The sun was beating down upon the deck, but the crisp air was growing colder by the day. Leo had finished his duties, scrubbed the ship from top to bottom with the lovely lavender scented soap he had obtained in Allegria. His wound had healed well enough, only minor discomfort with the wrong twists and pulls that he could mostly ignore. The only thing he had left to do?
Visit the mess for a grand meal, something large enough to hold him for his stint in the crow cage. He had reported his health dutifully and was certain they would command his detainment at any moment. He slipped through the empty hall and into the kitchen, scanning the raw ingredients for anything he readily available. His cooking skills were limited, but many ingredients were quite enjoyable alone. A larger cabinet caught his eye, a likely home for vegetables, or maybe fruit if he was lucky. His stomach gave an anxious rumble as he popped the cabinet door open.
Potatoes, mostly fallen from the sack and sparse. He turned away, dejected. Potatoes were not good raw, and he wasn’t sure he has time to boil them. Perhaps he could roast them over the coals with one of the onions he found in an upper cabinet? Wait…
Leo turned back to the cabinet slowly, a spark of recognition setting to flames of curiosity. That was not a sack of potatoes. Was this the little girl Emryk had spoken of? ”Uhm, hello potato girl?” he said with a nervous wave.
The trouble with staying in a cabinet was that sometimes people opened it. Usually Lady Fingers stopped them, and they just thought the door was suspiciously sticky, but this time she hadn't. Pris didn't know what was going on with her, sometimes. She just didn't seem to be very good at getting her construct to do what she wanted. Hester never had problems with that.
Regardless, now she was staring at a man. He smelled like...
Soap?
Lady Emer had made her take a bath, or at least what passed for one on a ship. A scrubbing. Pris did not like scrubbing. She thought it was all fairly pointless, since it wasn't like she was even doing anything anyway.
And she was never, never going to admit that it smelled kind of nice, at the time. She had a feeling Lady Emer knew, anyway. Lady Emer had a way of knowing things. Lady Emer was, fortunately, not here, but Pris wondered what she would say about the man who smelled like soap.
Potato girl, he called her. She wasn't sure about that, but she supposed it was better than some of the things she'd been called. "Um... hello?" Pris decided she might as well unfold a little, and poked herself out of the cabinet, or as much of herself as there was, which wasn't very much. "Did you... need something? You smell like soap."
Leo blinked as the girl unfolded herself, the bag disguise dissolving away as he gangly limbs poked out of the cabinet. He took a step back, giving her room to leave the cabinet if she wanted. A flash of ivory white caught his attention, a flicker of flame flaring to life and fading away just as quickly as his glance.
”I did! I came for food, since this is the kitchen. I don’t really know how to cook, though.” He sniffed himself cautiously, a grin spreading across his face. ”I guess I do. That is good. Soap smells much better than sweat.” Leo eyed the stray potatoes in the cabinet thoughtfully. ”Raw potatoes are not good, but I don’t see anything else to eat. Have you seen anything?”
Although he hadn’t expected to find a child in his search for food, the little girl was hardly a surprise after the debate between Emryk and the Captain. ”My name is Leo. Names are important, what’s yours?”
"I can cook potatoes, if you want some. And eggs. That's about all I know how to cook, though, so if you want something besides potatoes or eggs you'll have to ask someone else."
Names are important. The girl stared at him oddly, for a little while longer than was probably necessary, her hand wrapped around a potato that she seemed to have forgotten what she was planning to do with. "I... I'm... Pris. I guess." Somehow it seemed inadequate, all of a sudden. She didn't know how to fix that. All she knew how to fix was...
...Well, potatoes, anyway. It wasn't nothing. She shook her head, then set the potato on the counter and added a couple more to join it before unhooking a metal pan and setting it over the stove to heat. The stranger - Leo, his name was Leo, and names were important - Leo didn't seem to know how to cook potatoes, even.
As the girl expertly began collecting her tools Leo watched, enraptured by the surety of her movements. It was an odd contrast to how unsure she had been about her name. Her question lay forgotten for several moments as he tapped his chin with his finger. He remembered being unsure about his name, once.
