Somewhere in the Baltic Sea...
Waking up to a soul jarring vibration in his bones, a grimy, dirty man blinks, rubs his eyes, and curses. "O" dans l'enfer suis-je?" Not only where, but when"
...Thrummmmmmm...
It was a warm, rainy Saturday evening when the big Belgian stumbled into the dockside bar in Heiligenhafen, the seedy little German port on the Baltic Sea. A few (dozen) stout German biers later, he stumbled out into a dark, rainy night. The gently swaying lights of the docks were easily confused in his blurred vision with the more stable lights on shore. He remembers barking his shin on something in the dark, a wild tumble, then nothing.
...Thrummmmmmmm...
He claps a hand to his head...the alarming vibration breaking him out of his memory. "What in the hell is that"!" Looking up, fine dust sparkles in a sliver of red light from a seam above his head. He finds his feet as the hard metal beneath his feet shifts abruptly and he tumbles, head first into an unseen wall.
...Thrummmmmmmm...
This time, when his eyes open again he doesn't move. Having ricocheted around the room, "Hold....this is a cargo hold", the big man feels rivulets of blood running down from his thick hair and into his rather bushy beard. Laying face down and head first in a hard metal corner, he rolls over onto his rump to lean against the wall..."Bulkhead, you idiot! Dit is verdomd Schip!!!" He shakes his head...if he's thinking in Dutch, there's definitely a concussion.
...Thrummmmmmmm...
"A ship...a ship....Petreth, you imb"cile....You fell into the hold of a ship!" Incredulous, he thumps his head against the vibrating bulkhead and the fog clears a bit. Frantically, he pats himself head to toe, checking for breaks as well as doing an inventory. "Bloody hair, no big deal....beard...is all still there!" A sigh of relief. He woke up from that incident in Brussels with half of his most distinguishing feature burned off. Pinching and pulling the front of his t-shirt out in the gloom, he realizes he's got on one of his ubiquitous Muppets T-Shirts on and no rips.
...Thrummmmmmmm....
The rhythmic throbbing of the metal around him are becoming commonplace, almost (but not quite) soothing the pounding in his head. He continues his inventory, checking that the Scots Guard sporran that he wears on his hip is still firmly belted and secured. "Oh, thank god." Across the dim hold lies his backpack. Crawling across the diamonded metal decking to it, he checks that all buckles and flaps are tight before pulling it onto his battered shoulders. A moment of clarity soaks into his abused skull. "I'm a maudit stowaway!!!" Carefully finding his feet again, he leans against a bulkhead...feeling his way towards the shaft of red light streaming in above, his blind groping finds purchase on a ladder just as the deck tilts again.
...ThrummmmmSCREEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!
Eyes wide in the gloom, grips the ladder as the deck heaves up beneath him, then tilts over farther than he would have imagined possible...He quickly scurries up the near horizontal ladder and throws his body weight into the hatch. His shoulder ignites in pain, but the hatch doesn't budge. "Neuken klootzak, eikel klootzak!!!!" Cursing vehemently at himself in dutch, he fumbles around the edge of the hatch as the ship shudders violently. Finding one latch, then another, deft fingers make quick work of them, then delicately push the hatch open.
The screeching and agonizing metallic howl continues but is muted once his head is above deck. Glancing quickly up the long axis of what seems to be a rather large cargo freighter, he can make out a row of crewmen fighting the tilt of the ship and clinging to lifelines on the port side. Turning back to the bow, a lighthouse flashes it's haunting beam, incredibly close..."Close enough to swim?" He asks himself, but by this time he's on the pitching and heaving deck, scuttling from cover to cover. His eyes catch sight of the shoreline as the lighthouse beam sweeps by. It's only a few hundred meters and a far better option than being caught by the crew. Running down the opposite side of the ship from the struggling crewmen, he passes the winged bridge and catches a glimpse of strange faces in the reddish light. He freezes at the aftmost bollard, pops off a crisp salute to the crew, then dives overboard into the wake.
