- Influence
- 0.00
Mina Rose let out a small, panicked whine as a bottle of Ol' Ironinsides toppled off her tray, unbalancing the lot. She moved to catch the tray on her head, the bonk just above her eyes making her briefly see stars, and she nearly dropped her other tray, only saving it because she scooted it onto the edge of a table, much to the irritation of the sailors playing a round of Twenny-Wah on its surface. She used her hip to keep that tray level while she carefully reached up and, scooting her paws, managed to shift her grip enough that she could safely lower the tray to her belly. Some of the grog had sloshed out of the flagons, creating what would surely be a sticky mess in a few minutes, and ruining her perfect pours. Another small whine escaped the vixen, and she blinked furiously, trying to keep back the tears.
"Mina, lass," the voice of Captain Gilbert, a rack-hoon - some strange black-and-white vermin from the far seas - soothed her as a paw offered the (fortunately) unbroken bottle of Ol' Ironinsides to her. "Don' go cryin' over spilled grog naw. T'ain' nothin' ya coulda done. Sometimes this happens, an' all y' kin do is keep moseyin' forward."
Mina Rose blinked quickly, trying to force the tears away, as she shifted her grip again, driving the edge of the tray into her aproned stomach, and accepted the bottle. "Thank ya, Unca Gilbert," she addressed the captain fondly, giving him a warm smile of genuine appreciation. "I'm so sorry for interruptin' yer evenin'! I'll get yeh a round on the house ta make up fer it."
She carefully wiggled her grip to hold the tray on the left side of her hip, and then scooped up the second tray to hold against the right side. It was unwieldy, and she feared that any shift would send both trays toppling, but she managed to make it to her target tables and, with a nudge of her hip this way and that, scooted each tray onto their destination. "Four grogs an' an Ironinsides, sorry about the mess," she apologized. "I'll get y'all a free refill ta make up fer it. An' we've got two grogs fer this table, plus a flight a' vodka strong enough ta wing ya all the way ta Fyador, an' a strawberry twist almost as sweet as me." She gave a small, playfully self-effacing smile to the table, who chuckled at the joke appreciatively.
Her delivery done, Mina Rose deftly stacked her trays, using one to trap the grog spill on the other, and returned to the bar at the back of the room. Her Pa, a fox with a thick bristle of fur on his lip and a bald spot on his skull forming a tonsure, was cleaning the bar with a rag, scrubbing at a stain that hadn't come out in years. He eyed the grog seeping out from under her tray with a hint of exasperation. "Mina Rose, dove, not again," he sighed.
"It was just a little spill this time, Pa," Mina Rose assured him. "Nothin' broke, an' I kept it off the guests this time. I told ya, I'm gettin' better!"
"And somehow you still manage to give away more drinks than you sell," he grumped.
"An' they keep comin' back here," Mina pointed out, carefully lifting the top tray and flipping it so her Pa could scrub the bottom clean with his rag, "instead a' goin' ta the Mother a' Pearl o'er in Wultlie. Face it, Pa," she gave him her best smile as she picked up the second tray and raised it above her head, tilting it so the loose grog would flow toward her lips, "I'm better fer business than you are now."
Her father pulled the tray from her paws and set it down in front of him, cleaning the surface with his rag instead. "I told you," he warned, "no drinkin' on the job! An' no lettin' anyone buy you drinks neither. I don' want anyone lookin' at my little girl like a common barmaid."
"Aww, Pa, yer the sweetest," Mina remarked, leaning forward on the bar as her tail enthusiastically twitched. "Yeh know I'm the most uncommonest barmaid anyone's ever seen!"
Her Pa sighed, rolling his eyes. "You're the uncommonest something alrigh'," he sighed. "Why don' you go collect an uncommon amount a' tips, an' then I'll sing your praises?"
"Aww, love you too Pa." She stood up on tiptoes to kiss her father lightly on the cheek before scooting back down and picking up the clean tray to do a round of clearing glasses and getting refills, as well, as collecting a pawful of gilders into her apron pouch. She could feel them bouncing and jingling as she sashayed through the barroom, cleaning as she went and exchanging friendly banter with some of the regulars. There was a brief scuffle when a hired paw on a tramp liner reached for her tail while her back was turned, but before he could even touch her, the sailors at the surrounding table had jumped him and hauled him bodily to the door, where they chucked him out into the sandy East Tookumberry dirt. Mina Rose made sure to give them all an extra warm smile of gratitude and noted to fill their glasses extra full on their next round.
By the time she made her way back to the bar, her mother was bringing out several food orders from the kitchen, already plated and ready to go. "Cod is for Chipfang," the elder vixen instructed, "tuna is for Goldpaw and Bloodwhisker. And stop flirting with the patrons!" She looked over her daughter critically, eyeing the tight corset that was working so hard to wrangle what Mina Rose had definitely not inherited from her rather flat-chested mother. "You keep leading them on like this, you'll get yourself in a world of trouble one day."
"Aww, Ma," Mina Rose sighed dramatically as she rolled her eyes, "those boys wouldn' hurt a fly. 'Sides, they're more like brothers ta me anyway."
"Well, in that case," her mother grumbled, turning away, "I'd hate to see how they look at their sisters."
