The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

Headless Over Heels.

Annalise held the stubby pencil out by its point. On the other end, into the nub of eraser, someone had inserted a slim wire, bent into a T-junction. “Go on, boyeen.”

The falcon hopped across the fold-down table in the center of the carriage, talons clicking on the pale poplar wood. Its beak clacked shut around the wire.

“You got that all right?” Annalise prompted.

Tiago nodded. The pencil’s tip bobbed.

“Right. Page me, if you please.”

Ofelia tore a page of yellowy groundwood paper from the dedication of one of her finished novels, and placed it before her bird-brother.

“What’d you see, Sunshine?” Annalise asked.

SHiP

Tiago hopped and bobbed across the page. The lead skipped and wobbled, but managed to form four letters:

SHiP

“See anyone aboard?” Seth asked. “Anyone moving?”

Tiago shook his head.

Annalise chewed the end of her vacant pipe. “What’s the sorta crew we’re looking at for a ship like theirs, you reckon?”

Tiago hesitated, then thumped his avian foot on the table. Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

“Ten.” Annalise sat back and crossed her arms. They got so big when she did that. “Much more’n that and I’d advocate for crashing the bleeding thing, but I reckon we can take ten. These things aren’t cheap. We’ll get a shake and a fair play to ya from Charlie for bringing this one home, sure.”

“Did—” Seth started, then shut up as Tiago returned to his haphazard etching.

ROPe

“A rope,” Seth repeated. “Hanging down? You can climb it?”

Shake shake shake.

“We need a rope?”

Nod nod nod. He started scrawling again. A diagram this time.

“That’s a mountain?” Seth asked. “Tiago?”

Tiago flapped a wing in agitation.

Annalise rested a hand on his knee. “He can’t nod or shake when he’s drawing, petal.”

“Oh.” Seth smacked his forehead. “Of course. Sorry, T.”

Tiago’s sketching paused. He stared at Seth.

“I like that,” Ofelia said. “T. That’s good.”

Tiago shook his head rapidly.

“It beats Sunshine,” Ofelia said. “You’re never sunny.”

“That’s the point,” Annalise said. “It’s aspirational.”

“So wait. Before you go back.” Seth tapped a fingertip on the scribble. “Is that a mountain?”

Tiago nodded and returned to his business. A long lozenge shape appeared beside the mountain, and then a line connecting the two.

“That’d be the ship,” Seth said. “So what you need is someone who can climb a mountain, shimmy along that tether, get inside, and drop a rope to let in the rest of us.”

Tiago dropped the pencil in the middle of a clumsy attempt at a propeller on the lozenge’s rear. Nod nod nod.

“Well, golly.” Seth rubbed his chin. “I wonder who everyone’s thinking of sending up the mountain all by themselves to infiltrate the pirate airship.”

Three sets of eyes—two unlit, one avian—caught him in a nexus of meaningful looks.

“I can climb a rope no problem,” Annalise said. “A mountain… dunno.”

“And I don’t want to,” Ofelia said.

Annalise let a dose of motherly reproof into her voice. “You’re on the raid, Feeli.”

“I’m happy to swashbuckle,” Ofelia said. “I’m only bowing out of the mountain. I’ll take the rope. I’ve seen what all that rough climbing’s done to Seth’s hands.”

Seth glanced at his palms. “What’s it done to my hands?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ofelia flapped the stiffness from a pair of keystone-thumbed swordsman gloves and opened the snaps on their wrist closures. “Your lover surely doesn’t care. Hers are like sandpaper.”

Annalise scoffed. “Will you ever whist.”

“It’s not a moral failing, Mother. I simply pay attention to my cuticles. Especially in this dry air. Climbing a rope and murdering people with a sword will be fine.” Ofelia pulled a glove on and clicked it shut. “But I will need to moisturize after.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...rize-after
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2520542/