The Story of a Lifetime Ch. 06

There's something almost magical about getting a hint of the smell of sea air carried to you on the breeze. It smells rich, vibrant, and relaxing. But, like many things, the ocean's a lot less exciting close up.

This close to the ocean, the majestic smell gives way to a more base combination of dead fish, mildewy wood, and too much salt. But somehow, even that wasn't enough to put a damper on my excitement.

I waited there, half-sitting on a crate, watching the men bustle about. They were just finishing up loading the ship.

I realised that I was staring at one of the humans, eyes glued to his biceps and the muscles in his back as he picked up a large barrel of water. With an effort, I pulled my gaze from him and looked the ship over again. I wasn't a sailor and couldn't tell a galleon from a frigate from a caravel, but this ship was familiar to me anyway.

The Melancholy. It was just about two years ago that I boarded this ship in Newport to cross the Emerald Sea. Here I was boarding that same ship again, this time going the opposite direction.

The ship looked about as I remembered it, and I vaguely recognized some of the crew members as they picked and carried this or that. I found my eyes lingering on a woman as she pulled on a rope, her muscles bulging as she tightened and secured the line. I realised I'd been ogling her, and couldn't help but chuckle. As much as things change, some things stay the same.

But not everything stays the same. I turned my head again, looking over and down at the little man beside me. "How are you doing, Davvy?"

My son looked up from the stick he had been gravely inspecting, and gave me a big grin, showing off all eight of his teeth.

"Tick," he told me, holding the stick out towards me. He was sitting up by himself now, and if I put him on the ground he'd be able to tottle along for a short while. If he had something to hold onto as he walked, he covered ground pretty quick. It was getting to where I couldn't take my eyes off of him for more than two minutes without him getting into trouble.

"Yes," I told him in an encouraging voice. "A stick." I really enunciated the "s", trying to get him to copy the sound. It was probably a bit early to expect his pronunciations to be spot-on, but practising early was important. At least that's what Granny had told me.

I had no idea how Davor Junior was doing in terms of developmental milestones. He was a bit more than a year old... I frowned in concentration as I tried to count days and months. More than a year, maybe fourteen or fifteen months. But neither Granny nor I had known what to expect for development.

She'd seen a lot of elven babies in her life, and even a lot of half-elf children, but she had never even seen a baby half-orc before, let alone a half-orc, quarter-human, quarter-elf.

He had the wide eyes and pointy elven ears from my father's side of the family, but his green skin and thicker physique looked like it came from his father's side. Two of his teeth on the bottom were already protruding a bit above his lip, and I wondered if his tusks would be as long as his father's. And he was growing so much faster than the elf children his age had been, before we left town.

That train of thought sent me back into nostalgia. It had been two years since I'd seen Davor. Since my one-night... or three-night stand with him. I'd also slept with Ausk and Mazon during those days of travel together. I couldn't know for sure that it was Davor who'd fathered little Davor Junior, it could have been either of the other two orcs.

But I'd fucked Davor more times than either of the other two, and he was the one who'd asked me to come live with him, so he was as close to a father as Junior had.

At the time, I hadn't been ready to say yes, even though I had thought hard about it. Davor was sweet, kind, and clever. Not to mention ridiculously sexy. But I'd been taken with wanderlust, and wanted to see the world before I settled down.

But then, a few months later, I'd realised that I was pregnant, and wandering the world suddenly became a much more daunting task. I'd found my way to Granny, and offered her my story of a lifetime in return for her expertise in midwifery. She'd even helped me find work in the small elven town, under a local herbalist.

I'd spent a year tending the herbalist's garden, drying and grinding herbs, fetching things, travelling, and trading his herbs and potions in nearby towns for him. And in that time I'd held onto every single copper piece I'd earned. And when I wandered the woods and collected rare herbs and fungi to sell on the side, I'd kept every bit of money I made.

And I traded almost all of that money for a trip on the Melancholy as soon as I could.

It's not that I didn't like that little elvish town. It was beautiful, picturesque, and peaceful... and so damn boring. Nothing happened. Everyone just lived their long elven lives and did their routines exactly as they had done them for centuries.

The near-immortality of elves is no excuse to become sedentary.