The night passed quickly, as these long early spring nights tended to do. The East Tookumberry Keys didn't really get a proper winter, but it definitely had a windy season, and when that broke, the temperature rose and turned the islands into a tropical paradise. Sure, it would be so hot in the summer that most beasts stripped down to the bare minimum necessary for propriety, but for now, the windows of the tavern were open to a delightful spring evening of laughter, ale, and conversation. Mina stopped at a couple of tables for a few minutes, leaning in with her elbows on the table, face in her paws and tail wagging behind her, as she caught up with captains and crew she hadn't seen in months, newly returned with tales of distant lands, places where the mountains rose so high you couldn't see the peaks in the clouds, jungles so thick and deep that no living beast even claimed to have ventured inside, and frigid poles where even the sea turned to ice, and beasts had to get out and cut a passage with axes, pulling the ship behind them, just to keep from being frozen in. She loved those stories; she could imagine all of those places in bright, vivid color, and when she fell asleep at night, she dreamed of wandering through those fantastical tableaus. She'd wear the most beautiful dresses in the most exotic fabrics, eating foods she'd only heard tell of in stories, and, in a few of her dreams that she didn't dare mention even in her diary, had secret trysts with handsome, exotic todds with rich accents that sent a tingle right down to the base of her tail. She certainly didn't mention those dreams to Geremy; he'd only get jealous and insecure, and he was boring when he got like that.
Eventually the tavern cleared out, only a few drunks left sleeping at their tables or curled up beneath them. Most had gone back to their ships, or, more likely, out to camp on the beaches, sleeping under the stars on soft, warm sand. Mina hadn't tried it herself; staying out that late would be too much even for her rather permissive parents, so she only knew what it was like to lie in those sands, looking up at the stars and marveling at the myriad lights.
Mina Rose carefully counted her tips as she dropped them into a large jar already nearly full of small copper fo' gilders, silver ha' gilders, and even a few golden proper gilders in the mix. She was good at numbers, just not quite as good with her memory for them; she'd given up keeping an exact count a long time ago and had taken to broadly rounding her total each night, finding it far easier to keep track of her coin that way. By her count, she either had a hundred gilders or a thousand saved up, depending on if you rounded up or down. Her father watched her, a small, proud smile on his face as she so fastidiously added to her life's savings. He'd always worried, for some reason, that she would grow into a vapid, shallow, self-obsessed vixen, like those who came to visit the resorts and treated the locals like mud beneath their paws. Mina would admit, she could get a little jealous of the beautiful clothes and jewelry they wore; those femmes wore wealth on them that probably surpassed the value of her parents' tavern, while her stud earrings had been a major gift, one that several of the regulars had chipped in to help her parents purchase for her eighteenth nameday. Even then, they were made just of sterile silver, not the gorgeous gold that the visitors wore.
Satisfied with her count, Mina closed the lid on her savings and slipped the jar back under the bar, hiding it in a cabinet. She trusted the patrons of the tavern - mostly. There had been that time somebeast had gotten clever and slipped behind the bar while her father's back was turned to try to pour himself an extra drink. She tried to close the latch on the cabinet and it failed to close, prompting an exasperated sigh. "The darn latch is warped again," she complained, trying to sell the frustration. She'd spent fifteen minutes with a hammer carefully bending the latch out of shape this morning.
"Again?" The disbelief in her father's voice briefly worried Mina Rose; she hoped he hadn't caught on to what was truly happening here. Fortunately his next words were, "I really need to have a word with that smith. This level of quality is just unacceptable."
"It's just the heat an' humidity, Pa," Mina Rose rushed to assure him. "Ain' nothin' anybeast can do ta stop it from happenin'. I'll take the latch down ta the smith an' get it fixed righ' now."
"Now?" Her mother glanced out the window at the dark beach outside. "It must be past midnight. Surely they aren't open."
"Well, they said ta come back anytime," Mina Rose pointed out, prying the latch free of the cabinet door. "I'd say right now counts as 'any'."
"Alright," her father allowed, calling after his daughter as she moved to the door. "But he'd better fix it right this time!"
"Don' worry," she called back. "I'll make sure he hammers it real good this time."
~~@~~
Mina lay back in the grass, trying to catch her breath, as Geremy flopped down next to her, face down and panting. She grabbed one of the blankets they'd brought with them but hadn't even found time to lay out and covered herself with it, tossing the other atop Geremy's tail. The sweat cooling off her in the night breeze was shockingly chilly. "I'd say ya did a good job, Mr. Smith's Apprentice," she commented, glancing over at him to give a wry smile.
Geremy groaned, shifting onto his side so he could rest his weight on one elbow, his paw supporting his head. His eyes trailed down her form, and she pulled up the blanket a bit further, suddenly a bit self-conscious under his gaze. He smiled at her sudden modesty. "Ain' nothin' I haven' seen before," he pointed out, chuckling.
Mina Rose reached over and flicked his nose lightly. "Ain' nothin' yer gonna see again if yer takin' it fer granted," she rebuked. He rubbed at his nose before moving in to kiss her, and this time she let him, basking in the afterglow.
When they broke apart, Geremy smiled at her, a warmth that reached his eyes. "Mr. Wroughtiron says I'm jus' abou' ready ta make full smith, ya know," he commented. "I can join the guild, open my own shop. I won' be an apprentice much longer."
"Well, good fer you," Mina commented, just a touch facetious. "Maybe ye'll graduate from beddin' barmaids ta tavern keepers too." The expression of hurt on his face at the joke made her feel guilty, and she leaned in to kiss the pain away. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "I'm happy fer ya, I really am."
