We all came back on deck and I was immediately glad for the snow suit First Mate had given me. The cold hadn’t left with the storm, and my eyes immediately began to sting.

“Fuck.” Elma said, looking down over the edge of the ship. I joined her at the edge, followed by the rest of the crew.

“What were you expecting with all that snow?” Thatch asked, “We’re going to need to dig the ship out.”

“Thatch is right.” First Mate said, “No need to talk too much about it. Melody and I will head down there and see what we need to get done, Elma and Quiver go grab some shovels and ice picks from the hold and then help us poor weak humans smash the ice.”

“This is going to be miserable.” I muttered,

“Yep.” First Mate said, “But you’re going to be doing something else that's miserable.”

Uh oh.

“You and Thatch are going to head out and make sure there isn’t anything nasty around that might want to try and eat, maim, and/or infect us with horrible diseases.”

“What? Me? Why me?”

“Not just you.” Thatch said, “I’ll be going as well.”

Thatch wasn’t wearing a snowsuit, but he did seem to be oiling his joints with something out of a little canister.

“You’re the guy that can turn invisible and electrocute people, spy boy.” She said, “I figured this is the kind of mission you’d be good at.”

“I can’t turn my clothes invisible unless they were made with my skin in mind, and if I want to electrocute something I’d need to get my gloves off before I could do anything. I’m not a video game spy, you realize.”

“You can turn invisible and electrocute people with your fist. Not a video game spy my left butt cheek.” First Mate said, “Plus, your skin isn’t organic, so if you touch something it's less likely to go poorly for you. You and Thatch are the best ones to poke around. It’ll be fine.”

“Right. It’ll be fine.” I said, laughing, “Fine. Let me just get something from my room.”

I came back on deck with my Ghost Knife stashed underneath my heavy clothes. It made me feel a little better to have, but I wished I knew how to control it. I had been too afraid to experiment with it on the boat. I didn’t want to be falling through the Befuddled and into the Ocean because I had no idea what to do with it, or worse, fall through and get stuck in a ballast tank or something.

Now that I thought on it, would land be any safer? What would happen if I fell through the earth while using it? I was starting to have second thoughts about my purchase. Maybe this weapon was more dangerous than it was worth.

“Come, Sam.” Thatch said from the ladder the crew had affixed to the side of the ship. “Just a quick look. An hour, no more than that, likely.”

“Likely. When do ‘likely’ things ever really happen, Thatch?” I sighed,

“Frequently, I’d expect, since they’re likely.”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” I said, but I followed the Patchwork down the ladder and onto the snow.

Melody, First Mate, Quiver and Elma were all using what looked to be sledge hammers to crack the ice that had rapidly built up around the ship. They’d taken off their masks, and the two humans were red faced and grunting as they struck at the ice and snow lodging the ship in place. Elma was laughing and panting as she worked. I wasn’t sure if it was because someone had told a joke, or she was just having fun hitting things with a hammer. Quiver hadn’t been wearing anything on the ship, but now, down here, all of their tendrils were wrapped in what looked like thick fuzzy sweat bands, and their little body was wearing the equivalent of an ugly red christmas sweater, without the little reindeer or ornaments. It seemed light compared to what everyone else was wearing, but that didn’t seem to bother them. They were using their tendrils to push through and crack the ice nearby.

“Stick close together.” Thatch said as we began our trek deeper into Putrice. “Keep your mask on. The cold has locked in the worst of the smells, but it still might not be safe to breath.”

“Must be nice, not needing to breathe.” I said absently, looking down as my feet punched holes in the new snow. Things cracked and snapped below the snow. The dead and dying plant matter had flash frozen into stiff corpses that broke like glass under my boots. The mud they had wallowed in had frozen over as well, and was slippery. Fortunately the boots that came with the suit had a good grip, and the layer of snow prevented the ground from being too frictionless.

“It is, honestly.” Thatch said, “It seems like quite a lot of trouble, all the biological functions everyone else needs to deal with.” He said,

“Not a fan? Most of us aren’t, either.” I said, looking up. Thatch had gotten a little ahead of me, and I caught up with him as we began to crest a low hill covered in snow covered lumps that exuded black spines too thin for much snow to accumulate on them. Some sort of Sea Urchin, it seemed like.

“Don’t touch those.” Thatch said, “The spines are toxic.”

“Noted. But don’t Patchwork have to deal with their own squiggly bits of grossness.”

“Sublimation, you’re talking about?”

“Sublimation? That’s solid to gas. I thought Patchwork parts get all… runny before they need to be replaced.” Though to be fair I’d never seen any part of Thatch looking less than pristine.

“Sometimes, depending on the substance they can ‘get runny’.” Thatch said, “But not wood or cloth. If we incorporate it into our bodies it sublimates, usually. Left over bits around the vanishing parts can get runny I suppose. And you’re right, it is a hassle, having to replace parts of me every so often. But so do humans, don’t they? They just don’t do it consciously. It’s a little more work, but worth it in the end. I admire you fleshy creatures, living with the knowledge your bodies will stop replacing the parts of you properly and that it’ll eventually kill you. But I definitely don’t envy you.”