His trajectory from the high deck of the pitching ship carries him well underwater. Arching his back and twisting, he uses the momentum to glide far away from the grinding screws of the freighter. The large pack weighs him down, rolling him onto his back. Instinctively frog kicking towards the surface, his head and upper body break the plane and he gasps for air. The lights of the freighter pitch again in the distance, then settle out and steadily grow smaller in the gloom.
"Pas de soucis maintenant..." No worries indeed, except that he was in a strange place, far from shore, and he was positively freezing! Paddling gently to stay afloat, he eyes the lighthouse far in the distance as he bobs from crest to trough in the gentle one meter seas. "I'll freeze to death long before I make it!" Glancing around frantically in the dark, his eyes catch a glimpse of a light over his shoulder. Thrashing around in a very rough approximation of a circle, the light comes into bleary focus. A lamp post..."What in the hell?" A wave slops him in the face as he gapes.
Not taking the opportunity to avoid being a Belgian popsicle, he begins swimming, conserving his energy with smaller strokes. After only a few minutes, a searing pain shoots through his thigh. Reaching down underwater to cradle the injury, he slams his knuckles into something solid as a rock. Spluttering and choking, he gropes in the darkness and finds...a rock. A very large rock, only a foot underwater! He pulls his bruised and hypothermic body onto the underwater savior only to realize that his newfound friend is a pile of rocks on the end of a jetty running out from the shoreline. Realizing now that the freighter he jumped from must have been curving between this jetty and the lighthouse, he starts clambering over the rubble towards the light on his hands and knees.
Almost an hour later, he reaches the shore side of the jetty. Crawling under a railing and onto a patch of grass, the violent shivers that have wracked him for the last half hour return. Frozen hands struggle with icy metal clasps and in frustration he rips the bag off his back.
"F..ff...ff...f..f...f......." A rime of ice is already beginning to crust the shell of his pack when he rips it open, tearing the waterproof lining instead of wasting time unzipping it. Fumbling inside with wooden digits, he pulls a change of clothes and nylon ground cloth free. As he changes out of the wet clothes, a dull ache begins to creep into his head and time starts to move slower and slower. The shivers subside as he fights with frozen boot laces. He finally manages to pull on dry things and roll up in the cloth before losing consciousness.
Some time later...
Warmth...pain shooting through fingers and toes, but warmth. Bloodshot hazel eyes open to a star filled sky. His bodily reserves have slowly heated up the inside of the cloth, restoring feeling to his battered body. Unwrapping delicately, he sits up and does another personal inventory. All there and intact. "What the..." His eyes snap upward, reevaluating that sky. "The stars are.....wrong....." He can't figure out where he's at, or when. Where the North Star should be is now a cluster. For a man who spent most of his childhood on sailing vessels, this is an almost personal affront. Spinning around, his eyes scan the horizon..."There......" A pair of moons, one significantly larger than Earth's own lie three fingers above the near treeline. Memory washes over him..
As a lad of nine years, he had been apprenticed for a summer to one of Scotland's most reputable Sailing masters as a cabin boy. Spending most of his four months in the galley learning to cook and, of course, brew the perfect pot of Melrose tea, he hadn't seen much but mop, stove and wooden bulkhead, but a dim recollection of two moons just like these lingers. He remembers sitting on a bench on the front porch of a bar...."No....an Inn!" Wrestling with another child in the street while his master drank and relaxed inside, sharp scales cutting into his arms..
"Scales"!" The stream of memories broken, he shakes his head. "Where in the hell did I get Scales?" Staring at those twin moons, he realizes that that may not have been a dream..
"Oh shit....This is RhyDin!" His hand goes to his head, fingers squeezing his temples in confusion. "How is that possible?" The imaginings of a child have just become reality for the man. Scrambling to his feet, the confused, lost Belgian shoves the ground cloth into his pack. Finding the clothes from his swim frozen solidly to the grass, he tears them free with a rip. Shoving the awkward lump in as well, he pulls the bag on and follows those moons into town.
"RhyDin...You've gone and screwed yourself royally this time!?