"I get my own shop, it means I'll get my own house too," Geremy pointed out. "Or, ya know, at least land fer a house. I was thinkin'... Well, ya know. I was thinkin' maybe we could build one t'gether."
Mina felt a chill run over her, like icy water poured down her spine. She understood exactly what he was suggesting, what he'd sprinkled here and there in playful hints that she'd laughingly batted about like balloons in the air. 'Gates, she should feel happy. She'd thought about what a wedding to Geremy would look like, had even tried to write it out from start to finish in her diary, narrating it like one of her stories, dialogue and all. It had been a pleasant fantasy, but...
But what? She knew, much as she might dream, that she was never leaving the East Tookumberry Keys. Traveling the world took coin, far more than the paltry coin she'd saved up across years. Besides, was she really going to blow her life's savings to go sailing around the world, just to wind up back here? That would take months, even years. By the time she got back, Geremy would probably have given up on her and moved on. He'd marry some other vixen, move into that house together and have five kits, and in the meantime Mina Rose would be back at her parents' tavern waiting tables, gilderless once more. All her dreams of travel were just that - dreams, fancies that didn't survive contact with reality. The moment you tried to seize them, they turned to so much dust in the air.
Mina took a deep breath, trying to wrestle the crushing weight of disappointment that threatened to smother her heart. "Alright," she agreed. "Let's do it."
Geremy raised his eyebrows. "Again? So soon?"
"Not that!" Mina laughed and shoved him away, the cheeky grin showing his satisfaction at the joke. 'Gates, she loved that he could make her laugh. It was probably his best quality. "Let's get married," she confirmed, saying out loud what they'd danced around for months. "I'll go talk to my Pa an' I'll tell 'im that I'm gonna marry you."
"Shouldn' I be the one ta talk ta him?"
"Yeh in a real hurry there ta have yer dingles cut off an' thrown in the harbor?"
"Righ', you talk with him, good plan. I'll talk ta my boss abou' a timeline, try an' get us time ta plan. Maybe we can hold it at the tavern."
"Maybe." Somehow Mina didn't like that idea. So much of her life had been bound up in that tavern, the four walls forming the perimeter of her world. She wasn't fond of starting her next chapter from within it as well. She leaned in and kissed Geremy lightly, then yawned. "I should get back ta the inn," she murmured, rolling to settle her cheek atop his chest, blanket wrapped about her body for warmth.
"Yeah," Geremy replied in a yawn, "yeh should. It'll be light 'fore yeh know it." He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling beneath Mina's head, and as she listened to his heartbeat in his chest, Mina imagined hearing this sound every night for the rest of her life. She closed her eyes-
She opened them to the dazzling oranges and yellows of a East Tookumberry sunrise. She blinked, then squinted, blocking the light from the east with her paw as she looked about. Oh 'Gates. Geremy was there on the grass where she'd used him as a pillow, softly snoring. If it was dawn already, then Mina had been out for hours. Her parents were going to absolutely lose it; she was lucky they hadn't gone out searching for her in the dark and stumbled across her and Geremy together. This is going to make that conversation very awkward, she reflected as she raced to recover her discarded clothes and dress herself before the sun revealed her full shame.
Geremy started, blinking awake and then squeezing his eyes shut as he covered them with his paw. "Oh," he groaned, still groggy. "Did we-"
"Yes."
"And you-"
"Yes." Mina's voice was breathy as the panic started to set in. 'Gates, where was the string to her corset? Ugh, never mind, she didn't have time for this. She got up and, her corset hanging loosely like a vest, started toward the side of the island where the tavern stood in its own copse of trees.
"Mina Rose!"
Mina turned back, surprised at Geremy's use of her middle name. Only family ever used her middle name. I guess that's what we'll be soon. Geremy got to his footpaws and, keeping his blanket wrapped about his hips, stepped forward to kiss her lightly. "Come visit me once you have an answer?" he invited, a note of hope in his voice.
Mina sighed, then nodded, not meeting his eyes. "Of course," she promised. "I'll find you." Then she turned and, trudging along like a soldier to a hopeless battle, struck her path homeward.
~~@~~
Mina Rose noticed the smoke first. That wasn't the smoke of a cooking fire coming from the chimney; there was way too much of it, and rather than a serene white, it was a thick, dirty black. Her heart racing in her throat, Mina ran through the trees, breaking through into the back yard of the inn. She could see fire pouring out of the upper floor of the tavern, the floor that housed the few guest rooms as well as living space for the Brewer family. The heat was intense, licking at her from even a distance, searing heat coming at her in waves, beating at her and then retreating. The smell of it was awful, acrid and vile, and worse yet, she could taste it as well. Holding her breath, Mina ran to the back door of the tavern, which was kicked open, and, kneeling, crawled into the kitchen.
The fire wasn't so bad down here; the heat was everywhere, as was the smoke, stinging at her eyes and making them water so thick that she could hardly see, but at least the actual flame hadn't burn its way down to the floor itself yet. She crawled through the kitchen space, glancing about, searching for any sign of her parents, any of the sailors who had protected her the night before-
She heard a cough from the front room, and Mina crawled through the door into the space behind the bar. Her father was leaned up under the bar in the space where normally there would be a cask of ale ready for the tapping. All of the alcohol was gone, and her father was clutching at a patch of blood on his shirt, right at his gut. "Pa!" she called, and immediately regretted it as she coughed up smoke.
