“Fair Winds and Following Seas” [P]

[Oliver]

Caspian
| He/him | Loner | Moons 22 | No Purrks |
“It’s Captain Caspian to you, hehe, just kidding!”

Light blue eyes blinked open slowly, the tiny curl of cream, gray, and ginger looking out into the darkness that shrouded him from the hat laying over his front half. As it always has and as it always will. Caspian was always slow to wake up, and he spent a while just staring into the darkness, listening to the waves outside the rocked against the ship, though one noise was missing and his ears spent moments flicking back and forth as the sea-faring kitty tried to place his paw on the missing melody of the his usual morning sea shanty. OH! His housefolk, he wasn’t here making his weird sounds as he picked up the hat and placed it on his head signaling a morning beginning. Caspian was still here, sleeping in, with the hat on his head. After that the sleepiness snapped away as he scrambled to his paws, where was everyone??

He looked over to his housefolk’s bed, it was uniform, the pelts and the furs were all nicely put up. A stark difference from Caspian’s own nest but the cat didn’t pay any mind to that as he pushed the hat off to the side and dropped from his sleeping cubby and down onto the deck of the ship. No signs of his crew’s noisyness. Did they dock while Caspian was sleeping? But he could’ve sworn they had just docked and there were always quite a few suns until the next dock. Who knows, there’s been a few pretty close stop points and it would explain his housefolk’s being missing. He lifted his snout and didn’t scent anything out of the ordinary and he quickly pushed his way out of the cracked door. It was always cracked for Caspian to come in and out as he pleased. Out on one of the twoleg paths was just as empty as the den. Strange, this was very strange.

Caspian didn’t even take the time he normally would to fix up his sleep ruffled fur and fix up the ribbon around his neck as best as he could with his paws, though his housefolk usually made it all pretty as they had weird paws that were better suited for such a thing. The bell on the ribbon chimed with each step he took as he made down the trail. No signs of anything and he couldn’t scent anything but salty air, the sea breeze, and the other usual scents. Like odd prey and wood, and the occasional scent of mold. That was another one of his jobs, to keep an eye for that bad stuff. Mold, as he heard that noise said several times when he had gone poking around in the loading bay and discovered the foul smelling, and sickly thing. His housefolk noticed his discovery soon after and seemed shocked at such a thing and soon it was gone, and Caspian was given a treat. So he assumed it was his housefolks way of saying ‘good job, Captain, you protected us from another danger!’ Or something like that.

Speaking of, he should check the loading bay. Where all the things brought on from the land were put to rest until they were carried out again and replaced. It was usually full of interesting and potentially bad things. Caspian has caught quite a few stowaways along the weird boxes and such. Like rats and mice, sometimes they nibbled the corners of the boxes and then tried to escape and do it to the rest, so Caspian had to check all the boxes and catch all the mice and such he finds but he’s found all sorts of things while going through the oddities. Bugs, huge fish three times bigger than him, birds pecking at the boxes, and more. It was also interesting trying to understand the crew’s weirdness. Like there’s all sorts of things Caspian could never imagine understanding or wanting like his crew does but he’s a cat, maybe it was a housefolk thing. It probably was.

Though as he padded through the current bounty, Caspian could find nothing strange or out of place. Not a single housefolk which was worrying because there was always some part of the crew messing around in the loading bay even when they were docked. They took turns watching the space when they were on docks but there was nothing. Nada. All gone! He padded along through the bay and came up onto the front of the ship’s bow, well he was at least until he realized that something strange was there. Now normally, it was pretty empty on the deck near the bow. It was kept open for his crew to do their odd little housefolk things while the rest of the ship was meant for work or for sleeping. It was wide and had a wooden deck and were the same colors besides the walls of the ship and the bow. What it shouldn’t have is another cat… or at least he’s pretty sure it was another cat.

He only kind of knows what cats look like based on himself… but uhhh, that was a cat. A realllllll beat up cat given the scratches across her face and the way they litter along the cat’s body but it was a cat. Oh, why was there a cat on the ship other than Caspian?? Did the crew get him a friend? He hopes so, he gets lonely and the rats and the birds don’t make good conversation and he knows he has the crew but they can’t really talk. The pirate kitty took a few tiny steps towards the odd maybe-most-likely-cat, “Howdy? Are you a cat?” The tom asked genuinely. They would know if they are a cat or not, right? Even Caspian knows that he was a cat, even if he didn’t really know how he knows that, he just does. The same way he knows that his name is Caspian, or more so Captain Caspian, but Caspian for short even though he didn’t know what a caspian was. It was all too confusing and he chose instead to watch the other maybe-cat curiously with wide, pale eyes.

