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lasquadranights · 2 years

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Similar Situations

Gelato x Reader x Sorbet

Content Warnings: Polygamy

***

Sorbet raised an eyebrow when you hopped over the back of the couch and fell dramatically into his lap, nearly knocking the book from his hands.

“I’m bored.”

His eyes drifted back to the pages without a word. Sorbet never minded you hanging around him while he was reading as long as you didn’t make too much noise. Sometimes, if you remained quiet for a time, he would even start to read to you in a deep voice that made you melt into him.

But you didn’t get that opportunity because right after he began running his fingers through your hair, the front door opened and you both sat up to see who’d arrived back.

Gelato’s expression was twisted into a grimace before he noticed where you sat and you watched as the tension drained from his muscles. A loopy smile appeared as he sauntered over, favoring his left side a little too much.

“You two seem to be having fun.”

Sorbet made a hum of acknowledgement and you sat up properly.

“How’d everything go?”

Gelato tapped your nose. “Better than I expected. You should have seen the guy’s face when he realised Passione knew all about that little wife of his. Couldn’t get that kind of agony if I pulled out every single one of his teeth. Which, by the way, I really wanted to do because some of the things that asshole sprouted was beyond rude.”

Sorbet closed his book and gestured for Gelato to join him on the couch. “A little close to home?”

“Not really.”

He was lying, of course. Gelato could only lie when he was working; when he was with people he trusted, he just couldn’t do it. His entire frame became twitchy and he refused to make eye contact with anyone.

It was one thing to see people who worked for the organisation meet a very painful demise. That kind of end was almost expected for many in Passione.

But it was another thing entirely for an innocent to be dragged into such a brutal business.

Instead of taking the seat between yourself and Sorbet, Gelato shoved you into the middle before draping himself over your shoulders. “How do you feel about doing some travel?”

“Hm?”

Your slightly confused response made his attention switch to Sorbet instead, searching for agreement on his idea. “What do you think baby? The three of us can go on a long, long trip to somewhere nice and exotic like Malta.”

“Malta’s hardly exotic,” Sorbet responded. “Besides Pitcairn would be better for what you’re thinking.”

Gelato grinned excitedly. “Alright, then we’re going to Pitcairn.”

You rolled your eyes and elbowed his side playfully. “Are you planning on leaving me there?”

“You’d love it. There’s like fifty people on the entire island so you’d get to know everybody. We’d come and visit you once a year.”

“Thank you but I rather like living here,” you laughed.

Gelato huffed but you could see the idea hadn’t entirely left his mind. He shuffled closer, wedging you firmly between himself and Sorbet. It was a good thing you didn’t mind physical touch because he didn’t give you much of a choice about it.

“Darling,” Sorbet warned when you squeaked after Gelato tightened his grip on your arms as well. “You’re going to hurt one of the few people who’s willing to sneak out with you at three in the morning and I’m not going to do it instead.”

He didn’t let go though, fingers biting into your arms. “Maybe I can make you pop,” he hummed.

“But then I couldn’t hug you,” you pointed out. “Which would be an awful shame.”

Gelato sighed and lessened his hold ever so slightly. “I suppose that’s true.” He watched you from the corner of his eye. “You know, I try to scare you off from time to time. I’m sure there’s got to be something that’s your limit and then you’ll run away from here screaming.”

“You should try a chain around the throat,” Sorbet said, tracing your neck with the tips of his fingers. “Or removing a limb.”

“That first one could end in a way you’re not expecting if it’s with one of you on the other end,” you hummed, meeting Sorbet’s suddenly interested eyes. “But either way, if you do that, it’s hardly keeping me any safer.”

“It would be a limb instead of your life,” Sorbet said.

“Unless somebody from the organization finds out about my existence and I don’t have my beautiful, intimidating partners to protect me?” you asked. “What then?”

Your flattery got to Sorbet more than the others though he was subtle about showing it. His chest would puff up ever-so-slightly and the glint in his eyes would turn sharper as his full attention focused on you. Gelato was more open with it and, with a smirk, he brought his lips to your neck and trailed kisses along it.

“I guess you’re right,” he purred. “But we should try the chain idea, just in case. Don’t you agree?”

