FAKE Fic: Off The Charts - Part 6-6
Title: Off The Charts - Part 6
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2575
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Braving the fog once more, Dee and Ryo can only hope they’ll find their way safely out the other side.
Written For: spook_me 2023.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Set after Like Like Love.
Previous Part
The two men were silent for a long time, lost in their own thoughts, but finally Ryo spoke, his voice hushed as though he was reluctant to disturb the stillness.
“What d’you think that was back there?”
“Whaddaya mean?” Dee kept his voice down too. “It was a goddamn giant snake! I would’a thought that was obvious.”
“No, not that. I mean…” Ryo trailed off, frowning as he tried to collect his thoughts. “It was fine when we first saw it, just sleeping, like our being there didn’t bother it. We weren’t worth noticing.”
“More likely it didn’t know we were there until we woke it up, and then it saw us as a handy snack.”
“No.” Ryo slowly shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s it. If we’d just left when you wanted to, I think it might have just gone on sleeping; we weren’t any kind of a threat to it. It didn’t wake up until after I picked up some of the coins.”
Dee turned to his partner. “Some of them?”
“They were everywhere underneath the water, not just a few scattered on the mud, but… I dug my fingers in to pick up a handful, and I couldn’t feel anything else, just hundreds, maybe even thousands of coins.”
“You mean like a dragon’s treasure, and it woke up because it thought you were stealin’ from it? That makes a weird kinda sense.”
“The treasure might not even belong to the snake. Maybe it’s just… I don’t know, the guardian, a creature set there to deter would-be treasure hunters from taking something they have no right to. If I hadn’t dropped the coins…” Ryo shivered, but this time it had nothing to do with being cold. “Makes me wonder how many people have tried to steal the gold over the years, and how many might never have left the island.”
Dee shuddered too; that was a disturbing thought. “Yeah, that sword I found… maybe it belonged to someone who didn’t get away. What we thought were roots and branches under the water might’a been bones. Hell, we could’a disappeared there and nobody would’a ever heard from us again. But if the snake was only protectin’ the treasure, why did it try to chase us? We didn’t take anything.”
“It didn’t chase us far. Maybe it just wanted to make sure we left.”
“Could be.” Dee shoved one hand wearily through his hair. “Man, I’m beat; feels like this night’s already lasted a lifetime. How long d’ya think we were on the island?”
“No idea, I didn’t put my watch on this morning, or yesterday morning, whenever that was. Left it in our cabin, didn’t think I’d need it. Must have been a few hours at least, though.” Ryo threw a quick glance towards his lover. “Only needs one of us to keep an eye on things; you should try to get some sleep. We can trade places in a couple of hours.”
“No way,” Dee said firmly. “No matter how tired I am, I’m not sleepin’ ‘til we’re through this frickin’ fog. No tellin’ what might be out there that we can’t see. If there’s any risk of us hittin’ another boat, or runnin’ aground, or somethin’, I’d rather be awake and ready to abandon ship. ‘Sides, I’m too damned cold to sleep anyway, and I don’t wanna risk freezin’ to death.”
“Sorry, I should have thought to fetch towels and dry clothes from below as soon as we were aboard. I just wanted to get away from there as fast as possible.”
“Yeah, you weren’t the only one. Look, I could go…”
“No!” Ryo cut Dee off. “It’s probably even colder out there, it’s not worth the risk. We’re better off staying in here until we’re though the fog. Might not be a bad idea to get out of our wet things though.”
“I should’a thought of that. I’ll get yours first, then mine. You just keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the radar.”
It said a lot about how rattled they both still were that Ryo didn’t protest, and Dee did exactly what he said, without a hint of surreptitious groping, helping his lover strip down to his boxers before tugging his own sneakers off, the laces still tied, and peeling out of his jeans. He kicked the wet clothing out of the way, then wrapped himself around Ryo from behind, pulling the blankets tightly around them both.
“Any excuse,” Ryo murmured, smiling slightly.
“This is about sharin’ body heat, nothin’ else,” Dee chided. “Ain’t nothin’ sexy about it, not when it’s like huggin’ a block of ice.”
“Like you’re any better.”
“Point. Two guy-shaped ice cubes tryin’ to thaw each other out. Don’t know it’ll work, but until one of us comes up with a better idea, this is all I got.” Dee rested his chin on Ryo’s shoulder and the two of them fell silent again.
