Amythra 8

Crates home wasn't well lit that night nor well furnished at any time. He used to take discarded planks of wood and boxes from the ship yard and docks to carve strange stories on them before cluttering his one room home, which was located on the right side of the piers. Old unused fish nets served as curtains and were covered with hooks and dusts and shed fur. The only thing taken care of was his drawing table which Crate made and would sketch out unusual scenes from the ocean of monsters and creatures born underwater, half mume, have squid.

It was Crate that half raised Amythra and taught her how to draw, using anything at hand be it charcol, sand, wood, or rope. "Give me an empty book an' I'll fill it with a world." He'd knock on her head "Give me an empty head an' what'll I fill that with?"

She knocked on his drift-wood door. While remembering the feel of the trade gloves her mentor yelled "It's open, Lass." Followed by the crash of falling wood. She quickly pulled the door open to help Crate, but the old Effee was just sitting next to his stove, smoking his pipe as if the shifting foundation of wet wood didn't cause another stack of boxes to tumble.

"Oh, leave it. There are more important things."

"You know I'll be gone for maybe a week, old effee. How will you cope?"

"Bah." Crate waved away the thought with his pipe. "I'll be fine. Maybe I'll just burn the place down and live in one of those fancy boxes they store fish in. The one with windows."

The womume pushed a heavy box filled with metal tools against the wall. It had been stacked atop a smaller empty box which gave way slightly under the weight. "This whole house is like a rat-trap."

"I like rats."

"That explains how you eat, then."

They stopped to catch each other's glares, then broke into laughter. Crate kicked a pile of papers off stool in front of his recliner and said "Have seat, lass. I've heard ya' going into the city. It'll be an adventure, assuredly."

[note: I missed yesterday. This is getting to be a bad habit. I have 13 days off left this year.]