Sorbet’s muttered acknowledgement, dark and velvet against your ear, made you shudder.

You ran your fingers through Gelato’s hair, head tilting back into the attention from his mouth when you felt something at the base of his neck. The stickiness already told you what it was and he gave you a stern expression of warning.

As though you would ever listen to that.

You shifted away (an action that put you directly in Sorbet’s lap) and raised an eyebrow. “So?”

Gelato groaned, a little overdramatically. “It isn’t that bad,” he huffed. “A little uncomfortable at worst.”

It had to have been from a blunt object; a split that ran across the back of his head and remained mostly hidden beneath his hair. Of course, the amount of blood made your heart pound regardless even if you knew it wasn’t a life-threatening problem.

“We could have been having fun,” Gelato grumbled.

“You could have told us about this earlier,” Sorbet responded. “Then maybe we would be.”

Sorbet had produced a medical kit from somewhere (you suspected it was hidden under the couch but always forgot to ask) and was gently cleaning the wound while you tried your hardest to get the blood out of Gelato’s hair without pulling. You remained perched on Sorbet’s lap though, despite the awkwardness it created, because that’s where he wanted you to stay.

“You know, I do find it quite funny how you all worry about me so much,” you said. The dried blood was easy to comb out with a wet cloth but you didn’t have one on you. “I’m not the one who goes out and risks my life every day.”

“Yes, you do,” Sorbet grumbled. “By coming here –“

“I basically live here.”

“By being here,” he corrected. “You put yourself in just as much danger as we do. Perhaps more. We can defend ourselves easier against Passione if we come up against somebody who wants us dead.”

“And that’s not what they probably want,” Gelato added in. “They’ll want you as a hostage and far from in the fun way.”

“Never thought there would be a point in my life where being held hostage had a fun way,” you laughed. “But here we are.”

Sorbet’s eyes shone in a way that promised you would experience it at some point.

“Either way,” you continued. “I still worry about all of you. When I see you come back with injuries and the like… it gets to me. That’s when I want to handcuff myself to you and make sure you’re always being safe even when you’re working.”

“Maybe we’ll have to see about getting you a stand,” Gelato laughed.

You sighed, if only it was that easy. You knew how they came about but it also came with a promise to join the organisation and potentially be moved away from your group… and that was before you even got to the risk of not making it through at all.

Still, it was something to think about.

#sorlato x reader #la squadra x reader #sorbet and gelato x reader #sorbet x gelato x reader

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midweekblues · 3 years

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📕?

Okay, so first of all I'M SO SORRY, i should know better than fishing for asks when i have such a busy week ahead u_U'

This is a Fitzier bit that should be the next chapter on this long-abandoned fix-it of mine... one day i'll get them all the way back to England, I hope. When i have more time and my brain's less mushy.

AnywaY:

They're still not sure if they'll make it out of the ice on time on Ross' ship. Ross is optimistic and tries to coach Francis into preparing their story for the inevitable court martial. Francis broods. Ends up avoiding Ross altogether for a couple days.

Ross goes to James for advice and to ask him to talk to Francis himself. Heavily implied:

a) Ross knows exactly what's going on with them

b) Ross may or may not have had something with Francis in the past (Fitz is too discreet to ask and too exhausted to even entertain jealousy)

c) Ross is super happy that Fitzier is a thing because loving Francis Crozier is a lot of work and James seems to be doing great at it so far.

So, later that night James confronts Francis, Francis brooooods, James is like WTF you have to think of what we're telling the Admiralty, what the men are gonna tell, this could be big trouble, what do you think Tozer's gonna say? Or any of the mutineers? We can't trust them

Francis says Baby i don't care what they say, i'm planning on telling the truth anyway (except the tuunbaq parts, obviously)

James says That's nuts, mutineers will shit-talk management to get out of their own trouble.

Francis says Don't worry they don't really have anything against you plus i'll make sure I get all the blame, you're not coming down with me.

James is like WTF again. "You have no right to drag me out of the Arctic just to watch you hang". Angst galore.

