26 A Good Question

Polly was used to being alone, but not to being lonely. The Birbalinda was well on its way to The Second Island, and enough time had passed for day to become night. Polly had spent the majority of the daylight hours tidying up her ship and actually manning it, and was unfortunately reminded that the life of a one man band was not easy. And now, as the twinking, jewel-like stars sparkled in the night sky like a collection of celestial bees, Polly lay on the deck letting the wind do its thing and move her ship along.

Even if the kiwis had been on board, there was no guarantee she’d be talking to them, yet Polly felt a sort of longing for what might have been. Sure Polly enjoyed silence, but not when it was too quiet for comfort. Not when it wasn’t a choice. Not when it was a crushing weight on her heart.

Polly opened her mouth, to speak to Fethar, to try and break the pressing quiet, but the words wouldn’t leave. The soft splashing of water as the waves rolled, propelling The Birbalinda to her goal, felt too loud for her to speak over. It was all she could do to muster a sad sigh.

The young girl rose from her position of lying on the ship’s deck, and turned her gaze from the black of the sky to the dark of the sea. She moved to the ship’s railing and looked at the water below her. The moon was a circle this night, and her round face smiled brightly on the open waters.

“It’s a nice night,” said Polly to Fethar at last. Speaking at long last felt like taking a fresh breath of air.

“I suppose so, though considering how strong the wind is tonight, it is highly unlikely we shall be much closer to The Second Island by the morrow.”

“I-” Polly felt like she had something she wanted to say, but she didn’t quite know what it was. “Maybe I need to go to sleep.”

“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

“If every time I went to bed early I woke up rich, I’d do it a lot more often.”

Casting one last glance at the lapping waves and wavering outline of the moon, Polly headed below deck to where her room was.

Compared to the bed of Melonpan, the one on The Birbalinda might as well have been a rock. But that didn’t bother Polly. She had a feeling she wouldn’t be doing much sleeping tonight.

Polly wiggled herself into bed like a caterpillar into its cocoon, as if once she woke up she’d be transformed into a happy butterfly flying free from her thoughts and sorrows. She plucked Fethar out of her hair and set the hat on a nightstand beside her bed.

Polly wasn’t even sure herself why she felt so empty, so saddened. Her goodbyes had all been relatively happy for the most part and there were no hard feelings, at least none that she was aware of. And she and the kiwis had even agreed that she’d be back for them.

Polly wagered a guess it was because she was too busy being worker ant #1 on the ship the whole day and she hadn’t had time to really think about what had happened. Or perhaps the shining sun in all its brightness had staved away her gloomy thoughts with its bright rays. Who knew? Polly wished she did.

She closed her eyes, and memories of the fun times she had with the kiwis came trickling in, despite her very firm insistence to her brain that they stay out. Polly was gunning for a good night’s sleep after all, despite being doubtful that she’d get it.

After they had departed Sea Island 4 and before they had all but run out of food and gotten into the hot mess that was the Twelfth situation, the four had actually been having a pretty good time.

There were a few packs of cards left behind from Captain Trixx’s days of seafaring, and the crew had a whirl of a time playing together. Sure Polly and the kiwis had a fight, or two, or twenty because their islands had different rules for the card games, but as no one has probably said, if there’s no blood shed then it wasn’t a good game.

Polly had actually tried juggling the kiwis a few times as well and had gained a pound or two of muscle doing so. At her best she was able to juggle all three of them successfully, but 9.5 times out of 10 she could only juggle Wiki and Ed, and she would drop them about every 5 seconds. But those two didn’t seem to mind.

The four, plus Fethar, also had storytelling nights. While Fethar mostly contributed useless trivia like a hippo’s sweat is pink and the word for an irrational fear for trees is dendrophobia, the kiwis had actually interesting stories about the days before The Dictator.