"Mina Rose," her father croaked, reaching out a paw for her. She crawled forward and took it in hers, struggling to hear his words. "Thank Vulpuz you lived. I'm so glad you weren't here. Pirates... they..." The rest was lost to a fit of coughing.
"Where's Ma?" Mina Rose urged him, squeezing his paw tightly.
"She ran to get the gull. Your mother - she needed to know -" He coughed, and Mina saw red in his spittle.
"We gotta get yeh out, Pa." She started to pull at his arm, but he groaned, and she ceased, letting him settle back into the cubby.
"Too late now," he wheezed. "I'm gone, your mother's gone. You have t' live, Mina Rose. You are... You're such a special girl. You brought so much joy to our lives." Tears were shining in his eyes that had nothing to do with the smoke, and Mina found it difficult to see.
"I'm not gonna leave yeh, Pa!"
"You 'ave to," her father insisted, pulling his paw free of hers. "They're still out there, ou' front; when th' fire dies down, 'ey'll come back inside an' pilfer again. You can't be here when that happens. Run, Mina. Run into the jungle an' don' look back. You don' stop until ya can't hear anythin' anymore."
"Pa-"
"Go, Mina. Go!"
Mina hesitated, her eyes coated over with tears, protecting herself from smoke and heartbreak alike. Then, she turned and fled.
She didn't know how many minutes she ran after she got back out the back door of the tavern. By the time she stopped, the only thing she could hear was her thunderous heartbeat sounding in her ears. She heaved and gagged, spitting out a trickle of bile onto the loamy jungle floor, and took a ragged, gasping breath, trying to calm the turbulent emotions that only made breathing harder. 'Gates, Ma... Pa... The tears weren't coming right now; maybe she had cried them all out for the moment, or maybe it just hadn't become real yet. Nothing felt real, this had to be a nightmare from which she'd soon awaken. She'd fallen asleep on Geremy's chest, and she would awaken there at any moment to find it was midday, and her parents were going to ground her for life for sneaking out to see a boy. Hearing that they were going to be married might ameliorate them a bit, but until the ring was on her finger, there was no way they'd let her out of their sight again. She closed her eyes, trying to picture Geremy's face when he was asleep, to feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath her.
She didn't wake up.
She didn't recall slumping against a tree, nor sliding down to rest, stunned, at its base. The time that passed wasn't a blur so much as it was one long, interminable moment, a single prolonged note of agony that suspended the world until its tone was concluded. Only the shift of the sunlight indicated any time had passed, until the disappearance of the sun as it fell beyond the western horizon, toward the Vulpinsula, brought on the cool quiet of night. It was only when the chill began to make staying in place uncomfortable that Mina forced herself to her footpaws, and unsteadily, she began to walk in the vague direction from which she'd originated.
The tavern was completely burnt out. The roof and several of the walls had collapsed, including the backdoor. Mina didn't try to dig through it; she knew that her parents' bones had to be somewhere in there, and if she saw that, she didn't think she'd survive. She circled around to the front of the tavern instead. There was blood on the ground, a lot of it. Some of the crew who had slept on the beach must have retreated here, tried to make a stand in front of the tavern. It seemed they had only managed to make a stain instead. Mina walked, numb, among the dead, recognizing some by name, the rest only by face. 'Gates, what could she do for them? Would anyone notice they were missing and come looking? Did they have families who were wondering why their sons weren't coming home?
Mina stopped in front of one fallen fox, and something in her stomach turned. No. No, no, it couldn't be. She knelt down and, taking the body by its shoulder, rolled it over. Geremy's eyes stared upward at the sky, unblinking, unfocused. A gurgle escaped Mina Rose's throat, a scream that couldn't push through the bile that was also rising there. She turned and heaved, managing to avoid getting any on her lover, on the beast who would have been her husband. This time the tears fell, and then the choking, wrenching sobs, the ones that shook her frame so violently she thought her bones might snap. He'd come to the tavern because of her. Whether because she was late, or because he wanted to check on her, or he wanted to do the damn fool thing and talk to her father himself, he'd come to the tavern, and he'd died for her. She felt wretched in a whole other way now. He had died for her, literally given her his life... and she hadn't wanted to marry him. She'd agreed because she hadn't seen an alternative, but he had truly loved her. She hadn't deserved him.
She didn't fall asleep next to his body; there was no sleeping, not after all of that. She lay there in torpor, still as the dead herself, watching as the flies buzzed about, drawn by the scent of carnage. She waved them away anytime they came near Geremy, and proceeded to not sleep a wink. In the morning, when dawn broke once more, she reluctantly got up. She couldn't possibly bury him, let alone everyone else, all by herself. She would need help to honor the dead. She got up and started to walk toward the village when she remembered her savings. Maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to get Geremy a proper funeral. She turned -
There was glass by the door, and a tin lid. Mina Rose approached carefully, avoiding stepping on any shards, and saw a pawful of copper fo' gilders on the ground, not even worth scooping up. She nearly broke in that moment. She had lost everything, literally everything in her life. She turned away, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other, to not simply fall over and wait for death. She could do that later. Right now, she needed to tend to Geremy and her parents.
It was a large funeral. Tookumberrians built pyres for their dead, but since her parents had burned to death, they instead were put in boxes and set adrift out to sea. They would be taken by the ocean, and perhaps find peace and solace in its cool waters. Geremy burned brightly, though. He always had, Mina realized too late.
