SSCS 02: Installment 3 of 32
How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
This is Installment 3 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
At least now there wouldn’t be any rose blossoms for gran-Tom to send her after for at least a week, maybe two. As Mina took in the wide destruction of her morning chore schedule, that was some consolation.
…How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
Installment 3: 18.0807, 22.0408
With a sudden rattle and a too-wet thunk, a clump of shit chose that moment to unstick from one of the apple-branches, which then caused a brief cascade of spattering from branches further up – and Mina experienced a sudden, intense nostalgia for climbing up rose-brambles in itchy gloves.
Plus, just as bad as the shit clean-up was the fact that they still needed to catch the stupid, flying pigs, who would probably still be flying for some hours yet. And Mina was not good with a lasso. Hedwin was good with the lasso, but Hedwin had had about five cups of the seawitch spirits last night – the month’s provisions had finally been brought in yesterday – so…
Nope. She definitely still needed his help – throbbing head or not.
“Heehhd-wiihhn,” Mina sang out, turning toward the stairs that led down the side of the spire to the under-rooms and lower alcoves. (Very, partially, down the side of the spire. The real stairs were on the other side of the kitchen and led a lot further down.)
Like Mina’s, Hedwin’s personal alcove was tucked just off the bottom of the twisty, stone stair, and Mina made sure to jump the last three steps in order to thump her boots down extra hard when she got there. She got a faint groan for her effort, and the curtain in front of Hedwin’s alcove twitched a bit – trying to open or trying to close tighter, the twitch was too vague to tell.
But the shit situation was bad enough Mina judged it warranted no privacy, and so she shoved the curtain open. Hedwin, having anticipated her, was already sitting up, blinking sticky eyes and groping for his boots. He scowled at Mina, though, and the light she brought in with her, making the faint, faint scales around his eyes crinkle from blue-grey to gold. But his heart wasn’t in it, and they paled again almost immediately, so that that brief, sour expression was like a flash of sunlight against grey stone cliffs. “I’m afraid to ask,” was all he said, instead. Maybe because Hedwin was less than half sea-folk, he simply never showed anything like the temper some of the others Mina knew could have.
Still, Mina grinned wickedly. “Not afraid enough,” she sang. “You need to bring the las– ”
Just then, a bone-shivering, ear-shriveling shriek slashed the morning air. Though perhaps the stone walls should have muted it, it was very clear that it was coming from up above.