to climb up a ladder, walk a little ways, and climb up another ladder. Granted, they would also have to look through all the books, which had no sort of organization on them.
He rather liked his system; it gave him the peace he needed to work effectively.
The work he did was tremendously gruesome compared to that of the average writer. An average writer who made any profit at all had a telephone like system in which they spoke into, and the words the person said were transferred onto a screen in front of them.
Of course, the man didn't work that way though. No, he used a typewriter from centuries before that couldn't even allow him to edit if he messed up. There was a Voice Writer, as it had been so conveniently named, on board, but no one ever used it.
Captain said that if you typed everything like they did back so long ago, that it'd look so much more historical when it was found years down the road. It'd look like it was typed by someone far past their era; someone smarter that stood out.
It was enough to convince the greedy scholar; everyone was smart enough to know that the man only wanted recognition.
Hinges slowly squealed with lack of use as the doors to the library opened. They'd been locked much earlier, due to some trouble up on deck. The scholar wouldn't dare let his books get ruined over some worrisome fighting.
He couldn't even tell what the fighting was about. He was just granted with the knowledge that he was on the winning side, had a place to stay, food to eat, and as much writing materials as he required. It was enough to make him happy, and as long as he was happy he could really care less about the world.
His brown eyes narrowed at the screen in front of him. It was mapping out the course of their travel, and it showed him exactly where they were heading to, how long the trip would be, and generally it gave him some idea on why they were going there.
He had no idea why they were going there though. They'd taken a turn, and he had no idea why.
His chair slammed to the ground as he finally turned to face whoever had walked in.
Captain, go figure.
Not only Captain though, but a few worthless men behind him carrying the new kid around.
The kid couldn't even fend for himself, how tragic.
“Why the change of course?” was the first question that came from the scholar.
Captain didn't even bother answering the question; instead, he motioned for the men to place the boy on a nearby couch. They did so, leaving afterwards.
“I need you to watch him for me.”
“What am I, your babysitter now?”
The Captain laughed. Everything the scholar said seemed to be a joke to him. From anyone else, that would probably bother the scholar, but it didn't bother him coming from Captain. It wasn't because Captain was his authority. Authority had laughed at him before, and it angered him to a great extent. It was because nothing seemed to bother Captain. Captain didn't seem to ask questions that he didn't know the answers too; didn't make orders that people were incapable of; didn't make plans without thinking things through.
He was so god damn happy though, and that bothered the scholar a lot.
“When he wakes up have him heal that cut on his hand.”
With that the Captain walked out, shutting the creaky wooden doors behind him.
Captain loved wood.
Now, the room was silent again.
---
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Pound. Ring. Repeat.
It was the sound Iryce woke up to. The small clicking sound, followed by a louder one, a ringing of a bell, and the continuation. It was a slightly aggravating thing to wake up too.
He sat up from the couch, seeing a man not to far off typing furiously on some kind of machine. He hadn't seen anything like it before, so giving it a name was something rather hard for him to do.
“Heal your hand.”
It wasn't exactly a nice voice to wake up to either.
Iryce looked down at his hand, flinching at the site of the half-complete job he had done before. It was something between the mix of a scab, a scar, and a cut; it looked terrible. It was practically black from all the dirt that he gotten up underneath it from touching all those boxes.
He hadn't even bothered to check what was inside of them.
He picked at his previous work with his other hand in hopes of getting the grime out from underneath.
The man had turned around and was partially facing Iryce now. “It doesn't take all day.”
“I have to clean it first.”
The man chuckled as he rolled his eyes as the younger male. He watched closely as Iryce began healing the wound. At least this time, Iryce actually had time to heal it, and he didn't have to rush it as he had previous times.
It felt as if doing it the normal way was just an agonizingly long process.
The man had stood up; his form hovered over the couch as he curiously watched the boy below.
“You need to work on that a bit.”
Iryce looked up. “I know.”
“Just making sure.” The man walked away, heading back to his machine and typing again. Once finishing with that sheet of paper, he placed another one in. This time, when he'd finished it he'd placed it in a new pile, separate from the rest.
