Tunie’s crew were suffering a poor morale again. It was distressing when this happened. Normally Tunie had to cajole and meep and gently draw on her crew’s attention for a long time when this happened. It required that she tell jokes and such until all the poor morale became good morale.

That could take a very long time.

But this time Tunie had a friend! Tunie had passengers who were willing to talk to her properly and tell jokes and assist in improving crew morale!

So Tunie did something ships in general and Tunie in particular rarely did. She talked to someone other than her crew and asked them to do something.

It was exciting and scary in a way. Tunie was doing a crew thing and she was not sure she would be as good at it as her crew. In fact Tunie was pretty sure she was definitely not as good at it as her best in the reef crew! That was why she surmised it normally took so long to improve crew morale when things got this bad like they sometimes did.

But this time there were passengers to help Tunie which were honestly not as good as crew but seemed to be helping anyway!

Her crew’s Morale was improved a great deal now! This made Tunie happy. Now she could return her attention back to gossiping with the other ships and enjoying the sweet sweet grist of the port flowing into her tummy and being spun up into higher and higher energies until the potency was so great that only her feathers could contain it.

Oh it would appear that Lutish and his crew were leaving now. Well she wished them fair trades and good journeys on that wide arc into the outer void. She muttered quietly to herself and a few of her friends that she wished she would not have to speak with the creepy old ship and his weird heavy crew ever again.

It sounded like her crew’s morale was not improving as rapidly as anticipated. This was a sad thing. Tunie prompted her special bestest crew with a prize to try and help increase morale more. She knew her crew liked to do silly crew things in ports. She decided to add an amendment to one of their previous promises.

Tunie knew her crew deserved it for all the good crewing they did with the tribunal. Besides she was going to be a while digesting and up-spinning all this grist. Tunie knew that she didn't like when she finished eating up her grist at a port and then wait-wait-waiting for crew things. It only seemed fair that crew should get something to fill dull times waiting for her Ship things.

So Tunie told her crew she was changing a promise they made.

Her crew could go to three silly crew thing places instead of the one that she had made them promise at the stupid fat pushy fish.

That was surely going to improve morale.

Oh and crew wanted to bring the passengers with them right?

The passengers seemed to help with morale a lot! Tunie suggested that her crew take the passengers on the silly crew things too!

That should do it.

Tunie loved her crew.

...

Oh.

Well that was honestly a lot less trouble than Tunie was expecting them to get into but it was fine. Morale seemed to be improved. It had not eaten up very much time though. But apparently her Crew was fine with that as well. Tunie was a little worried though. Morale was sitting semi acceptably but it seemed like it could swoop off into a bad place super easily based on her previous experiences with her crew.

Tunie fidgeted with her feathers watching over the indicators of morale and communications. Her friend the passengers tried to tell jokes but mostly she was not in the right mood to loop over anything.

There were some more scares and despite knowing she could not really drink grist any faster or uptake it into hr feathers any harder she tried. She wanted to get up out and about and on to the next port. Her crew usually got better morale with new ports, and getting to new ports was what Tunie did!

It was what ships were for.

But they were stuck here because she had to swallow all this grist and grind and squeeze and press it into strong potencies in her feathers!

They were stuck and her crew was wobbly in the Morale. It was vexing because Tunie could not get them to open up about what specific silly crew thing was impacting morale so bad.

Tunie finally got fed up and demanded that her crew explain the morale situation.

She was not good at crew things but morale was important even if Tunie only really understood it a little bit.

And the answer? It was so confusing and silly!

Her crew was all wobbly and saying things like it was it was good enough. That was all kinds of plucking silly!

Her crew was the best crew and she poured endless charts and courses and maneuvers of true things about how this was so.

She rumbled and ruffled her feathers enough to make the port workers with the feeding tubes squawk and flutter all around for fear she would shift out of the little resting hole she was in.

But Tunie would not shove this silliness.

Her crew was the best and that was a fact whether her crew was being silly crew and not seeing that or not.

And finally the crew Morale started to improve.

It was not the best it ever had been.

But there was a much better trajectory now.

Tunie huffed and shook her feathers so she settled back into the docking posture and sucked hot grist.

Really?

Crew were silly little creatures. It was a wonder they could survive at all without ships. Well she supposed it was true that ports did not survive without ships. It made her feathers fluff a bit more and some of her roots twitch with anticipation of shedding aggressively.

It made her want to load up on more of the special things that hit like rocks at cruise speed.

Crew and ports needed ships because they were silly with their Morale. So of course Tunie wanted to protect them.

But morale was not like scary predators in the void or abyss.

It was not something you could solve with rocks or feathers.

Well except that one time.

But her crew’s morale dipped if she brought it up.