Algernon Black

(Chapter 112) Glorious Clutter

Loy walked out of his cabin to be almost slapped in the face by Cal screaming and running a mop along the wooden hallways as fast and with as much force as he could. Coming from the opposite direction was Beal who also yelling and aggressively mopping.

"This is to build up your stamina!" Cal yelled. "And every man should learn how to properly clean!"

"Right!" Beal screamed back, competing with Cal. To their credit, the ship had become a lot cleaner, though Loy didn't have the words to get through someone as dumb as Beal that Cal didn't get all those muscles by just cleaning. But at least they were keeping occupied, as was Selice who Loy spied on from a crack in her door tinkering with her toy mouses and Marve's gifted marble with the last light of the setting sun.

"Don't give up now Beal!" Cal shouted as he rushed past Selice's room. "And one day you'll be a great man!"

"Right!" Beal yelled back, right on his tails with his own mop.

Selice looked to her door where she heard the screams but they had already passed. The corridor was empty, but she could have sworn she felt a pair of eyes on her a second ago. She brushed it off when a spring burst from the head of her mouse.

Marve occupied his office, as he customarily did. He felt secure surrounded by his miscellaneous collection, while others saw his ship as a floating junkyard, to him it was glorious clutter. Every surface had something interesting for the eyes to land upon. Tapestries on the walls showed various lands and travel routes and countless scrolls nestled away in wooden barrels. It was a clashing of colors, patterns, and textiles, but the glowing red light of the candles overcast it all in a brilliance of warmth.

"You're really are stocked up on supplies," Loy remarked, wandering into Marve's workroom and noting his extensive collection of stone. "Could you be preparing for something that I'm still don't know about?"

"If you've come angling for information, you'll find it at a cost, prince," Marve replied, gesturing to the end of his marble press with it's four huge-looking brass tuba pieces.

Loy went over to the machine obligingly to begin funneling light magic into one of the shafts, and creation magic into the other.

Marvel smiled and used both hands to crank the huge cog that rotated the many parts of the machine. Loy's magic was pushed up long glass tubes into the small arched ones on top. Marve slowed his cracking and pulled down an iron lever prompting two cement slabs with small half circle indents to press together.

Loy stopped his magic before he could overwhelm the machine, and Marve had to use all his strength to hold the lever down as the angry hiss of compressing magic forged into a stone. The marble maker waited until the stray traces of magic not locked into the stone flowed over the edges, before dragging the lever back up.

The cement molds opened to reveal a perfectly shaped crystal clear marble. Marve examined it thoroughly, seeing this space stone was extra well made and could hold an entire wardrobe of clothes.

"Who is asking for all these space stones?" Loy asked, coming round the machine to see his creation.

"People everywhere, who need space." The pirate rebuffed as if it was obvious. Loy laughed. Marve had a great delivery of lines and humor in great contrast to his twin. He always wondered how he and Devane had emerged with such drastically different personalities.

"And would those people be citizens of Emora or Estera?" Loy prodded.

"Those people wouldn't know how to get to me in the first place," Marve said, heading over to his desk for a closer inspection. Like his ship, his desk was littered with papers and various weapons. And centered right under the skylight so Marve had the last of the sunlight left to work with, he exclaimed the marble under the three-ring glass magnifying device perched in the middle of his clutter. "But you didn't make a trip across the world just to ask me that, did you?"

"I still don't quite buy all your star mapping gossip but it wouldn't hurt to hear what you have to say about all these rumors of war and bleak boys," Loy said, ascending the steps of Marve's observatory to gaze through his massive telescope.

"The heavens have been quiet lately," Marve remarked, lifting his head away from the marble with a worn smile. "And when the gods are bored, we humans pay the prince for their entertainment." He stared up at the sky setting into night. "Much like the spoiled princes of the world."

Loy shot a side-eye at the man, scaling down the stairs.

"I assume that is what you're doing by dragging that poor girl with you across the world."

"She serves for more than just my entertainment," Loy defended, brushing dust off the spiral stair's railing.

"Oh?" Marve noted, shifting the magnifying glass into Loy's face. "Is that a trace of human emotion I spot?"

Loy stared directly through the conclave glass of the lens at the pirate, looking distorted and small from Marve's view. "You'd have to search a lot harder."

Marve laughed as he turned the magnifying glass back to his task at hand.

"Just as you have," Marve justly asserted. "So long as I've known you, Loy, you've been searching for your humanity," The pirate chuckled while silently reflecting on the months he had taken Loy in after his first prison break on his search for meaning, and the many time after he sought refuge after that. "One day you'll see the great irony in it."