“Why am I here?” Iryce questioned loud enough for the man to hear.
The man could only offer a shrug of his shoulders; he didn't even stop typing.
Jerk.
“How did I get here?”
The man had stopped typing, and had now turned around to glare.
Iryce decided he had a scary glare.
“If you could please find some other form of entertainment other than bothering me I would greatly appreciate it. Now, unless you have an amazing question that won't be deemed pointless by me, then you may speak. Other wise, be quiet and do not ask questions.”
He'd turned back around and started typing again.
Iryce had gotten the message; now what would he do for entertainment in a library.
He stood up, walking to the opposite side of the room from the angry man with a foul temper.
His eyes scanned over the books, looking for familiar phrases that he recognized.
One phrase appeared along the spine of all the books.
“What is... Becky... Oxin?”
The typewriter had stopped typing again, this time followed up by a deep sigh. “First off, the correct question would be 'who is Beki Axen?, and secondly, you pronounced it wrong. That would be me by the way. Most people in this hell hole call me Beks though. I guess Beki is to sophisticated for them.”
The machine was going again.
Then it stopped.
“Can you not read?”
Iryce could tell it was a rhetorical question, and by the way the Beki, Beks, said it, it sounded more like a statement.
Beks was giving Iryce a disapproving glance as he scanned the much shorter individual up and down. “You really are pathetic, you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Just making sure.”
He grabbed Iryce's arm, pulling him along back to the machine. He hit a few more buttons before pulling the sheet out, and adding it to one of the piles. He entered another piece of paper, pushing Ircye down into a chair before sitting down into one himself.
“You are going to be the best reader in this hell hole. Looks like Captain brought me a new toy.”
Ircye wasn't sure whether or not he was scared because of Beks, or the fact he had just been called a toy.
---
The doors to the library squealed once more as they slowly opened, and then shut once again. Beks looked up, rolling his eyes as Captain walked in once again with two men behind him.
Captain picked a few papers off of a now sleeping Iryce's stomach before the men carried him out. His eyes scanned over the paper before looking over at Beks. “The alphabet?”
“He can't read.”
“At all?”
“Not a bit; you sure know how to pick them good.”
Captain laughed, walking over to wear Beks sat. He picked up a stack of newly typed papers, “I thought you would be interested if he healed for you.”
“It's easier to write on something you've seen up close.”
“You seem strangely excited.”
“I don't get excited.”
Captain looked up from the papers only to see Beks glaring at him. He grinned, setting down the pile of papers where he had picked them up from.
“You're interested at least.”
“That I am.” He turned back to his typewriter, his fingers lightly touching the tops of the keys. He always did that when he was thinking; it was as if barely tapping the tops of the buttons just enough to make them click, but not enough to make them type, was enough to get his train of thought going. “He'll get better at it the more he practices.”
This seemed enough to please the Captain. It would be great to finally have a healer on board.
“Back on the subject of his reading. Could you teach him a few more languages then just the basics?”
Beks quirked an eyebrow. “What would be the need? I'm already a translator. He'd be terrible for trade anyways; he's way to young.”
There was a glint in the Captain's eye that made Beks cringe. Captain never told anyone anything; he had yet to explain the change of the ship's course.
“I don't need him for trade.” He grabbed a piece of paper, and started scribbling down a list of languages.
He was confused. How was he supposed to teach a kid who couldn't read one language a bunch of languages that he couldn't speak himself. Well, he was fluent in most of them, but some of them he'd barely even considered needing.
“You're ruining my paper.”
“I'll get you more.” The pen clanked as it hit the table; the sheet of paper making a light swoosh as it was slid across the table over to Beks. “You think he'll be able to learn these?”
“He fell asleep after trying to learn the alphabet.”
“Oh well.”
“You have a lot of faith in this kid?”
“Not really.”
“Just making sure.”
The clacking of boots as Captain left was gone in an instance.
Beks stared at the door for a minute, his fingers tapping against the table. Suddenly, his toy didn't seem as exciting anymore.