”Pris is a good name.” He blinked again, eyes falling to the potatoes on the counter. ”I- I think so. I did it a few times. Usually they just let me cut them into little chunks because they said I would cut too deep.” He could peel them, though, sure enough.
”How did you become a pirate so young?” he asked absently as he took one of the potatoes in hand. Casually he pulled his sword slightly free from its place on his bag and scraped the potato along its edge. With a small nod to himself he slid the weapon back and began searching for a smaller, more effective blade. It was worth a try.
"Me? Oh, I'm not a pirate," Pris answered, "I'm a stowaway." By now, she was a stowaway who knew her way around the kitchen, so when he put his sword away and started looking around, she handed him a small knife. She was a bit regretful, though - she sort of wanted to see him peel potatoes with a sword. That would have been a good trick.
She was aware that her answer had been very short, and he seemed nice. Maybe it was just the soap, or maybe it was that he was willing to peel potatoes. Pris thought it said something about a person, whether or not they were too important to peel potatoes. "I was born on the Truth Teller," she added. "Hetty and Mr. King helped me learn some things, but then everything got confused and now I'm here. But Hetty's here too, so that's okay."
Lady Fingers picked up one of the potatoes as well, and Pris applied her own knife as it rotated, apparently quite used to having an extra hand in the kitchen. "So how old are you supposed to be, to be a pirate?"
A proffered blade ended his search and Leo set to work carefully turning the potato in his hand and cutting through the peel. Focused on the task, he said nothing to Pris as she explained her position, reacting only at the mention of Solomon King by glancing up from his potato with his lips twisted into a grimace.
The skeletal hand that assisted the girl set any of his doubts aside. He couldn’t recall seeing her while chained in the bottom of the foul ship, but a companion like that spoke to her abilities gained from her time there. As strange as the ship had seemed to Leo, the girl’s story smacked as oddly familiar. He had also been born into less than favorable circumstances.
”I don’t actually know,” he said in response to her question, setting the peeled potato down and picking up another. ”I was young when I became a prisoner. I think it would better if we were allowed to choose when we are little.” He set to the second potato, making a few turns before the uneven lump twisted in his hand and fell to the floor. A thin line of red formed on the pad of his thumb before he stuck into his mouth quickly.
”Did you choose to be a stow-a-way?” He rolled the word by each syllable, testing it as it fell from his tongue. Leo wasn’t quite sure what the difference between a pirate and a stowaway was, but he could ask that question later to one of the more educated crew members. ”Starbird gave me a choice to be free, and so I am now a free pirate. If you want I could give you the choice to be a pirate, too.”
"Choose?" Pris didn't know what to say to that. She didn't know if she'd ever really been offered choices. She'd been offered 'choices,' but they were the sort of choice that went like 'you can do this or you can be the next one in the Ritual' and she didn't really think that was much of a choice at all. And coming here - well, the scary man had just picked her up and tossed her over, and she didn't really know what to think about that, either.
But it hadn't really been a choice.
"I don't really know about choosing. But I think I'm okay as a stowaway. People don't seem to mind. And no one asks me for anything besides potatoes. And sometimes eggs. So... that's okay." She shrugged a little. "I like it down here. Or down with the goats. But not... not up top. I don't like the sky. There's too much of it. I think things are easier to think about when they're not so big."
His heart wrenched inside of its cradle, the knife and spud forgotten in his hands for several moments as he looked at the strange child with a signature tilt of his head and steady, curious blinking. He had nothing but small, walls and bars, chains and manacles and no space to explore or learn or do anything. He had been blank in those days, silently wondering about everything and nothing with words that weren’t ready to be articulated.
The idea of still being confined by his surroundings and his lack; well honestly he could not imagine it. It was understandable, but he could not relate. ”You are right, it is very big. There is a lot in the world and so much to learn.” Leo cautiously eyed the child, searching for another sign of fear from her at his words. Before it could take root he smiled softly.”There is much to learn here on the ship, as well. Though a lot bigger than a potato cabinet, the ship is a lot smaller than the sky it flies through. Its okay to take your time learning from what is right here.”