Francis tries to calm him down, broods some more, "I did fuck up as Captain and i won't let my men pay for my mistakes. Anyway let's go to bed and i'll tell you a story"

Spooning in the dark. Whispered infodump about the mutiny on the Bounty because:

a) it's a pretty cool story and Pitcairn Island is a fascinating place

b) The real Crozier was among the first English crew to encounter the descendants of the mutineers, when he was 18, and in my head it made him question a lot of stuff about authority, good and evil, etc

c) which ties directly into his attitude towards the mutineers in-canon (more than God loves them) and after-canon

d) I wanna make James picture an 18-year old Francis, full of freckles and dreams, climbing the rigging of a ship in the middle of the Pacific... maybe think of himself at that age, how he's changed since then.

James goes really quiet after that, Francis is concerned (is he still mad at me? Did he get bored and fall asleep?), James reassures him he's neither, they smooch a bit, possibly bang (ok who am i tryna fool, they're definitely banging), James falls asleep thinking he needs to find a way to keep Francis away from the gallows but honoring his desire to not throw any of the crew under the bus. End Chapter.

#thank you so much for the ask <3 #this might actually force me to sit down and WRITE it? hopefully?#fitzier #asks

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allovertheworldblog · 4 years

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Over The Ocean and Far Away to Easter Island

Easter Island or Isla de Pascua or Rapa Nui as the locals know it is a spit of land in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

It’s the most isolated inhabited place in the world.

Chile is the closest inhabited place to the east at 3,510km away, to the west it’s Pitcairn Island of Mutiny On The Bounty fame at 2,075km. It’s had a few different names over time so the current 2 is nothing new.

The former Polynesian name was Te Pito meaning The Navel Of The World.

The original inhabitants came from other Polynesian islands to settle the island but after that more than likely (given their isolated position) had no contact with anyone outside their island.

Their island was their world.

Leaving my hostel in Santiago on the 28th of April 2010 I was whisked by taxi to the airport through the deserted streets of the sleeping city.

I was advised by the LAN (Chilean national airline) agent that my flight to the Chilean possession of Easter Island was an international one as the plane went on to Tahitti.

I was advised to be at checkin at least three hours before departure, which I was.

After queueing for 30 or 40 minutes in a line with other international travellers I made my way up to the top.

This line was for my boarding card and passport to be examined. When I got to the top I was told that I’d have to go the national flights section as Easter Island wasn’t an international destination.

I raced to the other end of the airport fearing I’d have to queue for another half an hour, then be x-rayed and go to the boarding gate.

I made it.

My flight left on time. We were fed on the plane. LAN is continually winning the praise of South American travellers for their courtesy and professionalism and I can see why, they’re experts.

On the flight I looked at a documentary on Easter Island.

Coming in to land there was a real air of expectation. In the middle aisle of the plane I could see glimpses out of the left side of the plane and the right.

I could see the blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean and not much else.

Then I thought I could see the green of the island.

Maybe I was seeing things. Maybe we’d overshoot the island, it’s only 15 miles long in a vast ocean.

Surely the pilot has flown this route before, he knows what he’s doing.

Passengers not in window seats are straining to look over the shoulders of people who were.

There was a real buzz about the landing.

Finally I see what’s definitely a patch of island.

We land on the runway, which was developed as an alternative landing site for US space craft.

This development fostered the massive tourist inflows that Easter Island now enjoys. At the airport a sniffer dog checks our bags to see if we’re smuggling anything onto the island.

Only in this case the dog isn’t as much checking for drugs or explosives as fruit and vegetables.

It’s prohibited to bring them onto the island as it might damage their eco-system.

At this point my eye is caught by the owner of a guesthouse who’s set up stall in the arrivals hall.

She’s beckoning me to go over to her counter to tell me about her guesthouse. Elvira shows me pictures of her guesthouse which is on the ocean.

It costs $12,000Cl a night.

I tell her that it’s too expensive so she says she’ll charge $10,000Cl.

I’m sold.

She waits for me and a young Dutch couple who are also staying at the guesthouse to collect our bags and then we’re off.

The guesthouse is set on the edge of the island facing west. I feel a sense of unreality when I gaze out to the Pacific from the front porch of the guesthouse.

The fact that the island benefits from the power of the internal combustion engine, satellite communications and most modern conveniences there is a sense that the three hours that I gained travelling through three time zones to get there doesn’t mean so much on the island.