And the people in the town had never really treated me like I belonged. My red hair, my curves, my smoother and less angular face... these all marked me as an outsider. I wasn't an elf, I was only half of one.

And not to mention my child, the child of an orc... I didn't want Davvy to grow up feeling like an outsider, scorned or even pitied. He deserved better than that. We both did.

I smiled down at the little fella, and couldn't help but laugh when I saw his face half-hidden by his hat. It was too big for him, and kept falling forward to cover his eyes.

I pushed the hat back to the top of his head, and was treated to another of his big sunny grins. "Mama," he babbled at me. "Mama, tick."

"You just hold onto that stick," I told him as I scooped him up. "Oof, when did you get so heavy?"

The ship was loaded, so I picked my way up the gangplank. One of the sailors had even grabbed my bags and brought it downstairs where I'd be staying, so I wouldn't have to.

The last time I'd been on board the ship I had only owned as much as I could fit into a backpack, but this time I wasn't travelling quite as light: three or four changes of clothes each for myself and Junior, cloth diapers, and a few souvenirs from my stay in Yamen En'sol.

The sailors gathered on the deck as the captain stepped up to give a pre-sailing speech, just like last time. But another thing had changed in the last two years: Captain Rockbeard was gone, and the captain standing in front of the crowd looked almost human, save for skin the colour of a glowing ember and red hair that moved like a living flame. She called herself Captain Flamespirit, and booking passage with her had been much easier (and less costly) than with Rockbeard two years prior. I hadn't even had to suck cock or spread my legs for anyone this time.

Although, as I watched her pace and talk, red skin faintly glowing under a sleeveless coat, I caught myself thinking that giving a little quid-pro-quo wouldn't have been so bad...

By the time I pulled myself away from my reverie, the group was dispersing. The sailors started untying ropes and lowering the smaller sail to get the ship moving away from the dock. The tide waits for no man, not even for flame-spirit women.

The captain stood on high to watch her workers set to their tasks, and the other two passengers make their way below deck. Captain Flamespirit was a lot less picky about the difference between a cargo ship and a passenger ship. "If the ship's already going to sail somewhere," she had told me, "may as well stick a couple passengers in it and make a bit more money."

I scanned the workers, looking for more familiar faces. That hobgoblin coiling a rope had been here before, as had that big, grey orc lady. I spotted Brigs, the only goblin I'd ever met, scampering up the mainmast towards his spot in the crow's nest. And who else...

I felt a grin spread across my face when I spotted the little halfling cook as she moved across the deck. "Mel!" I called out to her, and she stopped short (no pun intended).

"Amy?" she asked, surprised, and ran forward to give me a hug. I stooped down and wrapped one arm around her, setting Davvy down on the deck. He was only half a foot shorter than her, but hid behind my leg anyway.

"And who's this?" she asked as we parted.

"This little man is Davor Junior. Are you going to say hi, Davvy?"

He peeked out from around my leg and glanced at her, then mumbled what might have passed for "hello".

"I didn't see Tial-" I cut myself off, remembering that minotaurs keep their given names private. "Stubs. I didn't see Stubs when I was getting on. Is he still here?"

She shook her head, looking a little blue. "No, Stubs went with Captain Rockbeard when he got the boot."

"Wait, they fired the old captain? How do you fire a captain?"

"Easily, as it turns out," she chuckled. "The ship doesn't belong to the captain, it belongs to Seaport Porters & Co. The captain just manages the ship and crew. If you fuck up too much..."

"You get the boot," I finished for her.

"Exactly. Not that I miss the crotchety old bastard." She looked around, and I realised she probably had work to do.

"Don't let me keep you, Mel. You're probably needed in the galley."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I'm still stuck in the galley for a little while longer. But I'm almost done."

"You're leaving the ship?" I was genuinely surprised. She had seemed so content working in the galley with the other ladies.

"I'll tell you about it sometime," she told me, starting to walk away before stopping. "Do you want to catch up over drinks?"

I hadn't drank any alcohol since finding out I was pregnant, and it seemed like as good a time as any to start. "You know where to find me."