Leo set the potato down, the more symmetrical strokes speaking to his rapid improvement. ”Learn from people just like I am learning from you… and your friend,” Leo’s soft smile grew wider and more exuberant until he brought attention to the skeletal hand. There it faded a bit, still clinging to the corners of his mouth despite the unease he felt around such macabre instruments. ”Did King build that for you?” he asked with only a hint of suspicion.
"No, I made her," Pris answered. "I picked out the bones and worked the spell. Hetty and Mr. King taught me how, but I did it myself. She doesn't always listen very well, but I'm still learning. Not that I'm really learning too much necromancy here, but I guess that's okay. Mr. King said I could be good at it, but... I kind of don't know if I want to."
She shrugged a little, uncertainly. "I mean... Lady Fingers is pretty good, but she's special, you know?" Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Maybe she wasn't making sense to anyone except herself, but maybe that was okay, too. "And I don't really need an army of skeletons. I'm not planning on taking over any islands. I'm just planning on... well, right now, I'm just planning on frying potatoes. So an extra hand is good for that, but an army of skeletons, not so much. They'd just get in the way. And step on the potatoes."
Mr. King was pretty keen on the whole undead army thing, and maybe that was fine for him, but Pris... didn't have to have an undead army. She could just have potatoes. The pan seemed hot enough, so she added a little bit of lard to it to melt and started slicing the potatoes thin.
Leo simply stared at Pris and Lady Fingers as she explained how she came to posses the unnatural construct, unsure of his feelings on the matter. Despite her innocent confession to such fell arts Leo felt no spark, and though that were confusing enough a sort of admiration for the girl rang through him stronger than any other emotion. Even without the extra hand she possessed more skill and self assurance than he had possessed until quite a bit older.
”I think that is a wise choice. She does seem to be more useful than an entire mindless skeleton, even if she doesn’t listen sometimes.” He did not wish to address the idea of an entire army of bones. Pris seemed to be possessed of some ill advised admiration for the captain of the Truth Teller, but she seemed already to be looking for a different height than his.
”Everything!” He was bit too loud, too excited by her question. Sheepishly he took a breath and looked away from the child as the potatoes sizzled in the pan. “Sorry. What I mean is that I am learning new things every day, since I came to the ship. All I knew in my old life were bars and chains and death. Here I have learned a great many things, and there is so much more to see and know.
Leo's sudden exclamation almost made her jump, but it wasn't a bad exclamation. It was... the sort of voice people used when they were happy about something. Pris thought that the world could use a little more of that, and she guessed if Leo wanted to learn everything, then she certainly wasn't going to try to get in the way of that.
And then he spoke of bars and chains and death, and her expression fell. She tried to hide it, of course, but Pris was not so good at hiding things. She didn't like thinking about the bars and the chains and the death. She knew a lot about them too, from both sides. It was... not so good, sometimes, that part of things. Working with bones already all piled up was one thing, but she didn't like the Ritual.
Not that she'd had much choice about that.
Carefully, she turned the potatoes, letting them brown. It was something to do, while she tried to find her voice. Lady Fingers sprinkled on some salt, a practiced hand. "Sometimes... there are things that aren't so good to learn."
As Pris turned the potatoes and her macabre assistant seasoned them Leo turned away, eyes scanning the cabinets and shelves before he returned with a loose onion, green shoots sprouting from one end indicating how long the vegetable had been left to its own devices. Deftly he sliced the green away, cutting through the outermost layer and setting the papery skin to the side before he began cutting the onion into large chunks.
The little girl seemed put off, whether by his exuberance or something else he wasn’t sure. Softly she spoke, her voice mingling with the sizzling heat and almost otherworldly. Leo blinked at her for a few moments as he sliced the onion absentmindedly, sniffling a bit as his eyes watered. Sliding the diced pieces closer to her Leo turned to Pris bodily.
”Learning is never a bad thing. It is what you do with what you learn. When you learn bad things you can use what you learn to help keep bad things from people you care about. When you learn good things you can use it to make those people smile.” His life had been nothing but ignorance for so long he couldn’t accept the idea of gaining knowledge being a detriment. ”You are a good girl. I am sure everything you learn will help make people happy.” Cautiously he held his hand out, palm up. ”I will help you, if you want.”