There’s a sense that the island, though a part of Chile, runs to its own distinct clock, well what would you expect from The Navel Of The World.

Easter Island is another world.

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originaldetectivesheep · 7 years

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A Life of Riley Part 3: The Very Last Place On Earth ch 2

Chapter 1

From inside somewhere, you could get used to the rain. Outside, bare-headed because what was the point, wearing a Pacers jersey that hung down to the middle of my thighs because Simon was tall and I was very not tall and was so full of water, even though it was supposed to shed, that I was seriously considering just chucking it off and dealing with Remy and whoever of the locals staring at my bikini, carrying my machete and the camera tripod and a borrowed hatchet in a zipped-up day pack that felt like it was completely filling up with water, you could get used to it as much as you could get used to standing under a waterfall, or as much as you could get used to some idiot dumping a swimming pool on your head. If there was anything good about it at all, it was that as we walked along the road single file, trying to stay out of the way of any passing trucks and not fall into any potholes under the puddles, the dogs that usually ran out of yards to bark and snap at whoever came by didn't bother us. The dogs were smart: they stayed out of the rain on their porches and curled up under palm trees. They knew better than to go running around in the wet for no reason that made sense to anybody; not us. We were the dumb ones here.

The rain lightened up a little as we got out farther: farther out on the road from the town, the places where people lived in numbers, and closer to the mountain, the big ragged hill covered in jungle that looked down on the rest of Wellman Island. There were still people living here, people in small tin-roof houses built into the sides of the slope, saying good morning as we went past and making sure that their dogs and chickens didn't bother us, so there was still a road going up partway, but it was a dirt road now, half finished in shells and broken coral from the lagoon, and we were still going almost straight up, still in the rain, through a tropical steam bath. It was tiring, and we were soaked and feeling awful, but we kept going – and then we ran out of road, and Riley stopped for a moment before pointing us off into a gap in the brush that kind of turned into a trail if you squinted at it exactly just right.

People who lived here obviously used the mountain; back down in the house or in town, we'd talked to people, and people had traditional land rights on Mt. Loafnuh that went back to probably when people first came here in canoes, and even if they didn't live out here any more, they still planted taro or bananas or came out and cut coconuts every so often. But that was mostly down on the lower slopes: the way we were climbing was more a game trail than anything people would use, but Riley was still leading us up and over it like it was a four-lane highway. It seemed like this was even steeper than the road that we'd taken up, and like it was heading straight for the summit. Maybe that was how we were supposed to get Simon's observations done: get up to the top of the mountain, up over the clouds, and wait for the sun to go down.

It certainly seemed that way when Riley stopped, garbage-bag poncho rustling to check something on a compass and a chunk of laminated fiberboard that didn't exactly look like a map, at what looked like a fairly random point on the trail. We stacked up in – there was more tree cover there and the trail we'd been climbing up was kind of exposed – and Riley turned back around as we crowded. "You're probably all worn out from the climb, so take five or ten or however many here. We're getting pretty close, but it's down from here; it's not gonna be as hard as that one climbing in. So, like, eat or whatever, and when you're ready we can get moving again."

"Eat what?" Remy asked, looking around, one to another of us. "Riley, you just told us to pack like machetes and shovels and Simon's telescope; I didn't bring anything to eat. Did anyone else?"

I sighed and pointed up, shrugging my pack down to pull out my machete. "Remy, Riley means eat jungle food. It's all around us; go up and get some coconuts, and I'll open them up, or if you're afraid of heights, you can walk back the trail a little bit to that banana tree and chop some bunches off it."

"Remy's a big boy, and he's not scared of heights," Sajitha said, setting her pack down next to me. "Carolína, let me see that hatchet we borrowed off Ernest on the way over; I'll go get the bananas, and you can open up the coconuts as Remy pulls them down." I handed her the hatchet; behind her, Remy was slapping his hands together and looking up nervously at the palm trees, high and skinny and slick with the rain. But after that, there was no way he could just beg off and offer to go help with the bananas.