She grinned and scurried off, and I made my way towards the back of the ship, out of the way of the sailors. Davor Junior and I watched the shore of Patridike get smaller and smaller as the ship's sails unfurled and caught the wind. Davvy and I gave a small wave to the city as it became indistinct, and kept watching for a while after it had faded away completely.

I spread my coat out on the wood floor below to keep Junior from getting splinters, and set out a few of his favorite toys. I smiled as I watched him roll one of the wooden blocks around before picking it up and frowning at it. Those blocks had an elvish letter on each face so they could be arranged to make words, but Junior was still too young to read or spell... especially since elvish has dozens more letters than the Amellan alphabet.

I plucked the block out of his hand, turned one side to face him, and carefully enunciated the letter. He frowned in concentration for a moment as I repeated the sound, then lost interest and settled on a different toy.

Leaning back against the railing, far enough out of the way of the sailors that I wasn't worried about us being trampled, I slowly turned the block over in my hand. I recalled the years spent learning the perfect spelling and calligraphy that was expected of my elvish grandparents.

It was the constant expectations and pressure that had me leaving home just as soon as I could, straight into a pointless life of partying and carelessness. Then I found a human man I thought loved me, but just wanted to cage me and control me like my family had.

The end result was me fleeing another crappy home, onto a life of adventure, and the end result of that adventure... I smiled down at Davor and promised myself for the hundredth time that he would have it better than I had.

He played there for a little while, while I leaned against the railing and rested my eyes. Eventually the sun started feeling a bit too hot, and I ushered Davor towards the stairs. He'd inherited his father's green skin and wouldn't burn quite as easily as me with my paler skin, but I figured he could use a nap by now anyway.

Once I had Davor down, I picked a spot beside a port that let in some sunlight, and cracked my book open. It was a romance story about two elves, one from the city and one from the deep woods, falling in love. It was silly, fluffy, and entirely predictable, but it kept me invested and the afternoon flew by.

The evening's meal was actually decent, since the ship still has fresh supplies. Once we were further out to sea we would be relying on dried food.

"How long 'til we cross into the Emerald Sea proper?" I asked Mel as I helped Davvy get the right end of his spoon pointed towards his food. He'd started trying to take over eating by himself two months ago, which means the messes he makes now have a much bigger splash zone.

"We'll stop at three smaller port towns," she mumbled around a mouthful of thick stew. "So two days?"

"I guess we have two more days of fresh food, then."

"Maybe three, if you're real polite," she said with a smirk before polishing off her bowl. She had the same size dish as Davor, about half the size of mine. A few of the crew members had dishes so big they looked like mixing bowls. The size difference was crazy, but that was to be expected when you had a crew that ranged from three feet tall to seven or more.

I wondered if they got paid differently based on how much they ate, how much they could lift...

My mind went off down this tangent as I gave Melody a parting wave without looking up. While Melody clambered off the bench, I turned half my attention back to mitigating how much of a mess my little monster could make.

By the time Davvy finished eating and I got him cleaned up, it was just about time to get him into bed. Since The Melancholy was heavy on supplies and light on passengers, Davvy and I had our own room.

I read him another story from the second book I'd brought with me, a small folio of tales for children, written in Elvish of course. He'd already heard all the stories, both in Elvish and in Amellan, the language of my home country.

I was glad Davor was going to grow up bilingual like me. Amellan is sometimes called the language of humans, and is spoken throughout Amella, the largest country on the continent across the sea from us, and up into Theris. Some people as far away as Patridike spoke Amellan, because of all the trade coming into the port.

Elvish is weirdly almost identical in every elf nation, which I figure is because elves are allergic to anything ever changing.

Davor would probably be able to pick up his father's tongue, but I had no idea how hard Orcish was to learn... or if there was even a single Orcish language for that matter. For all I knew, each orc town might have its own language.

I tucked Davor Jr. into his little hammock, sized perfectly for halflings, goblins, and children, and stepped out of our room. I closed the door most of the way behind me, and found Mel sitting at a squat table across from her partner. I squinted slightly as I walked over to them, trying to remember his name.

"Hey, Mel," I said, sidling into a chair beside the two. "And... it was Harold, right?"

"Harry," he corrected me amiably. "We didn't talk much when you were here what... two, two and a half years ago?"