The next few weeks were a blur. The world moved around Mina Rose, but she simply was. She didn't do anything, she hardly even ate anything unless it was put in her mouth for her, and she didn't speak to anyone. Perhaps that was how she might have spent the rest of her life, if the most unusual ship with the most unusual captain hadn't sailed into port.
"Mina, lass," the voice of Captain Gilbert, a rack-hoon - some strange black-and-white vermin from the far seas - soothed her as a paw offered the (fortunately) unbroken bottle of Ol' Ironinsides to her. "Don' go cryin' over spilled grog naw. T'ain' nothin' ya coulda done. Sometimes this happens, an' all y' kin do is keep moseyin' forward."
Mina Rose blinked quickly, trying to force the tears away, as she shifted her grip again, driving the edge of the tray into her aproned stomach, and accepted the bottle. "Thank ya, Unca Gilbert," she addressed the captain fondly, giving him a warm smile of genuine appreciation. "I'm so sorry for interruptin' yer evenin'! I'll get yeh a round on the house ta make up fer it."
She carefully wiggled her grip to hold the tray on the left side of her hip, and then scooped up the second tray to hold against the right side. It was unwieldy, and she feared that any shift would send both trays toppling, but she managed to make it to her target tables and, with a nudge of her hip this way and that, scooted each tray onto their destination. "Four grogs an' an Ironinsides, sorry about the mess," she apologized. "I'll get y'all a free refill ta make up fer it. An' we've got two grogs fer this table, plus a flight a' vodka strong enough ta wing ya all the way ta Fyador, an' a strawberry twist almost as sweet as me." She gave a small, playfully self-effacing smile to the table, who chuckled at the joke appreciatively.
Her delivery done, Mina Rose deftly stacked her trays, using one to trap the grog spill on the other, and returned to the bar at the back of the room. Her Pa, a fox with a thick bristle of fur on his lip and a bald spot on his skull forming a tonsure, was cleaning the bar with a rag, scrubbing at a stain that hadn't come out in years. He eyed the grog seeping out from under her tray with a hint of exasperation. "Mina Rose, dove, not again," he sighed.
"It was just a little spill this time, Pa," Mina Rose assured him. "Nothin' broke, an' I kept it off the guests this time. I told ya, I'm gettin' better!"
"And somehow you still manage to give away more drinks than you sell," he grumped.
"An' they keep comin' back here," Mina pointed out, carefully lifting the top tray and flipping it so her Pa could scrub the bottom clean with his rag, "instead a' goin' ta the Mother a' Pearl o'er in Wultlie. Face it, Pa," she gave him her best smile as she picked up the second tray and raised it above her head, tilting it so the loose grog would flow toward her lips, "I'm better fer business than you are now."
Her father pulled the tray from her paws and set it down in front of him, cleaning the surface with his rag instead. "I told you," he warned, "no drinkin' on the job! An' no lettin' anyone buy you drinks neither. I don' want anyone lookin' at my little girl like a common barmaid."
"Aww, Pa, yer the sweetest," Mina remarked, leaning forward on the bar as her tail enthusiastically twitched. "Yeh know I'm the most uncommonest barmaid anyone's ever seen!"
Her Pa sighed, rolling his eyes. "You're the uncommonest something alrigh'," he sighed. "Why don' you go collect an uncommon amount a' tips, an' then I'll sing your praises?"
"Aww, love you too Pa." She stood up on tiptoes to kiss her father lightly on the cheek before scooting back down and picking up the clean tray to do a round of clearing glasses and getting refills, as well, as collecting a pawful of gilders into her apron pouch. She could feel them bouncing and jingling as she sashayed through the barroom, cleaning as she went and exchanging friendly banter with some of the regulars. There was a brief scuffle when a hired paw on a tramp liner reached for her tail while her back was turned, but before he could even touch her, the sailors at the surrounding table had jumped him and hauled him bodily to the door, where they chucked him out into the sandy East Tookumberry dirt. Mina Rose made sure to give them all an extra warm smile of gratitude and noted to fill their glasses extra full on their next round.
By the time she made her way back to the bar, her mother was bringing out several food orders from the kitchen, already plated and ready to go. "Cod is for Chipfang," the elder vixen instructed, "tuna is for Goldpaw and Bloodwhisker. And stop flirting with the patrons!" She looked over her daughter critically, eyeing the tight corset that was working so hard to wrangle what Mina Rose had definitely not inherited from her rather flat-chested mother. "You keep leading them on like this, you'll get yourself in a world of trouble one day."
"Aww, Ma," Mina Rose sighed dramatically as she rolled her eyes, "those boys wouldn' hurt a fly. 'Sides, they're more like brothers ta me anyway."
"Well, in that case," her mother grumbled, turning away, "I'd hate to see how they look at their sisters."