Yuping was also looking up at the coconuts, around at the lay of the ground and how the slopes fell, and then squatted, pulling a coil of thin rope out of his backpack. He kicked around under the brush at the sides of the trail and came up with most of a coconut shell; he tied one end of the rope around it, pulling it tight with like three or four loops across the husk. He tested how it balanced, then swung it back and forth a little, down about to the ground, then started spinning it up and around, up from his feet to over his head, faster and faster; Simon and Remy backed up, getting out of the way. With the coconut chunk zipping through the air, Yuping threw it up, up at the coconuts under the leaves; if he was trying to smack them and knock them down, he was going to have to find something heavier to throw.

He wasn't though; the coconut husk, going kind of sideways, kind of bent or bound around the spines holding the nuts to the tree and wrapped fast. Yuping pulled back on the other end of the rope, straining and doubling it over in his hands; Simon stepped in to give him a little help, and between the two of them something cracked up in the tree and the rope went slack. The coconut husk fell, and a coconut fell with it, bouncing off the ground with a heavy bonk and then thumping down the slope through the underbrush.

"Say, that's real smart," Remy said. "I'll go find the coconut; you keep throwing, and if they keep going that way, I can catch them and bring them back up. Yell when you think you got enough; I'll yell back if I need help finding them." He dropped his pack and hustled down the slope, following the coconut's trail, as Yuping reeled his husk back in and started to look for another mark. I got the machete out of my pack and checked the edge; this would probably take a while.

"My team," Riley said from the head of the trail, sitting down on a rock with a wide smile. "It takes a bit, but sooner or later, everyone's all in together."

"I'm sure we are," I said, "but it might happen a little quicker, or a little easier, if, some of the time, we knew more about what we are doing. Like right now – you said you'd explain about the treasure on the way up, but with the climb, and how the rain was so bad, you didn't: and right now, we're up the mountain, and we don' know anything more about this treasure than when you brought it up, back down the house." Yuping and Simon yanked, a spike crackled and tore, and another coconut smashed down the hill towards Remy.

Riley's lip wrinkled, like this story was going to be especially complicated. "All right. Yeah, you do deserve the full story, but I only got bits and pieces of what went on way back; don't blame me if it turns out weird." 'Don't blame me if it turns out to be completely made up', is what I heard from that, but I kept my mouth shut, to see exactly what kind of story Riley was going to come up with, and if I could guess what the actual motive was to get us up into the jungle – what we were actually looking for up here.

"So I guess that you of all people ought to be familiar with how the Spanish stole everything remotely valuable out of South America that wasn't thoroughly nailed down," Riley started, and I nodded cautiously. It was true, but I didn't see what that had to do with the Pacific – most of the treasure was packed across the Andes and shipped out of Cartagena on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. "And yeah, most of that stuff went out on the Colombian north coast, but there was this time that Spain was fighting the English, and they were really wrecking Spain's shit in the Caribbean, and like to show how hardcore they were going to be about it, they put up like a colony of friggin Scottish people in Darien to cut off the Panama isthmus. They all died, of course, from Indians and malaria, and it was a stupid idea in the first place, but for a while it made it real hard for the Spanish to get their loot out so they could pay their bills with it. So they went like door to door in Peru, and ripped off more stuff that they hadn't stolen yet, and fitted up a treasure fleet out of Callao, full of silver and some other stuff that turns out to be important later.

"Anyway, this treasure fleet puts out to sea, and starts going south like normal. They stop for fresh water or something off somewhere in Chile, and the admiral or whoever hears from the locals that there's English pirates raiding along, burning towns and stuff, and he's like 'shit on this, I'm not going to fight these guys with slow ships full of treasure, we're taking a shortcut.' So they load up with as much provisions as they can hold, and turn west, out into the Pacific. Dude was going to run for Manila and then go by Indonesia because the Dutch were chill with them for this war, then boost off the Portuguese in Goa and along Africa to get back home.

"And I mean, this would have been a good plan if, like, anyone on these ships had any friggin clue where islands were in the Pacific, or if they weren't loaded up with tons of silver. The fleet got blown apart in a storm somewhere not quite out to Pitcairn; a couple sank and the rest couldn't recollect, and they kind of just like drifted west as far as they could run, each on their own, thinking that no matter where they ended up, there was land over there somewhere. Mostly, though, they ran out of water and got scurvy, and what you had was these three or five ancient Spanish hulks, no masts, no sails, the crew dead and bleached and picked out by birds, rolling along through the currents until they take a wrong plunge and break up on some reef somewhere."