Maybe they dozed standing up, everything was so dreamlike they couldn’t be sure, but after an unknown length of time, Ryo let go of the wheel with one hand and rubbed at his eyes. “Is it just me, or is it getting lighter?”
Dee shifted his feet, surprised at how stiff he felt, and peered through the window. “It’s not you. Looks like there might be a light up ahead, sure hope it’s not a ship.”
“Can’t be, it’s too spread out.” Moments later it became clear that the fog was thinning, tearing apart and scattering in a brisk breeze. Then suddenly they were though, blinking in the pallid light of pre-dawn. “We made it, Dee!”
“Never doubted it.” Dee wasn’t sure that was true, but he said it anyway, because the sun would be rising soon, and everything always looked better by morning light. “Once the sun’s up the rest of the fog should disappear.”
Ryo eased back on the throttle, slowing the boat almost to a stop. Pulling away from Dee, he rolled his shoulders to get the kinks out, and looked aft. “Looks like it already has. Huh.”
“What?” Dee turned to follow his partner’s gaze, letting the blankets slide from his shoulders; the clammy cold seemed to have vanished along with the fog.
“Can’t see the island.”
“Not that surprisin’, is it? Not at the speed we were goin’. I mean, it wasn’t much of an island, two or three miles at most, we don’t know how long we were in the fog, or how far we’ve come since we left it. Speakin’ of which, we should prob’ly figure out where we are and see about gettin’ back on course.”
“In a bit. I want to get some clothes on first, or maybe take some off.” To the east, the sun was just peeping over the horizon, and the air temperature was already noticeably warmer.
“Yeah, now you mention it…” Undoing his jacket, Dee stooped to pick up the discarded blankets, quickly folding them. “I’ll go get us somethin’. Shorts and tees?”
“That’ll do. I’ll spread our wet things out to dry.”
Blankets under one arm, Dee opened the door and headed across the deck to the hatch leading below. Ryo stripped his jacket off, tossing it onto the nearest bench seat, and stretched. Although he felt worn out, there was a lot to do before he and Dee could afford to rest, and anyway, he was ravenously hungry; all they’d had the night before was some soup, and that felt like forever ago.
Clear up first, pull some clothes on, then check their position on the charts, assuming the GPS was working now the fog had cleared. After that, set a new course, and then fix breakfast. There’d be plenty of time for sleeping later.
Picking up their discarded sneakers and socks, Ryo carried them out onto the deck, leaving them where the warmth from the rising sun would dry them, before going back for their jeans. As he shook his out, something clinked against the boards and rolled away; he went down on one knee to fish the object out from under the controls, holding it up to the light.
“What’cha got there?” Dee asked, coming in with a bundle of clothes in one hand.
Wordlessly, Ryo held out his hand, a gold coin gleaming dully on his palm. “I was almost ready to believe last night was just a fog-induced dream, but…” He shook his head. “When I dropped the coins back into the water, one must have gotten caught somewhere. Guess that explains why the snake was so determined to chase us.”
Dee took the coin and studied it. “Looks old.”
“Yeah. Funny how they didn’t seem so tarnished last night.”
“Everything looks different in daylight.”
“I guess.” Standing up, Ryo stripped off the rest of his clothes and put on the clean ones Dee handed him. He would have liked to freshen up, but like sleep, that would have to wait a while. “Okay, let’s see how far off course we are. Assuming we have GPS now.” Barefoot, he padded over to the helm, got their current coordinates, and checked them against the chart, then frowned. “That can’t be right.”
“What now, are we in the Bermuda Triangle or somethin’?”
“No, it’s just… According to this, we’re about thirty miles out from the Core Banks, and maybe ten miles north of Cape Lookout, which puts us a bit further inshore than we should be, but otherwise pretty much still on course. Maybe this stupid thing’s jammed.” As he had the night before, Ryo plucked the GPS from its housing and gave it a good shake before checking the readings again, but nothing changed.
“Okay, that’s good, right? I mean, we’re not hopelessly lost, and our little unplanned detour hasn’t messed up our schedule.”
“It’s good,” Ryo agreed. “It’s just not possible.” He shoved one hand through his hair. “I don’t know, maybe last night really was just some kind of weird hallucination brought on by heatstroke, or something in the fog.”
“You’re forgettin’ this.” Dee held out the gold coin. “If it was just a dream, where’d this coin come from?”
