SpoilerIf you want more to read, sider joining my Patreon! Or chey other inal works, Love Crafted (An iive story about a cute eldritch abominatioag things) or Stray Cat Strut (A cyberpunk magical girl story!) amon Bun (a wholesome LitRPG!) Fluff (A superheroic LitRPG about cute girls doing cute things!) Dead Tired (A edy about a Li a Wuxia world doing Sce!) or The Agartha Loop (A Magical-Girl drama!)

  [colpse]Chapter One Hundred ay-One - Oh, The Small Manatee

  I could tell that not all of my friends were fortable with just sitting around and waiting--Bastion, especially. For all that he retty cool guy, he didn’t seem the sort to just sit bad look over an enjoyable view. He was more of an a-first kind of sylph, which was fine.

  We’d head bae soon. I grihe Beaver Cleaver was already feeling like a home!

  “So, Joe, what do you do when you’re not being a pirate?” I asked.

  Joe shrugged, the gesture uncharacteristically humble. “Not too much,” he said. “I work over in the docks. Not the airship ones. Just hauling things around for a few copper an hour. It’s dull work, but I’ve learned a lot about pag things away, and balst, and I get to talk to a lot of old sailors, so that’s .”

  “Those wages sound awful,” Amaryllis said.

  “Yeah, they are,” Joe agreed. “But it’s work that’s there when you , you know?” He gestured to his two friends. “We’re putting all of our money aside to buy the things we o bee real pirates.”

  “Ho work for disho goals?’ Bastion asked. “Somewhat ironic.”

  Joe gred at the sylph, but it bounced off of Bastion’s armour like chaff. “The others work hard too.”

  Sally nodded. “I work at the shops. It’s mostly easy things. But one dy, the book shop owner, she taught me how to read a little, and how to write. I do a lot of bels and stog shelves since I know how. She even paid me in a book or two about ships.”

  “That’s really ,” I said. “We should get more books in the Beaver. Turn part of it into a library.”

  Awen of all people, nodded. “We could use more balst.”

  “Reading is good,” I said. “My butt got saved by a few books already. Mostly about pnts and such. It’s a nice hobby to have too.”

  Sally looked down, but she was smiling all the same. “I’ve been teag Oda and Joe too, but they’re not very good yet.”

  “Hey,” Oda said. “I’m just more of a hands-on guy.”

  “You work at the smith, right?” I asked.

  “And at the repair shop by the shore. They don’t give me any of the real plicated things to fix, but I’m learning. The money helps. Soon we’ll have enough parts to finish off the Manatee.”

  “The Manatee?”

  Oda looked to his friends, and got a pair of nods iurn. “It’s our ship. Our pirate ship. Do you want to see it?”

  “You’re darn right I do!” I said. “Where did you guys park it? At the docks?”

  “With the amount they charge?” Joe asked. “And the administration there doesn't like us. They’d make us pay as if the Manatee was ten times its size. Nah, we have a spot by the shore. It’s a quiet area. There are a bunch of other small ships pulled up and stored there.”

  “Should we?” I asked my friends.

  “It’ll be our st stop for the night,” Amaryllis said. “We do have some things to work on aboard the Beaver. We ’t just leave it all day.”

  “O bit of expl then,” I agreed.

  Leaving the church was about as easy as getting into it, which is to say that it required a bunch of climbing and squeezing through tight holes while w hard to keep my skirt on straight and my captain’s hat atop my head.

  Once we were all out and ready to go, Joe took the lead and headed right for the shore. We left the someoorer parts of toassed through a market filled with shops and bustling people. For the most part they were all human, with the occasional grenoil here and there. No sylphs, and no harpies that I could tell. And no other, more exotic species of people either.

  Needleford felt a little insur after visiting so many pces that had such a diverse mix of peoples.

  We arrived in an open lht o the docks proper. There were lots of ships--for the air and sea--most of them in these big square boxes stacked atop each other, with pads holding them in pd dders leading up to them. “These are the small ship drydocks,” Joe said. “They sell used skiffs and dinghies here.”

  “,” I said as I took a moment to spin around. There was a salesman-looking guy to one side, talking to some sailors while gesturing at a row-boat, and a shop nearby had oars and all sorts of ship-reted equipment for sale within.

  “That’s the Manatee,” Oda said as he poio the end of the lot.

  The ships there weren’t in their owhs. Most were just left on the ground here and there, and they didn’t seem to be in the best of shapes.

  The Manatee was behind these. Covered in an old tarp that had a few holes in it.

  Oda and Joe pulled the tarp off and revealed their ship.

  It wasn’t all that much to look at. It was maybe three meters long, with a wooden hull that came to a narrow point and that bulged out in the middle. That middle had a ky-looking engine in it, an ehat otted with its fair share of rust.

  At the back sat a propeller on a shaft that led to a gearbox ected to... a pair of foot-powered pedals.

  “Is this a paddle boat?” I asked.

  Amaryllis huffed. “It’s an airship tender.”

  “A what?”

  “When you have a rger ship, something bigger than the Beaver, sometimes you don’t want to e to a nding, but you still o send someoo the ground. So you use one of these. It’s small enough to pack away on deck, and you carry five, maybe six people, and a bit of cargo.”

  I nodded and looked back at the Ma was in surprisingly good shape for a tarp-covered ship in what looked like a scrapyard.

  The wooden hull had a few scrapes on it, but those were covered over by a fresh yer of cquer. None of the handles and ties on the sides matched, but they were all freshly painted and funal, and while the engine was rusty, it was still very . “That’s a pretty nice boat,” I said.

  Joe smiled wryly. “It’s not much of a ship for a crew of pirates,” he said. “But she’s ours.”

  “How did you get her?” I asked.

