(THNM) The cabin boy's cabin boy...

[downwithmyship]

When Jack went to sleep, he was happily pressed between Pearl and Bastiaan. He had a title again, but almost more importantly, he had this comfortable position back again. He hadn't even realized how much he'd missed it. He had a bed full of soft, warm bodies and it was --as it should be-- aboard a ship. Jack had both titles back once more and more

Comments

[pearl_noir]

The movement in bed disturbing her is ignored. Sometimes Jack flails about in his sleep just like when he's awake. You only had to tap his shoulder for him to spin and slap at air on the other side of him or mutter, 'Rums gone' so he sits up straight and pale as a ghost. This time she only rolls on her stomach and turns her face away until there's a little voice threatening her sleep in an uppity tone. She's not in the mood so she throws an arm out trying to find Jack and pull him closer. Instead she finds Bastiaan after the empty space their Captain should be.
Almost as good, she scoots over and wraps around him before dozing again.

[bastic_boy]

While Pearl is taking up two people's share of the bed Bastiaan is looking over his shoulder at the little boy that's appeared in their room. He didn't order one. After blinking some of the confusion out of his sleepy eyes he starts laughing out right at the kid's threat. He's never seen any children so young here and the boy looks very unkempt. So Bastiaan makes a guess.

"Are you a Lost Boy?"

[downwithmyship]

"Well I bloody am now!"

He looks around and begins to notice the subtle rocking of the anchored boat the lavish bedroom is held in. The boy's never seen such expensive things in all his life and only been aboard a ship twice...and he just barely counts being born on one.

"This isn't The Oaken Barrel. ... Are we on a ship?" Another glance around. "Is it the king's ship?"
Curious thing for an eight year old. He also knows well enough to speak only English around white people. They own most everything around the ports anyway. He only speaks his mother's language when he wanders from home or they go to market.

"Why are you in this lady's bed? Or is it your bed? Did you buy her?"
Bastiaan, to Jack, seems old enough to be some sort of royalty picking up whores in port on his big fancy ship. She's too old to just be his woman, though and to young to be his mother. It doesn't occur to Jack that this would be a rude question.

[pearl_noir]

Pearl scrunches her face up when the annoying little thing keeps yelling. She's not used to children and more or less thinks of them as human looking animals. Like a monkey but without the intelligence. As if kids are some kind of fetus crawling around when they should very well know not to come out until they're proper adults and can sail.
About the time Jack suggests she's a bought woman one small foot comes out and shoves the middle of his chest to knock the child thing off the bed. It's disturbing her beauty sleep.