Ryo took it from him. “I don’t know, I can’t explain it. Where’re you going?”
“I forgot somethin’,” Dee called back over his shoulder, already out the door.
Abandoning the helm, Ryo followed him out on deck. “Forgot what?”
“Where the hell is it?” Dee was searching for something, moving the coil of rope they’d taken with them the previous night… “Ah!” He pounced on something Ryo couldn’t see. “Okay, now that’s weird.” He turned, holding up what he’d found; it was a rusty old sword, the blade corroded and pitted, its edge dull. It looked nothing like the bright, sharp cutlass Dee had wielded against the snake, and yet there was nothing else it could be. “How can it be so old now when it looked practically new last night?”
“I don’t know,” Ryo said, sitting down heavily. “Nothing about last night makes any kind of sense.” He was a logical, practical person, and things he couldn’t explain tended to upset his equilibrium. “We found an island where there shouldn’t have been one, went ashore, and got chased through a swamp by a giant, glowing serpent that couldn’t exist! It’s crazy! If we tried to tell anyone they’d have us committed!”
Sitting down beside his lover, Dee patted Ryo’s bare knee. “So we don’t tell anyone, we just keep it to ourselves; nobody else needs to know.” He stared at the sword in his hand, deep in thought, for several long minutes. “But maybe it does make a kind of sense.”
“How d’you work that out?”
Dee shrugged one shoulder. “The fog. It came outta nowhere, wasn’t forecast or anything, and when we sailed through it, we found the island. When we came back through it and the fog cleared, the island was gone again, like it was never there in the first place, and maybe it wasn’t.”
“You’re saying we imagined it?”
“No, I’m sayin’ maybe the fog was a sort of doorway to somewhere else, another dimension, or another time, maybe a few hundred years in the past. Maybe that’s why your coin and my sword look so old now when they looked new on the island.”
“I don’t believe in other dimensions, and time travel’s impossible!” Ryo protested.
“You didn’t believe in ghosts until you saw one.”
Ryo scowled at his lover. “I hate you.”
“No ya don’t. You just don’t like when the world throws ya a curveball. Leaves ya feelin’ off-balance. I know, ‘cause I’m feelin’ that way too.”
“But it never seems to bother you!”
“Sure it does, guess I’ve just seen enough that I’m willin’ to believe the impossible. There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t have any scientific explanation yet, but that don’t mean it doesn’t exist. We don’t know everything, we’re still learnin’, and who knows what might still be out there waitin’ to be discovered?”
“Like other dimensions and time travel?”
“Among other things. Not sayin’ it’s not scary, thought we were both gonna get eaten last night, but we didn’t. I still don’t like snakes, but I think maybe I’m less scared of ‘em than I was. Hard to be terrified of somethin’ so small after facin’ down the biggest goddamn snake in the universe and survivin’ the experience.”
“You were very brave.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” Dee grinned. “I’m a big damn hero!”
That made Ryo laugh. “If you say so.”
“You okay now?”
“I’m not sure. I still don’t know what to think about last night, kinda don’t want to think about it at all, but at least now I don’t feel like I’m losing my mind. We both experienced the same thing, and we have tangible proof that it was real, so…” He shrugged, then stood up. “Come on, we’re more or less on course, autopilot is on, and I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I want breakfast, and a few hours’ sleep.”
“Sounds good to me.” Dee got up too. “If ya don’t mind though, think I’m gonna keep this.” He waved the sword.
Ryo nodded. “Fine by me. Wrap it and stow it in one of the equipment lockers.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n! Whatcha gonna do about your coin? Could be worth somethin’.”
“Could be, but if I tried to sell it, people would want to know where I got it, and that’s something I don’t wanna even try to explain. Besides, I don’t want people coming out here looking for that island. If they found it and tried to take the treasure, they probably wouldn’t survive. I don’t want to be responsible for that.”
“Gotcha. Let sleepin’ snakes lie?”
“Something like that.” Ryo paused, turning around and walking backwards. “One other thing. Next time we run across a fogbank at sea, we’re turning around and going the other way as fast as we can. I don’t care how far off course it takes us, or even if we have to put in to shore, but I’m not sailing through another one.”
“Y’know what? I’m totally okay with that.”
“Good.” Ryo spun on his heel and continued on towards the hatch leading below decks.
“Giant snakes are bad enough,” Dee muttered to himself as he stowed the sword, “but with our luck, next time it really would be zombies.”