  “The hull’s from a ship we bought here. Did some work for the owner and he’s a nice guy. He lets us tinker with the Manatee every so often. The ehat’s Oda. He rebuilt it from scrapped parts he got from the repair shop. The rest is mostly Sally. She’s good at repainting things and all that.”

  Joe ran a hand along the rail running around the ship and smiled. He seemed quite fond of the little dinghy.

  “Have you flown her a lot?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “She’s ready to go but... yeah.”

  The moment grew a bit long, and a bit awkward. The scallywags were looking to Joe with expressions that I couldn’t quite read. I think that it was worry, or something very close to that. They waheir freedom, to take to the skies, but at the same time, taking that big of a step was scary.

  I pat Joe on the shoulder. “It’s a real nice boat,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Maybe if things don’t work out, we sell it. Split the profits three ways.”

  “It might not e to that,” I said.

  Amaryllis sighed. “We should get going. I ’t imagine how long it’ll take to get back to the Beaver in this backwater maze.”

  “Sally, want to lead them out?” Joe asked. “Oda and I will tinker with the Manatee a bit, I think.”

  “Sure,” Sally agreed.

  oodbyes were a bit stunted, and I felt like someone saying goodbye to someo a funeral home for some reason. Everything was awkward and a bit weird. Fortunately, as soon as we were out of the yard, Sally spoke up.

  “Joe’s like that,” she said. “He really believes in our dream, even when Oda and I aren’t so sure, you know? But he gets afraid easy.”

  “He sounds like he’d make a good captain,” I said.

  “What? No way. I’m gonhe captain. No matter if Joe or Oda want it more,” Sally said.

  I giggled, the air lightening a bit. We were crossing through the same crowded market as before when I noticed Amaryllis looking around. “Where’s Awen?” she asked.

  The four of us stopped. I felt my heart beating crooked. She wasn’t behind us. I’d been walking with Sally, and Bastion and Amaryllis were right behind so... “Maybe she saw something?” I asked. It didn’t sound so sure, even to me.

  “She would have said something,” Amaryllis said. “We should double back.”

  “No,” Bastion said. “Broccoli, you get to the roofs?” I nodded. “Good. Take the left side of the road, I’ll take the right. Amaryllis, stay here in case she returns.”

  Bastion jumped up, and his wings beat humming-bird fast for a moment before he took off and flew towards the top of the shop.

  I shook my head, grabbed only my hat, and spent a load of stamina jumping to the roof across from that shop. The buildings here were only two stories tall, with steep tiled roofs that were broken up by eys. I scrambled up to the peak of the roof and looked down at the crowds below while w to keep my footing oiles.

  No blonde hair, not across the crowds that I could see. My eyes jumped from person to person, looking for Awen, her coat, or maybe a scuffle or something. A gnce across the street showed Bastion moving along, trag back over the path we’d taken.

  I tightened my fists and tried to shove any accusations against myself to the side. I knew I should have been paying more attention, that I should have watched over Awen some more. Was she feeling sad? Did she leave all on her own?

  It ure ce that had me looking up and towards the airship docks.

  They were a ways away, far enough that anyone I could see was just a tiny figure.

  That didn’t stop me from spotting Awen. She was the only person being manhandled by two big sailors on the deck of a ship. The only oh a bck band over her mouth. Her hair waved about as she fought against the men holding her from behind and ing ropes around her.

  “Awen!” I screamed, but she was hundreds of meters away, aboard an unfamiliar airship that was even now putting down its sails and pulling out of its berth.

  How did they get so far so quickly? For that matter, who were they and where were they going with my friend?

  “Bastion!” I called out.

  The sylph looked over at me, then followed my arm towards the distant figure of Awen. His eyes widened a moment before he lunged over the roof and nded by my side. “Damn,” he said when he nded. “We o get to the Beaver.”

  I heated. How long would it take to get the Beaver ready to go. Would the Beaver be able to take on a much bigger ship, ohat looked to be armed and crewed by dozens of men?

  “No, I have another idea,” I said.

  We jumped down and nded near Amaryllis and Sally. “Did you find her? What’s wrong?” Amaryllis asked.

  “Quick, we o go see the Scallywags,” I said.

  “The who?”

  “The pirates. Sally’s friends. We he Manatee, and we now,” I said. “We o go save Awen.”

  “Oh, Joe is not going to like that.”

  ***

  Annouhe pre-order for amon Bun Volume Two has just unched! You find it... here: LINK!The release date is set for the 14th of April!

  Are you eained?

  March 2020 Mondayamon Bun TuesdayStray Cat StrutDead TiredThe Agartha LoopWednesdayamon Bun ThursdayStray Cat StrutDead TiredThe Agartha LoopFridayamon Bun My goal as a writer is to help make people happy, and to share my work with as many as I . If you feel like helping, then sider giving my stories a review or leaving a ent! They help a bunch, and I read ead every one!

  If you feel extra-helpful, and want to keep me fed and watered so that I write even more, then sider joining the patreon at: RavensDagger is creating Fi | Patreon

  We have all sorts of goodies avaible; over 50 advanced chapters, access to the discord where you participate in daily worldbuilding and plotting, and access to Ebooks of all of my current stories! At the highest tier, you receive signed copies of any published paperback!

  Some of my stories are on TopWebFi!-amon Bun-Stray Cat StrutVoting makes Broccoli smile!

  The following books are avaible as paperbacks (and as Ebooks) on Amazon. Oh, and there’s an awesome audiobook for amon Bun Volume One!

  (The images are links!)

  All proceeds go to funding my addi to buying art paying for food, rent, and other ies!

  Thank you so much for all your support everyone! And thank you extra hard for allowio do this for a living; I’ll do my best to keep you eained!