Sajitha was back up with a couple bunches of baby bananas, which she passed around before coming back to sit on her pack next to me. Riley peeled and bolted a couple, tossing the skins off into the brush, and then went on. "The first sign that any of these ships even existed any more, that they hadn't just filled up with water and sank in a million fathoms somewhere a thousand miles from anything, was when an American sealing ship round about a hundred fifty years ago stopped at some sandbar island like a hundred miles off Palmyra Atoll to try and take on water. There'd been a hurricane and the sand had shifted, and the beach was covered, end to end, in Spanish silver dollars. That was the end of the sealing voyage; three dudes got killed in fights over it, but the rest of them chilled out and they were picking money out of the sand with shovels. And, as you do, when they got back to San Francisco and Callao and Valparaiso, these newly-rich sailors got drunk and told people about what they found.

"And so word gets out about this literal friggin Treasure Island where if you know what it is, you can go and pick up bullion in a bucket. Of course, none of the sailors could find it on a chart, and they weren't telling that part even as close as they could place it, but word gets out, and eventually it got around to this real horse's asshole, Wilk Moody, who people called Blue Mike for no reason anybody with half a brain has been able to dig up so far. Moody was a blackbirder out of Hawaii: he used to sail around to the little islands around here, places like this, and get people to come on his ship and have a party. Everybody got drunk, and when the natives wake up in the morning, they're in irons and the ship's underway for Australia and it's like, oh, you didn't want to come? Shouldn't've signed up to cut sugarcane at a dollar a month for the next three years when you were blasted last night, then. The guy was a slave trader in everything but name, a real friggin piece of work, but because he had to go sailing around every tiny little island to find one that he hadn't fucked over like that recently, he knew the middle of the Pacific like the back of his hand: all the islands, all the currents, how the weather runs and how far a derelict might be able to make it at the right times of year.

"Moody hears about the silver beach and he guesses, right, that a treasure ship broke up on the reef, and that its cargo gradually got washed in by storms. So after running in a load of slaves to the Galapagos or somewhere, he takes a detour to Callao – the only place they'd've been shipping that much silver from into the Pacific – and he finds out about the treasure fleet, finds the admiral's 'screw you, I'm going to Manila' letter, and starts making some guesses about where the other ships might have ended up. He thinks he's got a plan, and he scrapes up the real dregs of the West Coast to put together a crew: 300% bad men, dudes who won't talk because he'd run them in to the cops, or just kill them and expect to get a medal for it. He's got no clue how much treasure he's going to find, and if he can't lift it in the one steam yacht he's got under him, he's got to keep it secret until he can move the rest of it.

"The first couple places miss; the crew's getting cranky, but then they roll up on this unnamed atoll technically kind of in the Carolines – nobody plotted it in any log that survives, so nobody's got a clue where it is even today. And there, perched on a sandbar like it's on a drydock slip, rotted and shrunk-back at the seams and like I was saying de-masted and dead for wear, but still nearly all in one piece, is a goddamned Spanish treasure galleon that's been parked there for the better part of two hundred years." Riley paused, leaning back, either savoring the story and having an audience, or letting Remy pile up the coconuts by me and find a place to sit that Sajitha wouldn't kick him out of, or maybe just coming up with the next part in a way that would make sense and have something to do with this island.

"The ship on the sandbar's only intact in name, though; they look at it, and it's pretty clear that another monsoon season or two, and it's going to be in pieces and half the treasure's going to be on the bottom of the lagoon. Moody and his crew pack out all of the treasure, and even though it's not like literally full of silver – having less treasure than it could have is probably how it was riding high enough to go up on the beach – there's still too much to take back at once. They crate up the most basic stuff and bury it on the island, up at the highest point of the ground, so that it'll be there when they come back for it, and the most valuable stuff and everything else they can lug goes off on their ship. One of those most valuable things is a black chest bound with diamonds on its fasteners: Moody takes this for his own share, and says he'll kill anyone who messes with it. The men are okay with this at first, and after everything's squared away, they head back to Hawaii to split shares and cash out.