The End
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2575
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Braving the fog once more, Dee and Ryo can only hope they’ll find their way safely out the other side.
Written For: spook_me 2023.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Set after Like Like Love.
Previous Part
The two men were silent for a long time, lost in their own thoughts, but finally Ryo spoke, his voice hushed as though he was reluctant to disturb the stillness.
“What d’you think that was back there?”
“Whaddaya mean?” Dee kept his voice down too. “It was a goddamn giant snake! I would’a thought that was obvious.”
“No, not that. I mean…” Ryo trailed off, frowning as he tried to collect his thoughts. “It was fine when we first saw it, just sleeping, like our being there didn’t bother it. We weren’t worth noticing.”
“More likely it didn’t know we were there until we woke it up, and then it saw us as a handy snack.”
“No.” Ryo slowly shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s it. If we’d just left when you wanted to, I think it might have just gone on sleeping; we weren’t any kind of a threat to it. It didn’t wake up until after I picked up some of the coins.”
Dee turned to his partner. “Some of them?”
“They were everywhere underneath the water, not just a few scattered on the mud, but… I dug my fingers in to pick up a handful, and I couldn’t feel anything else, just hundreds, maybe even thousands of coins.”
“You mean like a dragon’s treasure, and it woke up because it thought you were stealin’ from it? That makes a weird kinda sense.”
“The treasure might not even belong to the snake. Maybe it’s just… I don’t know, the guardian, a creature set there to deter would-be treasure hunters from taking something they have no right to. If I hadn’t dropped the coins…” Ryo shivered, but this time it had nothing to do with being cold. “Makes me wonder how many people have tried to steal the gold over the years, and how many might never have left the island.”
Dee shuddered too; that was a disturbing thought. “Yeah, that sword I found… maybe it belonged to someone who didn’t get away. What we thought were roots and branches under the water might’a been bones. Hell, we could’a disappeared there and nobody would’a ever heard from us again. But if the snake was only protectin’ the treasure, why did it try to chase us? We didn’t take anything.”
“It didn’t chase us far. Maybe it just wanted to make sure we left.”
“Could be.” Dee shoved one hand wearily through his hair. “Man, I’m beat; feels like this night’s already lasted a lifetime. How long d’ya think we were on the island?”
“No idea, I didn’t put my watch on this morning, or yesterday morning, whenever that was. Left it in our cabin, didn’t think I’d need it. Must have been a few hours at least, though.” Ryo threw a quick glance towards his lover. “Only needs one of us to keep an eye on things; you should try to get some sleep. We can trade places in a couple of hours.”
“No way,” Dee said firmly. “No matter how tired I am, I’m not sleepin’ ‘til we’re through this frickin’ fog. No tellin’ what might be out there that we can’t see. If there’s any risk of us hittin’ another boat, or runnin’ aground, or somethin’, I’d rather be awake and ready to abandon ship. ‘Sides, I’m too damned cold to sleep anyway, and I don’t wanna risk freezin’ to death.”
“Sorry, I should have thought to fetch towels and dry clothes from below as soon as we were aboard. I just wanted to get away from there as fast as possible.”
“Yeah, you weren’t the only one. Look, I could go…”
“No!” Ryo cut Dee off. “It’s probably even colder out there, it’s not worth the risk. We’re better off staying in here until we’re though the fog. Might not be a bad idea to get out of our wet things though.”
“I should’a thought of that. I’ll get yours first, then mine. You just keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the radar.”
It said a lot about how rattled they both still were that Ryo didn’t protest, and Dee did exactly what he said, without a hint of surreptitious groping, helping his lover strip down to his boxers before tugging his own sneakers off, the laces still tied, and peeling out of his jeans. He kicked the wet clothing out of the way, then wrapped himself around Ryo from behind, pulling the blankets tightly around them both.
“Any excuse,” Ryo murmured, smiling slightly.
“This is about sharin’ body heat, nothin’ else,” Dee chided. “Ain’t nothin’ sexy about it, not when it’s like huggin’ a block of ice.”
“Like you’re any better.”
“Point. Two guy-shaped ice cubes tryin’ to thaw each other out. Don’t know it’ll work, but until one of us comes up with a better idea, this is all I got.” Dee rested his chin on Ryo’s shoulder and the two of them fell silent again.