"That sounds about right, yeah," I told him. "You two were already together back then, weren't you?"

"Four years last month," he said with a proud grin. He was a handsome enough guy. With that square jaw and sandy hair, he looked like the archetypical good ol' farmer boy. He seemed like a good match for Mel... except for him being a human and about twice her size.

Mel pushed a wooden mug towards me, then slid the uncorked bottle of wine over. I poured myself a cup and clinked it against hers.

"To another safe trip," I said as our three cups tapped together.

"May Byless grant a gracious sea and kind wind," Mel intoned. I raised an eyebrow and she chuckled. "Halfling deity of seas and travel. I've beseeched him before every trip."

"And we haven't sunk yet," Harry added with a shrug.

"To Byless, then," I agreed, taking a sip. The wine wasn't a particularly exciting vintage, but good company can make even a bad drink taste fine.

"Do any elven deities look out for sailors," she asked.

I took a small sip of the wine and shrugged. "I think so. There are hundreds of them... or just one, depending on your perspective. But I grew up in Amella, and didn't really learn much about the elf gods. Much to grandma's disappointment."

"Were you just raised by your human parent then?"

"Mom was the human," I explained, taking another small sip. "Dad was around too, though. And his parents, who were the very model of what an elf should be. Especially grandmother. She always treated me like being half-human was some great disability I had to overcome. And my parents both expected me to be the very best of both worlds."

Mel and Harry exchanged a look for a moment, then Harry shook his head. "I think we can relate to the disappointed parents thing."

"You too, huh?"

"They didn't exactly approve of our relationship," he supplied. "They acted like Mel was some sort of... distraction. Like I'd have fun with her and then toss her aside for a 'normal' girl. A human girl."

"And my parents looked at me like I was crazy," Mel added. "'A human?' They acted like I was talking about dating a dog."

Both of them winced at what must have been uncomfortable memories. True, the human-halfling pairing seemed kind of weird, but one look at them was enough to see that they were happy. And I certainly wasn't in a position to judge someone for their interspecies romance.

"To disappointed parents," I suggested, and we all clinked our cups together again and drank in silence for a moment. "So, you two are leaving the ship?"

"Soon," Harry answered. "We're just working here to earn some money until my apprenticeship in Newport lines up."

"Newport? What are you going to do there?"

"He's going to be a carpenter," Mel said. "And then we can build a real life together."

"That's really sweet," I told her, and meant it.

"Okay, I have to ask-" Harry started.

"Harry," Mel tried to say over him, her tone half pleading and half warning.

"No, I just... is it really true?" he asked.

"That the moon is a giant dragon egg?" I joked. "No, I think that's a myth."

He chuckled obligingly, but he would not be deterred. "I just heard... there was this rumor, see? One of the sailors said she saw you and the minotaur, Stubbs. She said the two of you were..."

"Fucking?" I supplied.

He finally had the decency to look embarrassed. "Yeah. That. But that's not true, right?"

"All true," I confirmed, and the two looked shocked. I had forgotten that I hadn't told Mel about the encounter yet. We'd gotten so busy in the galley afterwards, and it wasn't long after it that we'd made it to Patridike.

"Seriously?" Harry asked, mouth still agape. "How? I mean he was like... the guy was huge." He seemed to realize how that sounded, since his face went red and he started stammering. "I mean tall. And the horns..."

"Oh, he was huge alright," I told him, smirking as I rubbed his shock in his face. "To be honest, the horns didn't really play into it, except as convenient handholds."

The two were fully silent for a few moments, and I took a long sip of my wine.

"Truthfully," I sighed, "he was an absolute sweetheart. And I thought he was handsome, for all that he looked bestial."

"And everything, uh," he stammered, "you know... fit?"

Mel smacked him on the arm, and I couldn't help but chuckle at the look of absolute exasperation on her face. But I noticed that she didn't tell him to stop asking.

"Harry, you're literally double Mel's size," I reminded him, and both of them blushed. "I think these things have a way of working themselves out despite size differences."

"I mean..." Mel started, and her blushed deepened even more as she trailed off. I thought she would stop there, but after a moment she finished. "It takes some work. You have to be... very delicate."