Hell Hath No Fury - Book One

Seasick

Theo woke up hours later, at the first light of dawn. She laid in bed with her eyes open and went over the events of the night before. She would have to check in with Miss Yurwa in the treasury to see what the pot was for everyone and collect her own piece. She would probably have to meet with her boatswain and carpenter to budget for repairs when they arrived at their first city. All she wanted to do was to roll back over and fall asleep but she had captain duties to attend to. The last thing she wanted to do was spend her morning sailing and concerning herself with maintenance matters.

Duty called.

She stood up from her bed and made her way over to her wardrobe, opening it and looking around. She threw on whatever looked the most comfortable and made her way out of her room with no shoes on and a classic white shirt with tight black pants. As soon as she was two steps out of her room she could see three people make a beeline towards her and she took a deep breath, preparing herself.

When they all arrived they began to talk at once and Theo held her hand up and they stopped, "Walk with me. I need food."

When Theo turned and began walking towards the mess hall they all followed her, keeping up with her quickened pace. One of the girls, Eve, began speaking first, "We've got no issues with carpentry. We took them by surprise with the fire, they couldn't stay on their ship long enough to cause any permanent damage to ours. We won't have to budget anything from our find towards repairs."

Theo nodded as she walked and shot Evana a smile, "That's great news. Allocate whatever you think we would have spent if Espbar had come at us with more force and ask around to see what the girls want to see next. When we get to land you can purchase the materials for a project."

Evana nodded and her smile was beaming. She was the carpenter and building was her passion but most of what she had to do was repairs and maintenance of the ship rather than build. Every once in a while, when they got lucky like Theo let her embark on building a new room for the girls. She had already built new tables that were longer for the mess and a small library on the lower decks. The galleon was an Aelizian warship and was fitted for a crew of about 250. With a crew currently less than a sixth of that, there was a lot of open space for renovations and improvements. She quickly broke rank with the others following Theo and made her way down to her workspace to begin drawing out options for the girls.

Theo looked at the woman to her right, a thin, tall, dark woman who was dubbed Navi, short for Navigator. She was one of the smartest and most capable people Theo knew, and one of the few that could read and follow maps so accurately. Navi was Theo's sailing master and her life had been much less stressful since Navi agreed to join her crew. Xyra liked to pretend she was good with navigating the open oceans but she was no better than the rest of them. Navi cleared her throat, "We are ready to set sail as soon as you are. Most of the crew who is sailing the morning shift are awake and ready too."

"Thank you, Navi. Keep walking with me. I have concerns about the journey you need to brief me on before we leave but first, Pearl what's the update?" Theo turned her face to Pearl as they began getting closer to the smell of frying eggs.

"The whole deck is cleaned but I do have some cleanliness concerns in some of the rooms and the general lower decks need to be clean and organized. We don't want a repeat of the last ship," Pearl reminded and Theo shuddered. Their last ship's lower decks had become near impossible to walk through from the pile-up of things they had stored under there.

"Aye, do you have enough help for that?" Theo asked and Pearl shook her head no, "Right. Gather a crew of up to 8 and let them know that whoever helps you is off sailing duty for two suns. This sun and tomorrow's."

Pearl saluted her captain, "Aye, I will do that. Thank you, Captain."

Theo and Navi arrived in the mess room and Theo went to grab a plate for herself. Sitting down, she ran Navi through questions of the safest route and got answers for most of her questions. Once she had finished her breakfast and was properly satisfied with the answers to her concerns she got up and walked back to the helm, speaking with Navi the whole time.