The night passed quickly, as these long early spring nights tended to do. The East Tookumberry Keys didn't really get a proper winter, but it definitely had a windy season, and when that broke, the temperature rose and turned the islands into a tropical paradise. Sure, it would be so hot in the summer that most beasts stripped down to the bare minimum necessary for propriety, but for now, the windows of the tavern were open to a delightful spring evening of laughter, ale, and conversation. Mina stopped at a couple of tables for a few minutes, leaning in with her elbows on the table, face in her paws and tail wagging behind her, as she caught up with captains and crew she hadn't seen in months, newly returned with tales of distant lands, places where the mountains rose so high you couldn't see the peaks in the clouds, jungles so thick and deep that no living beast even claimed to have ventured inside, and frigid poles where even the sea turned to ice, and beasts had to get out and cut a passage with axes, pulling the ship behind them, just to keep from being frozen in. She loved those stories; she could imagine all of those places in bright, vivid color, and when she fell asleep at night, she dreamed of wandering through those fantastical tableaus. She'd wear the most beautiful dresses in the most exotic fabrics, eating foods she'd only heard tell of in stories, and, in a few of her dreams that she didn't dare mention even in her diary, had secret trysts with handsome, exotic todds with rich accents that sent a tingle right down to the base of her tail. She certainly didn't mention those dreams to Geremy; he'd only get jealous and insecure, and he was boring when he got like that.
Eventually the tavern cleared out, only a few drunks left sleeping at their tables or curled up beneath them. Most had gone back to their ships, or, more likely, out to camp on the beaches, sleeping under the stars on soft, warm sand. Mina hadn't tried it herself; staying out that late would be too much even for her rather permissive parents, so she only knew what it was like to lie in those sands, looking up at the stars and marveling at the myriad lights.
Mina Rose carefully counted her tips as she dropped them into a large jar already nearly full of small copper fo' gilders, silver ha' gilders, and even a few golden proper gilders in the mix. She was good at numbers, just not quite as good with her memory for them; she'd given up keeping an exact count a long time ago and had taken to broadly rounding her total each night, finding it far easier to keep track of her coin that way. By her count, she either had a hundred gilders or a thousand saved up, depending on if you rounded up or down. Her father watched her, a small, proud smile on his face as she so fastidiously added to her life's savings. He'd always worried, for some reason, that she would grow into a vapid, shallow, self-obsessed vixen, like those who came to visit the resorts and treated the locals like mud beneath their paws. Mina would admit, she could get a little jealous of the beautiful clothes and jewelry they wore; those femmes wore wealth on them that probably surpassed the value of her parents' tavern, while her stud earrings had been a major gift, one that several of the regulars had chipped in to help her parents purchase for her eighteenth nameday. Even then, they were made just of sterile silver, not the gorgeous gold that the visitors wore.
Satisfied with her count, Mina closed the lid on her savings and slipped the jar back under the bar, hiding it in a cabinet. She trusted the patrons of the tavern - mostly. There had been that time somebeast had gotten clever and slipped behind the bar while her father's back was turned to try to pour himself an extra drink. She tried to close the latch on the cabinet and it failed to close, prompting an exasperated sigh. "The darn latch is warped again," she complained, trying to sell the frustration. She'd spent fifteen minutes with a hammer carefully bending the latch out of shape this morning.
"Again?" The disbelief in her father's voice briefly worried Mina Rose; she hoped he hadn't caught on to what was truly happening here. Fortunately his next words were, "I really need to have a word with that smith. This level of quality is just unacceptable."
"It's just the heat an' humidity, Pa," Mina Rose rushed to assure him. "Ain' nothin' anybeast can do ta stop it from happenin'. I'll take the latch down ta the smith an' get it fixed righ' now."
"Now?" Her mother glanced out the window at the dark beach outside. "It must be past midnight. Surely they aren't open."
"Well, they said ta come back anytime," Mina Rose pointed out, prying the latch free of the cabinet door. "I'd say right now counts as 'any'."
"Alright," her father allowed, calling after his daughter as she moved to the door. "But he'd better fix it right this time!"
"Don' worry," she called back. "I'll make sure he hammers it real good this time."
~~@~~
Mina lay back in the grass, trying to catch her breath, as Geremy flopped down next to her, face down and panting. She grabbed one of the blankets they'd brought with them but hadn't even found time to lay out and covered herself with it, tossing the other atop Geremy's tail. The sweat cooling off her in the night breeze was shockingly chilly. "I'd say ya did a good job, Mr. Smith's Apprentice," she commented, glancing over at him to give a wry smile.
Geremy groaned, shifting onto his side so he could rest his weight on one elbow, his paw supporting his head. His eyes trailed down her form, and she pulled up the blanket a bit further, suddenly a bit self-conscious under his gaze. He smiled at her sudden modesty. "Ain' nothin' I haven' seen before," he pointed out, chuckling.
Mina Rose reached over and flicked his nose lightly. "Ain' nothin' yer gonna see again if yer takin' it fer granted," she rebuked. He rubbed at his nose before moving in to kiss her, and this time she let him, basking in the afterglow.
When they broke apart, Geremy smiled at her, a warmth that reached his eyes. "Mr. Wroughtiron says I'm jus' abou' ready ta make full smith, ya know," he commented. "I can join the guild, open my own shop. I won' be an apprentice much longer."
"Well, good fer you," Mina commented, just a touch facetious. "Maybe ye'll graduate from beddin' barmaids ta tavern keepers too." The expression of hurt on his face at the joke made her feel guilty, and she leaned in to kiss the pain away. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "I'm happy fer ya, I really am."
"I get my own shop, it means I'll get my own house too," Geremy pointed out. "Or, ya know, at least land fer a house. I was thinkin'... Well, ya know. I was thinkin' maybe we could build one t'gether."
