Tales of a Peculiar Pirate

9. The Teen Evangeline

"Well that's not good," remarked Polly at their new predicament. Though the storm had decided to dip after introducing The Birbalinda to the side of the rock, their situation hadn't exactly improved by a mile. An inch or two at most, but a mile? Nay.

On the plus side, the rock wasn't so big that crashing against it irreparably damaged the ship. On the downside, a rock was a rock, and crashing against anything of fairly hard and solid substance was not good news for a ship.

Polly crouched low and with great might used her leg muscles as one would a spring, shooting herself into the air. She plummeted towards rock's center like a meteor, except small. Though pulling her hair into a ponytail was part of her everyday routine, today was one of those days she was especially glad that it was a habit. The idea of zooming through the air with the wind whipping her hair into a tangled knot of sadness did not appeal to her in the least.

Polly landed with poise and not a single broken bone from the impact of slamming into a rock from nine feet above because after all, she had learned from the best: the long gone Captain Trixx. From her new position, Polly was better able to analyze the condition of The Birbalinda, which was better than she thought it would be.

"Don't mind us up here, fledge," called SAT to Polly. It had totally slipped Polly's mind that kiwis could not fly. But what about jumping? They certainly looked fluffy enough to take a fall.

"You can't jump down?" questioned Polly who hadn't the energy in her to shoot herself up to retrieve the lumps of feathers.

"If we could've don't ya think we already would've?"

It was an irrefutable argument, and so Polly had no choice but to launch herself like a rocket up, up, and away back to the deck of the ship.

Upon her arrival, Polly was then faced with a choice. Either she could carry the lumps of feathers down one by one or she could try and treat them like grocery bags and bring them down in one go.

"Thoughts?" she asked Fethar.

"Though I may dream of being reborn as a plastic bag flying through the wind waiting to start again in my next life, I can't say for certain that our crew mates are of the same mind. I do believe this to be a question you should be asking them, not me."

"One by one or grocery bag," Polly asked the kiwis.

"Grocery bag!" voted Wiki

"Grocery bag please," voted Ed

"Groceries," voted SAT.

"It is as they say," remarked Fethar. "Great minds think alike but fools hardly differ."

Although what Polly had to do was clear, she wasn't quite sure how to go about it. She was one of those kill first ask later sorta folks, except she didn't kill, and thus her planning how to do something before doing it would've been totally out of character.

Kiwis are about the size of chickens, which are by no means small animals. To add to that, Wiki, SAT, and Ed just so happened to be on the larger end of their species, whereas Polly leaned toward the smaller side. And to add to the already added, unlike grocery bags, the kiwis had no handles that Polly could stick her arms through for easy carrying.

"Right, I guess this isn't going to be as easy as I thought it was."

"I'm less surprised by that and more by the fact that you actually thought about this," snickered SAT.

"Okay, I've figured it out. Y'all are getting stacked and SAT is going on the bottom."

Ignoring SAT's bitter complaints, Polly prepared the pile with SAT on the bottom, Ed snug in the middle, and Wiki perched on top.