Waking up to a soul jarring vibration in his bones, a grimy, dirty man blinks, rubs his eyes, and curses. "O" dans l'enfer suis-je?" Not only where, but when"
...Thrummmmmmm...
It was a warm, rainy Saturday evening when the big Belgian stumbled into the dockside bar in Heiligenhafen, the seedy little German port on the Baltic Sea. A few (dozen) stout German biers later, he stumbled out into a dark, rainy night. The gently swaying lights of the docks were easily confused in his blurred vision with the more stable lights on shore. He remembers barking his shin on something in the dark, a wild tumble, then nothing.
...Thrummmmmmmm...
He claps a hand to his head...the alarming vibration breaking him out of his memory. "What in the hell is that"!" Looking up, fine dust sparkles in a sliver of red light from a seam above his head. He finds his feet as the hard metal beneath his feet shifts abruptly and he tumbles, head first into an unseen wall.
...Thrummmmmmmm...
This time, when his eyes open again he doesn't move. Having ricocheted around the room, "Hold....this is a cargo hold", the big man feels rivulets of blood running down from his thick hair and into his rather bushy beard. Laying face down and head first in a hard metal corner, he rolls over onto his rump to lean against the wall..."Bulkhead, you idiot! Dit is verdomd Schip!!!" He shakes his head...if he's thinking in Dutch, there's definitely a concussion.
...Thrummmmmmmm...
"A ship...a ship....Petreth, you imb"cile....You fell into the hold of a ship!" Incredulous, he thumps his head against the vibrating bulkhead and the fog clears a bit. Frantically, he pats himself head to toe, checking for breaks as well as doing an inventory. "Bloody hair, no big deal....beard...is all still there!" A sigh of relief. He woke up from that incident in Brussels with half of his most distinguishing feature burned off. Pinching and pulling the front of his t-shirt out in the gloom, he realizes he's got on one of his ubiquitous Muppets T-Shirts on and no rips.
...Thrummmmmmmm....
The rhythmic throbbing of the metal around him are becoming commonplace, almost (but not quite) soothing the pounding in his head. He continues his inventory, checking that the Scots Guard sporran that he wears on his hip is still firmly belted and secured. "Oh, thank god." Across the dim hold lies his backpack. Crawling across the diamonded metal decking to it, he checks that all buckles and flaps are tight before pulling it onto his battered shoulders. A moment of clarity soaks into his abused skull. "I'm a maudit stowaway!!!" Carefully finding his feet again, he leans against a bulkhead...feeling his way towards the shaft of red light streaming in above, his blind groping finds purchase on a ladder just as the deck tilts again.
...ThrummmmmSCREEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!
Eyes wide in the gloom, grips the ladder as the deck heaves up beneath him, then tilts over farther than he would have imagined possible...He quickly scurries up the near horizontal ladder and throws his body weight into the hatch. His shoulder ignites in pain, but the hatch doesn't budge. "Neuken klootzak, eikel klootzak!!!!" Cursing vehemently at himself in dutch, he fumbles around the edge of the hatch as the ship shudders violently. Finding one latch, then another, deft fingers make quick work of them, then delicately push the hatch open.
The screeching and agonizing metallic howl continues but is muted once his head is above deck. Glancing quickly up the long axis of what seems to be a rather large cargo freighter, he can make out a row of crewmen fighting the tilt of the ship and clinging to lifelines on the port side. Turning back to the bow, a lighthouse flashes it's haunting beam, incredibly close..."Close enough to swim?" He asks himself, but by this time he's on the pitching and heaving deck, scuttling from cover to cover. His eyes catch sight of the shoreline as the lighthouse beam sweeps by. It's only a few hundred meters and a far better option than being caught by the crew. Running down the opposite side of the ship from the struggling crewmen, he passes the winged bridge and catches a glimpse of strange faces in the reddish light. He freezes at the aftmost bollard, pops off a crisp salute to the crew, then dives overboard into the wake.