Mina felt a chill run over her, like icy water poured down her spine. She understood exactly what he was suggesting, what he'd sprinkled here and there in playful hints that she'd laughingly batted about like balloons in the air. 'Gates, she should feel happy. She'd thought about what a wedding to Geremy would look like, had even tried to write it out from start to finish in her diary, narrating it like one of her stories, dialogue and all. It had been a pleasant fantasy, but...
But what? She knew, much as she might dream, that she was never leaving the East Tookumberry Keys. Traveling the world took coin, far more than the paltry coin she'd saved up across years. Besides, was she really going to blow her life's savings to go sailing around the world, just to wind up back here? That would take months, even years. By the time she got back, Geremy would probably have given up on her and moved on. He'd marry some other vixen, move into that house together and have five kits, and in the meantime Mina Rose would be back at her parents' tavern waiting tables, gilderless once more. All her dreams of travel were just that - dreams, fancies that didn't survive contact with reality. The moment you tried to seize them, they turned to so much dust in the air.
Mina took a deep breath, trying to wrestle the crushing weight of disappointment that threatened to smother her heart. "Alright," she agreed. "Let's do it."
Geremy raised his eyebrows. "Again? So soon?"
"Not that!" Mina laughed and shoved him away, the cheeky grin showing his satisfaction at the joke. 'Gates, she loved that he could make her laugh. It was probably his best quality. "Let's get married," she confirmed, saying out loud what they'd danced around for months. "I'll go talk to my Pa an' I'll tell 'im that I'm gonna marry you."
"Shouldn' I be the one ta talk ta him?"
"Yeh in a real hurry there ta have yer dingles cut off an' thrown in the harbor?"
"Righ', you talk with him, good plan. I'll talk ta my boss abou' a timeline, try an' get us time ta plan. Maybe we can hold it at the tavern."
"Maybe." Somehow Mina didn't like that idea. So much of her life had been bound up in that tavern, the four walls forming the perimeter of her world. She wasn't fond of starting her next chapter from within it as well. She leaned in and kissed Geremy lightly, then yawned. "I should get back ta the inn," she murmured, rolling to settle her cheek atop his chest, blanket wrapped about her body for warmth.
"Yeah," Geremy replied in a yawn, "yeh should. It'll be light 'fore yeh know it." He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling beneath Mina's head, and as she listened to his heartbeat in his chest, Mina imagined hearing this sound every night for the rest of her life. She closed her eyes-
She opened them to the dazzling oranges and yellows of a East Tookumberry sunrise. She blinked, then squinted, blocking the light from the east with her paw as she looked about. Oh 'Gates. Geremy was there on the grass where she'd used him as a pillow, softly snoring. If it was dawn already, then Mina had been out for hours. Her parents were going to absolutely lose it; she was lucky they hadn't gone out searching for her in the dark and stumbled across her and Geremy together. This is going to make that conversation very awkward, she reflected as she raced to recover her discarded clothes and dress herself before the sun revealed her full shame.
Geremy started, blinking awake and then squeezing his eyes shut as he covered them with his paw. "Oh," he groaned, still groggy. "Did we-"
"Yes."
"And you-"
"Yes." Mina's voice was breathy as the panic started to set in. 'Gates, where was the string to her corset? Ugh, never mind, she didn't have time for this. She got up and, her corset hanging loosely like a vest, started toward the side of the island where the tavern stood in its own copse of trees.
"Mina Rose!"
Mina turned back, surprised at Geremy's use of her middle name. Only family ever used her middle name. I guess that's what we'll be soon. Geremy got to his footpaws and, keeping his blanket wrapped about his hips, stepped forward to kiss her lightly. "Come visit me once you have an answer?" he invited, a note of hope in his voice.
Mina sighed, then nodded, not meeting his eyes. "Of course," she promised. "I'll find you." Then she turned and, trudging along like a soldier to a hopeless battle, struck her path homeward.
~~@~~
Mina Rose noticed the smoke first. That wasn't the smoke of a cooking fire coming from the chimney; there was way too much of it, and rather than a serene white, it was a thick, dirty black. Her heart racing in her throat, Mina ran through the trees, breaking through into the back yard of the inn. She could see fire pouring out of the upper floor of the tavern, the floor that housed the few guest rooms as well as living space for the Brewer family. The heat was intense, licking at her from even a distance, searing heat coming at her in waves, beating at her and then retreating. The smell of it was awful, acrid and vile, and worse yet, she could taste it as well. Holding her breath, Mina ran to the back door of the tavern, which was kicked open, and, kneeling, crawled into the kitchen.
The fire wasn't so bad down here; the heat was everywhere, as was the smoke, stinging at her eyes and making them water so thick that she could hardly see, but at least the actual flame hadn't burn its way down to the floor itself yet. She crawled through the kitchen space, glancing about, searching for any sign of her parents, any of the sailors who had protected her the night before-
She heard a cough from the front room, and Mina crawled through the door into the space behind the bar. Her father was leaned up under the bar in the space where normally there would be a cask of ale ready for the tapping. All of the alcohol was gone, and her father was clutching at a patch of blood on his shirt, right at his gut. "Pa!" she called, and immediately regretted it as she coughed up smoke.
"Mina Rose," her father croaked, reaching out a paw for her. She crawled forward and took it in hers, struggling to hear his words. "Thank Vulpuz you lived. I'm so glad you weren't here. Pirates... they..." The rest was lost to a fit of coughing.
"Where's Ma?" Mina Rose urged him, squeezing his paw tightly.