"This is when things start going wrong. The men start fighting with each other on the trip back: bringing up old beefs, and the idea is that the fewer ways they split the treasure, the better. Moody doesn't like this, and tells them that he's confiscating the share of any man who gets killed. There are three dudes dead at this point, so he looks like a hardcore thief, and depending on who you get the story from, he has to kill another mutineer or two right there to get them to back off. Eventually, he gives up: he'll get half of the dead men's shares, and the crew will split the other half.

"Now, Moody is a shitbird, but he's a smart cookie: he knows that when you've got a mutiny started, that mutiny doesn't stop until either the captain or all of the mutineers are dead. He makes a little detour down to here, Wellman Island; he says he wants to bury the black diamond chest, like he can't sell it and the stuff inside on this side of the Pacific, and they obviously aren't going to go to China on the way to Hawaii. They land and leave a skeleton crew, dumb guys who don't know how to work the engine, and Moody goes up the mountain, away from where the local people live, with the worst of the mutineers. They dig a hole for the chest and put it in – and then Moody opens up with a revolver and kills the rest of them. Dumbasses forgot what happens to pirate flunkies every single time the captain picks out this kind of work detail. Of course, they aren't complete mooks, so Moody is wounded, too, but he buries the dead men in with the chest and straggles back down to the beach and gets the ship under way.

"He can't go to a doctor between here and Hawaii – everywhere he might, it's missionaries, and they're on the lookout for Blue Mike the notorious blackbirder who keeps stealing their people. The crew do what they can, but they're just dumbass sailors, and the wound goes septic, and he's dead before they make port in Honolulu. The crew go to jail and the plate and stuff is impounded; they're obviously pirates or something, so nobody believes them when they try to tell their story. Nobody believes them that somewhere on Mt. Loafnuh at Wellman Island, Wilk Moody buried a mysterious chest covered in diamonds, with emeralds inside as big as your fist; all that treasure and the only known plotting of the treasure island where he found the hulk of the galleon – where there's still crates and crates of silver bullion waiting for someone to come around and find it."

I struck the end off a coconut with a single machete chop and handed it to Sajitha, who handed it over to Yuping by bucket-brigade. "I've got a lot of questions about this, but I got the feeling that there isn't going to be any answers. First off, this is a big mountain; is all you got that the treasure is 'somewhere'?"

Riley nodded. "Well, basically. They said the west slope, so it's not the whole mountain – but I've got the feeling that we'll know when we're close."

"And the details, like what was in the chest and whether there is a map – how did they know that? I mean, you said they were mooks, dumb guys that this Moody trust don' know how to run the engine. I don' really think they would be in the room when he pack up this chest – they probably never seen him open it."

Riley shrugged. "I guess it was from fever ravings, while he was dying of an infected gunshot wound. You know how it is, people say a lot of stuff they don't mean to when they're delirious."

I shook my head. "Yeah, and a lot of it's got zero to do with anything real. It's something to do, and we got to eat some good coconuts and bananas out of this, but I really don' think we're going to find any treasure here today."

"You never know," Riley said, standing up and smiling enigmatically. "Go ahead and finish what you're eating; the rain's let up a little more, so when you're ready, we want to head down over that way." Riley pointed off down the left side of the trail. "This side of the mountain's the west slope, and somewhere down there, we might be about to walk over Blue Mike's black diamond chest." I looked around at the rest of the crew; nobody seemed super excited, but people were perked up with some food down, and the promise of less rain – and it wasn't totally impossible that Riley might be telling the truth.

I struck off the top of my own coconut, the last one in the pile, and wiped my machete on the bottom of Simon's shirt. "Okay," I said. "If you wanna go, I'll go, right as soon as I finish lunch." I balanced the machete on my knees and tipped my head back to drink the coconut. It was something to do, for sure, and at least the treasure that Riley had us hunting for this time wasn't someone's titanium cache or a nuclear bomb or something. Pirate loot was nice and safe and normal – as long as that was what we were actually looking for.

Chapter 3

#nanowrimo #alifeofriley #fiction #not running wild lyrics #don't think i've ever even heard 'diamonds of the black chest'

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