Maybe they dozed standing up, everything was so dreamlike they couldn’t be sure, but after an unknown length of time, Ryo let go of the wheel with one hand and rubbed at his eyes. “Is it just me, or is it getting lighter?”
Dee shifted his feet, surprised at how stiff he felt, and peered through the window. “It’s not you. Looks like there might be a light up ahead, sure hope it’s not a ship.”
“Can’t be, it’s too spread out.” Moments later it became clear that the fog was thinning, tearing apart and scattering in a brisk breeze. Then suddenly they were though, blinking in the pallid light of pre-dawn. “We made it, Dee!”
“Never doubted it.” Dee wasn’t sure that was true, but he said it anyway, because the sun would be rising soon, and everything always looked better by morning light. “Once the sun’s up the rest of the fog should disappear.”
Ryo eased back on the throttle, slowing the boat almost to a stop. Pulling away from Dee, he rolled his shoulders to get the kinks out, and looked aft. “Looks like it already has. Huh.”
“What?” Dee turned to follow his partner’s gaze, letting the blankets slide from his shoulders; the clammy cold seemed to have vanished along with the fog.
“Can’t see the island.”
“Not that surprisin’, is it? Not at the speed we were goin’. I mean, it wasn’t much of an island, two or three miles at most, we don’t know how long we were in the fog, or how far we’ve come since we left it. Speakin’ of which, we should prob’ly figure out where we are and see about gettin’ back on course.”
“In a bit. I want to get some clothes on first, or maybe take some off.” To the east, the sun was just peeping over the horizon, and the air temperature was already noticeably warmer.
“Yeah, now you mention it…” Undoing his jacket, Dee stooped to pick up the discarded blankets, quickly folding them. “I’ll go get us somethin’. Shorts and tees?”
“That’ll do. I’ll spread our wet things out to dry.”
Blankets under one arm, Dee opened the door and headed across the deck to the hatch leading below. Ryo stripped his jacket off, tossing it onto the nearest bench seat, and stretched. Although he felt worn out, there was a lot to do before he and Dee could afford to rest, and anyway, he was ravenously hungry; all they’d had the night before was some soup, and that felt like forever ago.
Clear up first, pull some clothes on, then check their position on the charts, assuming the GPS was working now the fog had cleared. After that, set a new course, and then fix breakfast. There’d be plenty of time for sleeping later.
Picking up their discarded sneakers and socks, Ryo carried them out onto the deck, leaving them where the warmth from the rising sun would dry them, before going back for their jeans. As he shook his out, something clinked against the boards and rolled away; he went down on one knee to fish the object out from under the controls, holding it up to the light.
“What’cha got there?” Dee asked, coming in with a bundle of clothes in one hand.
Wordlessly, Ryo held out his hand, a gold coin gleaming dully on his palm. “I was almost ready to believe last night was just a fog-induced dream, but…” He shook his head. “When I dropped the coins back into the water, one must have gotten caught somewhere. Guess that explains why the snake was so determined to chase us.”
Dee took the coin and studied it. “Looks old.”
“Yeah. Funny how they didn’t seem so tarnished last night.”
“Everything looks different in daylight.”
“I guess.” Standing up, Ryo stripped off the rest of his clothes and put on the clean ones Dee handed him. He would have liked to freshen up, but like sleep, that would have to wait a while. “Okay, let’s see how far off course we are. Assuming we have GPS now.” Barefoot, he padded over to the helm, got their current coordinates, and checked them against the chart, then frowned. “That can’t be right.”
“What now, are we in the Bermuda Triangle or somethin’?”
“No, it’s just… According to this, we’re about thirty miles out from the Core Banks, and maybe ten miles north of Cape Lookout, which puts us a bit further inshore than we should be, but otherwise pretty much still on course. Maybe this stupid thing’s jammed.” As he had the night before, Ryo plucked the GPS from its housing and gave it a good shake before checking the readings again, but nothing changed.
“Okay, that’s good, right? I mean, we’re not hopelessly lost, and our little unplanned detour hasn’t messed up our schedule.”
“It’s good,” Ryo agreed. “It’s just not possible.” He shoved one hand through his hair. “I don’t know, maybe last night really was just some kind of weird hallucination brought on by heatstroke, or something in the fog.”
“You’re forgettin’ this.” Dee held out the gold coin. “If it was just a dream, where’d this coin come from?”
Ryo took it from him. “I don’t know, I can’t explain it. Where’re you going?”