“So Patchwork don’t age?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“We age. We just don’t grow old.”

“How old are you?”

“Old enough that I can’t remember.” He said, waving his beautifully carved wooden hand in the air. I narrowed my eyes at his wooden hand, trying to find signs of this sublimation. Was his wrist thinner than it had been? Were those pock marks? I had no idea. I’d never paid close attention to his parts before, so even looking now I couldn’t tell.

We crested the hill and got a good look at… taller hills in the distance. The spires of stone we could see from the shore rose from the tops of a few of them, not covered in snow, but the dangling aquatic foliage was dusted with rime and didn’t move with the wind. I winced as the sun reflected off of something clear, like ice, hanging suspended in between two of the pillars, but couldn’t see what exactly it was.

Behind us we had a view of the ship and the sliver of land it was beached on. The sky was grey, as was the water, and a few errant snowflakes still fell here and there. No danger, as far as I could tell, except for those sea urchins that clung to the bottom of the hill. We should probably warn the crew about those, or someone would try to lick them or something.

“Ball park it for me.” I said, pulling my arms closer around my body. I was feeling the chill, even through the coat and my mask was slowly strangling me. I wasn’t sure I’d put it on quite right.

I was hoping after this brief look around, we’d head back, but Thatch continued towards the next, higher hill and I followed behind him.

“It’s all a little fuzzy. Patchwork don’t live with their parents, so in my formative years I had no one to keep track for me, and not much of a mind anyway. I think I was born a little after humans first came to the ocean.”

My eyebrows shot up to my hairline. That was at least four hundred years, then.

“So when you’re young you’re… what?” I had no idea what a baby patchwork would look like. I imagined a tiny blob like creature that eventually moved into a shell like a hermit crab before moving on up to… what? Carved wooden facsimiles of human body parts?

“We take whatever we can get, when we’re young. I don’t remember my first component, but I was a pile of leaves on the wind for quite a while. It was very freeing, and the parts of me were quite easy to replace. But it wasn’t useful for communicating or moving things or anything else, really. You need a more stable form for the complicated things.”

“Interesting. Does it bother you, taking orders from First Mate? She’s so much younger than you are.” Probably. Maybe she was, like, a Vampire or something and a thousand years old. I’d be surprised if that were true, but probably not that surprised.

He turned towards me, and though his face was unmoving and stiff, his entire body was expressive. The tilt to his head curious, his crochet covered arms crossed as if in negation, his posture straight, almost offended.

“Not at all.” He said, “First Mate knows what she’s doing. She has a knack for people, I think. A way about her that makes it easy to rely on her.”

“First Mate?” I almost laughed, but then stopped myself. Everyone seemed to trust her on board the ship. Even I had taken her at her word that she was going to help me and not turn me in, even if I hadn’t wanted her help. In fact, while I don’t know if I liked First Mate, I trusted her. A strange thing, considering one of the very first things she said to me was a lie, that she was ‘The First Mate’. “Do you know her story?”

“Some.” Thatch said, “But, I’m sorry, that’s not really mine to share.”

“How about yours?” I asked, starting to breathe hard as we neared the top of the second hill. I was in shape, if I did say so myself, but the snow was making it hard and it was a steep hill. Thatch glanced at me, but evidently didn’t feel like responding.

Eventually we stopped in front of one of the pillars and I got a closer look at some of the plant life that had been growing from it. It wasn’t a single type of flora as I’d thought from a distance. Most of it was made up of long, leafy seaweed, now frozen into blades, but here and there were Sea Anemone’s, some sort of muscles, and the frozen corpse of what looked like an elongated lobster with a stinger. As I approached the pillar something ‘crunched’ under my foot. I looked down to see another of the lobsters dead and frozen beneath the snow. Curious, I began to clear more snow away, revealing more creatures that had either died when Putrice rose, or frozen when the snows came. Assorted fish, crustaceans and the odd cephalopod littered the area underneath the pillar. It made sense, I suppose. Plenty of places to feed and hide amongst the foliage. After a moment of searching, I found a large, tube-like thing still moving. Some sort of slug, or sea cucumber or something else endemic to The Ocean.

“What the heck is this?” I said aloud, Thatch turned to look and I moved to prod the thing with my foot.

“Don’t touch that!” Thatch suddenly shouted, and I stopped in my tracks. “Don’t. Step away. Now.”

I had never heard Thatch sound so alarmed before, so I immediately did as he asked.

“That thing is literal poison. An emulsified glob of the worst toxins Putrice has to offer. You find them sometimes. It will kill you if you touch it. Probably even if you pick it up with a glove. Or prod it with a boot.”

“Oh. Great.” I took another step back. “Uh. Thanks.”

“Not a problem. We should stay together, now that I think on it. You are new to this place, and the snow hides things. We don’t want to stray into any danger that could have been avoided by---” Then he was cut short by the enormous, near invisible spiderweb he’d walked into, strung out between the pillars.