"She ran to get the gull. Your mother - she needed to know -" He coughed, and Mina saw red in his spittle.
"We gotta get yeh out, Pa." She started to pull at his arm, but he groaned, and she ceased, letting him settle back into the cubby.
"Too late now," he wheezed. "I'm gone, your mother's gone. You have t' live, Mina Rose. You are... You're such a special girl. You brought so much joy to our lives." Tears were shining in his eyes that had nothing to do with the smoke, and Mina found it difficult to see.
"I'm not gonna leave yeh, Pa!"
"You 'ave to," her father insisted, pulling his paw free of hers. "They're still out there, ou' front; when th' fire dies down, 'ey'll come back inside an' pilfer again. You can't be here when that happens. Run, Mina. Run into the jungle an' don' look back. You don' stop until ya can't hear anythin' anymore."
"Pa-"
"Go, Mina. Go!"
Mina hesitated, her eyes coated over with tears, protecting herself from smoke and heartbreak alike. Then, she turned and fled.
She didn't know how many minutes she ran after she got back out the back door of the tavern. By the time she stopped, the only thing she could hear was her thunderous heartbeat sounding in her ears. She heaved and gagged, spitting out a trickle of bile onto the loamy jungle floor, and took a ragged, gasping breath, trying to calm the turbulent emotions that only made breathing harder. 'Gates, Ma... Pa... The tears weren't coming right now; maybe she had cried them all out for the moment, or maybe it just hadn't become real yet. Nothing felt real, this had to be a nightmare from which she'd soon awaken. She'd fallen asleep on Geremy's chest, and she would awaken there at any moment to find it was midday, and her parents were going to ground her for life for sneaking out to see a boy. Hearing that they were going to be married might ameliorate them a bit, but until the ring was on her finger, there was no way they'd let her out of their sight again. She closed her eyes, trying to picture Geremy's face when he was asleep, to feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath her.
She didn't wake up.
She didn't recall slumping against a tree, nor sliding down to rest, stunned, at its base. The time that passed wasn't a blur so much as it was one long, interminable moment, a single prolonged note of agony that suspended the world until its tone was concluded. Only the shift of the sunlight indicated any time had passed, until the disappearance of the sun as it fell beyond the western horizon, toward the Vulpinsula, brought on the cool quiet of night. It was only when the chill began to make staying in place uncomfortable that Mina forced herself to her footpaws, and unsteadily, she began to walk in the vague direction from which she'd originated.
The tavern was completely burnt out. The roof and several of the walls had collapsed, including the backdoor. Mina didn't try to dig through it; she knew that her parents' bones had to be somewhere in there, and if she saw that, she didn't think she'd survive. She circled around to the front of the tavern instead. There was blood on the ground, a lot of it. Some of the crew who had slept on the beach must have retreated here, tried to make a stand in front of the tavern. It seemed they had only managed to make a stain instead. Mina walked, numb, among the dead, recognizing some by name, the rest only by face. 'Gates, what could she do for them? Would anyone notice they were missing and come looking? Did they have families who were wondering why their sons weren't coming home?
Mina stopped in front of one fallen fox, and something in her stomach turned. No. No, no, it couldn't be. She knelt down and, taking the body by its shoulder, rolled it over. Geremy's eyes stared upward at the sky, unblinking, unfocused. A gurgle escaped Mina Rose's throat, a scream that couldn't push through the bile that was also rising there. She turned and heaved, managing to avoid getting any on her lover, on the beast who would have been her husband. This time the tears fell, and then the choking, wrenching sobs, the ones that shook her frame so violently she thought her bones might snap. He'd come to the tavern because of her. Whether because she was late, or because he wanted to check on her, or he wanted to do the damn fool thing and talk to her father himself, he'd come to the tavern, and he'd died for her. She felt wretched in a whole other way now. He had died for her, literally given her his life... and she hadn't wanted to marry him. She'd agreed because she hadn't seen an alternative, but he had truly loved her. She hadn't deserved him.
She didn't fall asleep next to his body; there was no sleeping, not after all of that. She lay there in torpor, still as the dead herself, watching as the flies buzzed about, drawn by the scent of carnage. She waved them away anytime they came near Geremy, and proceeded to not sleep a wink. In the morning, when dawn broke once more, she reluctantly got up. She couldn't possibly bury him, let alone everyone else, all by herself. She would need help to honor the dead. She got up and started to walk toward the village when she remembered her savings. Maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to get Geremy a proper funeral. She turned -
There was glass by the door, and a tin lid. Mina Rose approached carefully, avoiding stepping on any shards, and saw a pawful of copper fo' gilders on the ground, not even worth scooping up. She nearly broke in that moment. She had lost everything, literally everything in her life. She turned away, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other, to not simply fall over and wait for death. She could do that later. Right now, she needed to tend to Geremy and her parents.
It was a large funeral. Tookumberrians built pyres for their dead, but since her parents had burned to death, they instead were put in boxes and set adrift out to sea. They would be taken by the ocean, and perhaps find peace and solace in its cool waters. Geremy burned brightly, though. He always had, Mina realized too late.
The next few weeks were a blur. The world moved around Mina Rose, but she simply was. She didn't do anything, she hardly even ate anything unless it was put in her mouth for her, and she didn't speak to anyone. Perhaps that was how she might have spent the rest of her life, if the most unusual ship with the most unusual captain hadn't sailed into port.