Wiki had recounted but when she was a lass and her parents had sent her to a prestigious cooking training camp that even foreigners were welcome to attend. At the event she had become close friends with a turkey because for some reason the others didn’t seem too keen on befriending her. Yet, a few days into the camp she discovered that the reason the others had been so iffy around her was because the turkey she thought was her buddy had really been talking smack behind her back to the other participants. The foul fowl had been spouting nonsense like Wiki was trying to kiss up to the higher ups for favors and that everything she cooked put the D in disgusting. Wiki had been horribly hurt by that betrayal, and that’s where SAT came into the picture.

SAT, another attendee of the camp, struggled to fit in because they were just so colorful, both literally and with their language. Wiki sought vengeance for having been wronged, and SAT was the one she turned to in her hour of need. After all, it only made sense for one outcast to seek another. SAT, despite Polly’s beliefs, was not a hateful bird who delighted in the sufferings of others, so according to Wiki, she actually had to work for a bit to convince SAT to help her out.

Then Wiki told Polly, without a single smidge of remorse on her face, that they sabotaged every single one of that turkey’s dishes up until the very end of the camp. They started small, with putting Habanero chili peppers in dishes that definitely should not have been spicy, and worked their way up to straight up stealing ingredients from the turkey.

When the tale had been told, Polly was both shocked and horrified that she was on the same ship with such ruthless and merciless individuals. She had wondered if Wiki had shared that story in order to scare her into submission or something. But the kiwi had said, all smiles, that she’d never do anything like that to Polly, and because they were in the middle of the sea and all that, Polly didn’t really have a choice but to believe her.

Their days sailing were often filled with moments like that, Polly being mildly concerned for her well-being, but having a good time overall. Those memories that had floated to the surface of her memory, brought a smile to Polly’s face.

Polly did a few sit ups in bed, hoping that some light exercise would tire her out. Unfortunately, all that did was get her blood flowing and lessen the likelihood of her falling asleep anytime soon. The gal thought she’d be more tired from her day’s hard work, but apparently running around all day wasn’t enough to exhaust her to where she’d knock out as soon as she hit the pillows, and that kind of upset her.

“How convenient it would be,” she thought to herself, “if I could power myself on and off.”

Next Polly figured she’d try the age old method of counting sheep. If it didn’t work then surely it wouldn’t have been referenced by pretty much every form of children’s media aimed at convincing children to knock out and take a vacay in dreamland that Polly knew of.

“One sheep, two sheep, red sheep, blue sheep,” Polly thought to herself. She had a sneaking suspicion she was doing something wrong because she wasn’t feeling sleepy in the slightest. Also, something about the phrase the sheep being red and blue didn’t feel right.

Sheep reminded Polly of Ed telling the story of her first time cooking lamb. Ed didn’t eat lamb herself, it had something to do with her only eating bug meat, but she had wanted to try cooking it anyways.

“I wasn’t always the master chef you know me to be now,” Ed began before going into how she almost burned down the island and caused the displacement of a whole species.

“At least that lamb you were trying to cook was, uh, probably very cooked,” replied Polly who, at that moment, had been trying to remember if they had any lamb on deck. She didn’t think so, and if they did she wasn’t above throwing them overboard.

Polly, still as awake as someone who had just knocked back five shots of espresso, finally gave up on trying to get some shut-eye and rolled herself out of bed. She popped Fethar back into her hair and returned to the deck.

“Looks like tonight will be an all-nighter kind of night,” she declared.

“Do keep in mind you are the one in charge of this ship. Should you face a lapse in judgement caused by sleep deprivation, well, you would have no one to blame but yourself.”

“A watched pot never boils.”

“???”

Polly didn’t know how, but Fethar had been so baffled by Polly’s quote of choice that had practically no relation to the topic at hand that it had somehow figured out how to pronounce ??? and transmit it to Polly.

“How did you do that? Hey wait, can I do that too?”

“Perhaps you can, if you put your mind to it. Is it not said that when there’s a will there’s a way?”

The now preoccupied Polly had something to do besides questioning why her brain wouldn’t let her hit the sack, and spent the rest of the night trying to fill the hole in her heart by trying to figure out how to pronounce a question mark without saying the word question mark.