[ @Rose - Lostspark ]

[Rose]

Lostspark
She/Her | Purrks Overlook

The whims of the mind is a strange thing. It has it's own ideas, it's own goals. One cannot mold the night into what they desire, just as the day cannot be so. Dreams were malleable at times, pliant and yielding in the paws of those who walked the night. But sometimes, just sometimes, not even a skilled paw could direct the flow of the river of dreams.

So settle down once and for all, no complaints needing to be heard here. One must be ready for the unexpected at all times, because fate is not something that pauses for those who complain. Bear what is tossed your way with patience, and that endurance will blossom into the sweetened fruit of reward. Tonight, however, do not mind all those technicalities. The topic of consideration is two young felines. . . though they are considered young hatchlings by their elders and too-old by their youngsters. One is surrounded by land that gives, a Clan that takes. The second is surrounded by sea that takes, and a Clan that gives.

One is too alone, isolated, and the other too suffocated, surrounded.

Neither can help their situations. Which circled back to our spotlight for tonight. Lostspark found her paws planted firmly on wood, claws digging into something that felt like bark and yet was not. Her scarred face was turned towards the vast endless blue that stretched before her, both awe-inspiring and intimidating. She has seen this sight once before, when she had fallen from that cliff and into these dark depths. She has recognized this as a dream, she knows she is safe in this world, in this cradle of the mind, but the fear still lingers. She can swim, but what if she were to fall? To slip? Would she drown for eternity? Would she choke on the salt water until she woke once more, safe at home, in her perch, in her tree. Sentry to Mossfreckle and Dawnstar's dens.

The sea had failed to claim her once. Would it claim her the second time?

The merry jangling of an approaching bell has Lostspark's supposedly unseeing eyes turning in that direction, fur prickling with unease, hackles rising as she awaited whatever monster resided in the doom and gloom. Who's lair was she trespassing on, and would she get away scot-free? So when she comes face to face with a... kittypet?, Lostspark finds her fur flattening, head cocked to the side.

'Howdy. Are you a cat?'

Huh. Get a load of this guy. Maybe it really was possible to be that innocent, or sheltered. "No, I am a bird." She deadpanned, voice carrying across the deck, and then sighed. She was stuck in this dream until morn. Better to make the best of it. "Yes, I am a cat." See, she could be nice. And because a quiet voice urged her not to fall silent; "I did not lie to you, seafarer. I hail by the name of a bird, my name is Lark." Or it had been, once. She missed her name.

[ @Dolomedes - Caspian | This is not late noooo... ]

[Oliver]

Caspian
| He/him | Loner | Moons 26 | No Purrks |
“It’s Captain Caspian to you, hehe, just kidding!”

Caspian tilted his head at the stranger's response, though they were talking to him! They were saying words that Caspian understood and unlike every other conversation with a bird he's had they weren't made up in Caspian's head. He's never met a bird that could speak like he could! Even if the way they said words was funny compared to how Caspian said them. "Oh really! I've never seen a bird like you- and they don't usually tal-" Caspian blinked and stopped rambling excitedly as the stranger continued with their own words. oh. Oh. OH! Yeah okay, that was on Caspian, they were a cat like him.

Caspian couldn't help his excitement as he hurdled closer to this Lark and circled her a few times happily humming a tune that the bird's sung sometimes. "A real cat! On the ship! Oh wow! I've never met another cat like myself before, Lark! That's a nice name, a proper name. I mean- I've never seen a Lark before... or umm have even heard of one but I'll take your word for it!" Caspian rambled to himself absentmindedly towards the end. He wondered if a Lark looked similar to this cat! But maybe not, because Caspian was named Caspian and he doesn't even know what a Caspian is... maybe it's a made up twoleg word. Then he halted in front of Lark and offered her a grin as he puffed out his chest in excitable dramatics.

"Well my name is Caspian! Captain Caspian! I run this here ship!" WOW! It was so much cooler saying this to someone that could understand him rather than any of the gulls or the rats that stowed away and only looked at him briefly with their beady little dark eyes before turning and running or flying away so he wouldn't catch them. Though he always does! Well, the rats that is. They don't have much space to get away though gulls get away much more. He looked away and his grin turned more sheepish as he plopped down on his haunches. Running his claws through the long running fur along his cheeks as he continued rambling. He couldn't help it! There was someone that was actually able to listen and respond now!

"Speaking of which! Are you a new member of the crew? I would think that my upwalkers would tell me about a new arrival but they can get forgetful! Regardless," The grey and orange feline raised a paw and physically waved it as though his thoughts were actually there needing to be manually swept away like some dust or dirt. "I'll just have to give you a tour and run you through all the things that we can do together!! It'll be so much fun! Captain Caspian and his First Mate Lark! Doesn't sound too bad and I wouldn't mind having..." company, "Some more paws helping me run this place!"

[ @Rose - Lostspark/Lark ]