“I forgot somethin’,” Dee called back over his shoulder, already out the door.
Abandoning the helm, Ryo followed him out on deck. “Forgot what?”
“Where the hell is it?” Dee was searching for something, moving the coil of rope they’d taken with them the previous night… “Ah!” He pounced on something Ryo couldn’t see. “Okay, now that’s weird.” He turned, holding up what he’d found; it was a rusty old sword, the blade corroded and pitted, its edge dull. It looked nothing like the bright, sharp cutlass Dee had wielded against the snake, and yet there was nothing else it could be. “How can it be so old now when it looked practically new last night?”
“I don’t know,” Ryo said, sitting down heavily. “Nothing about last night makes any kind of sense.” He was a logical, practical person, and things he couldn’t explain tended to upset his equilibrium. “We found an island where there shouldn’t have been one, went ashore, and got chased through a swamp by a giant, glowing serpent that couldn’t exist! It’s crazy! If we tried to tell anyone they’d have us committed!”
Sitting down beside his lover, Dee patted Ryo’s bare knee. “So we don’t tell anyone, we just keep it to ourselves; nobody else needs to know.” He stared at the sword in his hand, deep in thought, for several long minutes. “But maybe it does make a kind of sense.”
“How d’you work that out?”
Dee shrugged one shoulder. “The fog. It came outta nowhere, wasn’t forecast or anything, and when we sailed through it, we found the island. When we came back through it and the fog cleared, the island was gone again, like it was never there in the first place, and maybe it wasn’t.”
“You’re saying we imagined it?”
“No, I’m sayin’ maybe the fog was a sort of doorway to somewhere else, another dimension, or another time, maybe a few hundred years in the past. Maybe that’s why your coin and my sword look so old now when they looked new on the island.”
“I don’t believe in other dimensions, and time travel’s impossible!” Ryo protested.
“You didn’t believe in ghosts until you saw one.”
Ryo scowled at his lover. “I hate you.”
“No ya don’t. You just don’t like when the world throws ya a curveball. Leaves ya feelin’ off-balance. I know, ‘cause I’m feelin’ that way too.”
“But it never seems to bother you!”
“Sure it does, guess I’ve just seen enough that I’m willin’ to believe the impossible. There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t have any scientific explanation yet, but that don’t mean it doesn’t exist. We don’t know everything, we’re still learnin’, and who knows what might still be out there waitin’ to be discovered?”
“Like other dimensions and time travel?”
“Among other things. Not sayin’ it’s not scary, thought we were both gonna get eaten last night, but we didn’t. I still don’t like snakes, but I think maybe I’m less scared of ‘em than I was. Hard to be terrified of somethin’ so small after facin’ down the biggest goddamn snake in the universe and survivin’ the experience.”
“You were very brave.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” Dee grinned. “I’m a big damn hero!”
That made Ryo laugh. “If you say so.”
“You okay now?”
“I’m not sure. I still don’t know what to think about last night, kinda don’t want to think about it at all, but at least now I don’t feel like I’m losing my mind. We both experienced the same thing, and we have tangible proof that it was real, so…” He shrugged, then stood up. “Come on, we’re more or less on course, autopilot is on, and I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I want breakfast, and a few hours’ sleep.”
“Sounds good to me.” Dee got up too. “If ya don’t mind though, think I’m gonna keep this.” He waved the sword.
Ryo nodded. “Fine by me. Wrap it and stow it in one of the equipment lockers.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n! Whatcha gonna do about your coin? Could be worth somethin’.”
“Could be, but if I tried to sell it, people would want to know where I got it, and that’s something I don’t wanna even try to explain. Besides, I don’t want people coming out here looking for that island. If they found it and tried to take the treasure, they probably wouldn’t survive. I don’t want to be responsible for that.”
“Gotcha. Let sleepin’ snakes lie?”
“Something like that.” Ryo paused, turning around and walking backwards. “One other thing. Next time we run across a fogbank at sea, we’re turning around and going the other way as fast as we can. I don’t care how far off course it takes us, or even if we have to put in to shore, but I’m not sailing through another one.”
“Y’know what? I’m totally okay with that.”
“Good.” Ryo spun on his heel and continued on towards the hatch leading below decks.
“Giant snakes are bad enough,” Dee muttered to himself as he stowed the sword, “but with our luck, next time it really would be zombies.”
The End