Copyright J.B. Norman
“We have nothing to fear,” Dunstana tells the rest of the Porthaven Raiders as she looks down at her crew from the helm of her ship, “except for fear itself.”
She looks down at the confused faces of her crew.
“I don’t know what that means,” she admits. “But it sounds smart.”
“Um, Captain?” Williams asks, tentatively raising his hands. “What about bears?”
“What about bears?” Dunstana replies.
“Well, it’s just that they’re big and hungry and scary,” Williams explains.
“I guess there are pretty scary,” Dunstana admits.
“Williams,” Abrams counters, “how many bears have you seen out at sea?”
“P-polar bears?” Williams offers.
“And how many polar bears have you seen in this part of Realmgard?”
“Okay,” Dunstana says. “We have nothing to fear except fear. And polar bears, I guess.”
“What about sharks?” Williams asks. “They live in the ocean. What if somebody falls overboard and there’s sharks?”
“Okay, okay,” Dunstana amending her speech on the fly. “Fear. Polar bears. And sharks.”
She takes a moment to consider.
“Right? Other than fear, polar bears, and sharks? Is there anything else we should be afraid be of?” she asks her crews.
“Shark-bears?” one of the Raiders offers.
“Thats not even a thing!” another protests.
“Spiders big enough to fit over your face!”
“That we live in a cold, uncaring cosmos where all Human endeavour is futile and no-one will remember or care about us after we’ve died?”
“Wow,” Dunstana mutters. “That’s pretty dark, Fredrick. I think you need a hug. Williams, hug Fredrick.”
“The fact that I’ll never live up to my father’s expectations?”
“Public speaking?”
“Heights!”
“Public speaking on top of a tall building with a big spider over your face?”
“Oh,” Williams exclaims, sticking his hand up again. “I’ve got another one!”
“Yeah, Williams?” Dunstana asks.
“The Pelayan Inquisition! They could be getting ready to inquisit us right now, and we’d never seen them coming!”
Dunstana looks up at her Pelayan first mate. “Do you want to field this one, Jimena?”
“Williams,” Jimena assures the crew’s anxious notary, “you do not need to be afraid of the Pelayan Inquisition. For one thing, they only have jurisdiction in Pelayo.”
“Will we be going to Pelayo anytime soon, Captain?” Williams asks.
“Um… no,” Dunstana answers.
“Right,” Williams says, bashfully clearing this throat. “Sorry about that, Captain. You, were, um… giving some kind of inspiring speech, I think?”
“Well, yeah,” Dunstana says. “But now I don’t remember what I was going to talk about! Thanks a lot, guys!”
“I did say you should have written it down, Captain,” Jimena notes.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dunstana mutters.
She stares down at the Raiders.
“Look, guys, the important thing is that we go out there, and be all piratey and awesome and kick everybody’s butt!”
“Kick all the butts!” the Porthaven Raiders cry in one voice, triumphantly thrusting their fists into the air.
“Right,” Dunstana says, resolutely setting her hand on her head. “Close enough.”
She looks up at her first mate.
“Steady as she goes, Jimena,” she declares.
“Captain,” Jimena notes, bashfully scratching her nose. “You’re at the helm.”
Return to my master list of Short Scenes here.
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.
All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.
The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.
Realmgard is published by Emona Literary ServicesTM