His trajectory from the high deck of the pitching ship carries him well underwater. Arching his back and twisting, he uses the momentum to glide far away from the grinding screws of the freighter. The large pack weighs him down, rolling him onto his back. Instinctively frog kicking towards the surface, his head and upper body break the plane and he gasps for air. The lights of the freighter pitch again in the distance, then settle out and steadily grow smaller in the gloom.
"Pas de soucis maintenant..." No worries indeed, except that he was in a strange place, far from shore, and he was positively freezing! Paddling gently to stay afloat, he eyes the lighthouse far in the distance as he bobs from crest to trough in the gentle one meter seas. "I'll freeze to death long before I make it!" Glancing around frantically in the dark, his eyes catch a glimpse of a light over his shoulder. Thrashing around in a very rough approximation of a circle, the light comes into bleary focus. A lamp post..."What in the hell?" A wave slops him in the face as he gapes.
Not taking the opportunity to avoid being a Belgian popsicle, he begins swimming, conserving his energy with smaller strokes. After only a few minutes, a searing pain shoots through his thigh. Reaching down underwater to cradle the injury, he slams his knuckles into something solid as a rock. Spluttering and choking, he gropes in the darkness and finds...a rock. A very large rock, only a foot underwater! He pulls his bruised and hypothermic body onto the underwater savior only to realize that his newfound friend is a pile of rocks on the end of a jetty running out from the shoreline. Realizing now that the freighter he jumped from must have been curving between this jetty and the lighthouse, he starts clambering over the rubble towards the light on his hands and knees.
Almost an hour later, he reaches the shore side of the jetty. Crawling under a railing and onto a patch of grass, the violent shivers that have wracked him for the last half hour return. Frozen hands struggle with icy metal clasps and in frustration he rips the bag off his back.
"F..ff...ff...f..f...f......." A rime of ice is already beginning to crust the shell of his pack when he rips it open, tearing the waterproof lining instead of wasting time unzipping it. Fumbling inside with wooden digits, he pulls a change of clothes and nylon ground cloth free. As he changes out of the wet clothes, a dull ache begins to creep into his head and time starts to move slower and slower. The shivers subside as he fights with frozen boot laces. He finally manages to pull on dry things and roll up in the cloth before losing consciousness.
Some time later...
Warmth...pain shooting through fingers and toes, but warmth. Bloodshot hazel eyes open to a star filled sky. His bodily reserves have slowly heated up the inside of the cloth, restoring feeling to his battered body. Unwrapping delicately, he sits up and does another personal inventory. All there and intact. "What the..." His eyes snap upward, reevaluating that sky. "The stars are.....wrong....." He can't figure out where he's at, or when. Where the North Star should be is now a cluster. For a man who spent most of his childhood on sailing vessels, this is an almost personal affront. Spinning around, his eyes scan the horizon..."There......" A pair of moons, one significantly larger than Earth's own lie three fingers above the near treeline. Memory washes over him..
As a lad of nine years, he had been apprenticed for a summer to one of Scotland's most reputable Sailing masters as a cabin boy. Spending most of his four months in the galley learning to cook and, of course, brew the perfect pot of Melrose tea, he hadn't seen much but mop, stove and wooden bulkhead, but a dim recollection of two moons just like these lingers. He remembers sitting on a bench on the front porch of a bar...."No....an Inn!" Wrestling with another child in the street while his master drank and relaxed inside, sharp scales cutting into his arms..
"Scales"!" The stream of memories broken, he shakes his head. "Where in the hell did I get Scales?" Staring at those twin moons, he realizes that that may not have been a dream..
"Oh shit....This is RhyDin!" His hand goes to his head, fingers squeezing his temples in confusion. "How is that possible?" The imaginings of a child have just become reality for the man. Scrambling to his feet, the confused, lost Belgian shoves the ground cloth into his pack. Finding the clothes from his swim frozen solidly to the grass, he tears them free with a rip. Shoving the awkward lump in as well, he pulls the bag on and follows those moons into town.
"RhyDin...You've gone and screwed yourself royally this time!?