Chapter 23

Disgusting. I Love it.

Thrush

Satiation 80%

Days passed as I slept. My body was pinched like a wasp at the waist from a loop of rope. I awoke within ice. A dome of ice that my once full belly had made. The rope went straight through the ice beneath me via a worn hole. Through that hole, I heard the sea.

My ship! My sunken ship!

I was almost half goblin now, but still just as mean and powerful. Even though I’d slept for days, I felt something that I didn’t like.

Tired? Maybe not tired. Maybe I'm hungry.

I shifted around to find my backpack. Hawkin’s beer was still there. So was my last dreambon. It was time to make more.

I cracked it open and dropped it at my feet.

“Nightream eternal!” I said and stepped back to watch my only magic unfold.

The silver lines on the fruit sheened. The red glowed. The honey-like juice flowed out and the small black seeds began to sprout. It felt good to welcome my jungle again. One of my favorite things in the world. All that was missing was a belly full of smoked fish.

The sprouts twirled and grew by the dozen. They became saplings and stretched to fill the architecture of ice we were encased in. Bark grew and burst along the trunks of expanding saplings as they grew into small trees. The trees bloomed. Toxic flowers opened with whispers. Toxic pollen grew damp and fell as the trees shook violently. Vegetation rained around me with cacophony. I laughed with my entire being.

Dreambon fruits grew so fast that they made audible stretches and pops. They ripened and fell. I devoured them with a fury, breaking them by the handfuls between my teeth, between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, and squeezed them open in my throat. Gobbled them greedily. I was a mammoth eyed beast, feeding on ancestral origins.

“Eternal ends,” I said.

The continuously growing dreambon forest, forced into a woven ball, decayed and collapsed. It composted in a matter of seconds, filling my lungs with an aged scent of old earth. Only the fruit did not decay. They stayed ripe and I gathered them, filling my backpack with them.

Wait until Hawkin sees that!

I felt dreambon colors fill the sponge of my eyes. My ears rounded once more. My fur browned and grew thicker. My paws grew shorter and more bear-like.

The rope tightened, twanging. I pulled the rope with one hand, gathered the next length with the other, and heaved. I continued like that, pulling the sunken ship up with impossible strength until I saw a shadow draw up from the depths of the ice. My ship.

I pulled until I could pull no more and the ship banged against the bottom of the ice. I gave some slack and pulled again. The ship banged against the ice once more. After another heave and bang, the ice began to show signs of cracking beneath my feet.

Frigid water began to seep up between those cracks. I lifted one last time, pulling the rope until the ship banged one final time into the ice. The crash was deafening as the ice broke and I fell back into the sea.

Cheeks full of air, I found that I had made it very near to the coast. I wondered if I had been frozen mid-swim.

I pulled the ship as I swam for shore. The ice was no challenge to my claws and in half an hour, I breached the surface. After breaking enough ice to drag the ship ashore, I snacked on a dreambon and gazed upon the sea. Upon goblin freebooter ships still sailing and with goblins still bailing. Their ships totally occupied the sea. By the hundreds now. A handful of those ships were near enough that I could see goblin shapes cavorting about their decks. Small plumes of smoke rose from those ships. Then cannonballs splashed into the sea and broke into the shelf of ice along the coast.

So you’ve been waiting. Hunting me down.

They will not come upon the land. Of course not; they’re goblin freebooters.

The ship didn’t survive being dragged upon the land. It had nearly fallen apart and already I saw plenty of treasure. Barrels, chests, nets, and a load of other goodies. The goodies were mostly dead goblins that got stuck or sucked down with the ship.

I wonder how smoked goblins would taste.

Materials glinted in the daylight that squeezed in.

Metal. That was my purpose. My reason.

I ducked into the ship from a busted hole in the side. The space within had been a sleeping quarters. Blanketed planks of wood were lodged into the walls from ceiling to floor. Soggy bedding lay upon the floor and squished beneath my paws as I moved through the ship.

There were metals everywhere, mostly shoved into the walls with other debris that had once formed the ship architecture. The rest of the ship was a wonderful surprise. There were rooms full of small barrels that made me think of Hawkin.

He’d like these to put beers in. Maybe these have beers in them already.

Though there were rings of metal around the barrels, I wouldn’t take them. The intact barrels would be a gift.

The kitchen had quite a bit of metal. Metal tools. Hawkin had similar tools, but nowhere near as many. There were many chests framed in metal too. They’d be cinch to pull apart. Perhaps the biggest prize was the harpoon turret. It was a whole lot of metal and I could feel my smile almost tear the corners of my mouth.

This. This will make a good big smoker.

All I need now is Hawkin’s help. I’m sure he knows how to build a bigger smoker. If he doesn’t…

Well I’ve eaten enough goblins for a while, no need to eat Hawkin for some time. I’ve got a belly full, and a ship full of treasure and metal. We’ll figure it out one way or another.

After briefly inspecting the plan of the ship, It was an easy decision to stop and celebrate. A good time to drink some of Hawkin’s beer. The gourd had suffered a crack which had started near the cork. It was a small crack, not nearly enough for a leak. Not that it mattered. The cork was frozen into the gourd and I shook the thing to find that the beer, too, was frozen.

There was only one thing left to do. I bit into the gourd, tearing it away piece by piece. Though it was a block of ice, I felt the beer warm in my belly and then come up when I burped. It was one of the foulest things I’d ever eaten.

“Ahhh,” I said after a stomach-ripping belch. “Disgusting. I love it.”

Before returning to Hawkin’s cabin with my metals, I wanted to take more leisure in searching through the chests, barrels, and maybe even sink the dead goblin bodies to the depths of my belly.

My satiation had only gone up a few points since gorging on dreambons, so I could most certainly use a freshly frozen meal. There was something about frozen meat that hit the spot.

Maybe it's the crunch.