"Oh!" she turned her head with a jerk to face the Captain. Their eyes met and their noses grazed each other. Even the Captain was surprised how close the maiden was. Anette blushed, then turned her head to look at her knees. "Sorry." she uttered as meek as possible.
"What's to be sorry for? I apologize lovely." Captain Ren also turned her head away.
"N - no, I mean for going through your things." she set a book she held in her hands down on the bed and nervously started pulling at her fingers. "I was outside getting some fresh air when the older pirates started saying things I didn't understand."
"By older pirates you mean Footsmen?" Ren raised her right eyebrow.
"Yes, that might have been his name. Well, he asked me if I wanted to 'Roll in the hay with him?'" Anette turned her body on the bed so to face the Captain at the opposite end. "Do you keep hay on this ship Ren?"
Her innocent eyes pierced Ren's thoughts. She could never imagine this sweet, clueless creature wanting to do anything like, 'Roll in the hay'. She started laughing so hard she went tumbling off the bed. "Hahaha! No! No we don't have any hay on this ship!" she tried to get out through breaths of laughter. Finally, she managed to sit back up on the bed. Still chuckling she said, "Listen lovely, if any one of those perverts out there say anything like that to you again, tell me and I will make 'em regret it!" then, once again, she burst out into a fit of laughter.
"Alright." Anette, still confused as to why such laughter, then changed the subject. "While I was hiding away in here, I found this book." She reopened the book beside her to reveal realistic charcoal sketches of shells and clothing and different parts of the Feather Flyer. "These are the most beautiful drawings I've ever seen! Did you do these?" The maiden flipped through the book wonderingly.
"Oh, why yes, lovely I did draw those." Captain Ren nudged closer to Anette and stared at her older drawings. They made her feel sentimental, an emotion she hadn't felt in a long while.
"They are incredible! How did you learn to draw this well?" Anette turned her head to see the dazed Captain sitting beside her. "Ren?"
"My father taught me." she slowly responded.
"And how did your father learn?"
"He was the son of a nobleman. And his family gave him all the education in the world, science, math, literature, art..." her voice faded as Captain Ren ran her finger along the spine of the sketch book.
"Then how did he become a pi-"
"He was a wonderful father, but he wasn't a very good man." Ren interrupted. "When he was old enough he was going to be forced to marry. Heh, I remember when he would tell me stories of how wretched the woman he was to be married to was." Ren leaned her shoulder on Anette's side. She held her head low. Her long, dark hair partly covering her face, but she was chuckling. "Anyway," getting a bit more serious, she explained, "He ran away from home, leaving his whole family behind. Then he joined a crew of Pirates. Later he was able to buy his own ship, The Feather Flyer. And he put together his own crew. Which, actually most of these old dummies use to be under my father." She shook her head, thinking of how idiotic her crew really was. But she still cared for them dearly. "He never lost his love for education, so he collected all the books he could find over the years, educating himself further."
Hesitantly, Anette asked, "Is that when he met your mother and fell in love?" Anette smiled, anticipating the romantic story that might come next.
"Like I said, he wasn't a very good man." The usually tough Captain now showed a different side than her normal self, and she showed it to someone she didn't know that well. However, she knew exactly what she was saying and whom she was saying it to. Yet she continued, "One night my Father went into a tavern where he met this woman."
"And is that when he fell in love?" Anette said, still hoping for a good ending.
"Well lovely, " Still with low spirits, Ren put her hand on Anette's head and smiled, "They may have felt in love for that one night at least. But, my father never saw the woman after that until, nine months later, she wandered onto the Feather Flyer when it was docked with a baby in her arms. She left the baby on the ship and never returned." This time Captain Ren looked up to make sure this wasn't too much for the maiden. She saw Anette with a tear in her eye.
"That's horrible." is what came out of her mouth, almost sounding like disbelief.
"No! No!" Ren exclaimed. "That was the best decision she could've done! As far as I'm concerned, I had the best childhood I could have ever asked for. I was raised right on this ship, with these books, with those idiots." she sounded more playful as she pointed to the door of her room.
"Ren?" Anette had one last question that had been boiling in her mind since they started their conversation. "Where's your father now?"
The Captain went silent.
"Y - you don't have to tell me! I just thought that it was really nice talking like this, and it was just a silly question I have been meaning to ask, but you don't have to answer!" the maiden rambled.
She stopped when Ren took a heavy, deep breath and said, "One night when I was thirteen an intruder had snuck on the ship and stabbed my father."
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