Kissshot — Roleplayer Guild

Shahid stares at the man. What was he doing here? he thinks. Grubby and grimey like the street corner begger in Rabat who wears dirty clothes piled on his head, but nothing else on his body. Well, at least this man's privates are covered. Shahid never liked seeing the beggar's sagging butt. But this man made him feel just as uncomfortable. With the ship still docked, inside was quiet and dark enough. His mother sent him to find cloth and needle from the Boatswain and he had become distacted by the spectacle of this man.
Piecing together his Portuguese, Shahid asks, "Why do you not go above deck?" With the snap of the sails and the shoving of sweating bodies, where else would it be better?

Bento Belo Sr. looks up from his drink, the soft smudges of dirt underneath his eyes becoming more visible as he faces the light. He looks up at a young boy, his back sheltering the rest of the incandescence of the room. A young boy who seemed to be directing words and phrases at the haggard, senile man that was Bento Belo's father, Bento Belo. Another thick gulping out of his piss-warm bottle, and Ben Sr. replies:

"Why go above deck, boy? To test my drunkard's balance against the sea when we set sail? No, that's not wise for a man like me. I will stay here and keep out of sight before they boot me into the ocean because I shit more than every other man and don't put in enough work to make up for it. How old are you, boy? You should be above deck, yourself, should you not? I had a son of my own, at one point. Your parents will be mad with you."

Ben Sr. closed his eyes. They were his defining feature at one point in his life; a wild green, the green of crisp spring beginnings. You could look into his eyes and see golden valleys, once: fig trees and willows and sloping hills. Now they were ugly, more blue than green, more jungle-water than valley. Now they were shut. Shut against the emotions this child, and possibly the alcohol, were brewing inside of him. Ben Sr. did not like the idea of a whole voyage with children.

If Shahid's to be honest, and his mother taught him to be so, he doesn't understand half of what the man says. But watching how the man tips back his drink and how he doesn't look Shahid in the eye, the boy understands. (This man is the hollow of a man. A living phantom waiting to die.) So he nods and confides in the man, "My mother sent me below. She will be upset if I am gone for too long."

He tugs at the shirt he was given at the castle to be presented to the rich men there in a more favorable fashion. The fabric is heavier then he likes. He wants to take it off and walk with only his bottoms on. However, he also knows not to try his mother's patience. Not now. Not if he wants to talk with this man for longer.

"I am seven." He stops fidgeting and looks to the corner of the crate that the man is sitting on. "Seventeen?" He tastes the word, but decides it's much too high and so settles with "Eight." Instead. "I am eight."

"Eight? A nice age." Ben Sr. considers offering the child a drink, but then he remembers that he is, in fact, a child. What else could he offer, then? Something inside of him, beneath the drunken exterior, wanted to continue speaking with the boy. "What's your name, lad? Do you like stories?"

Shahid laughs. It seems the right response to being told that eight was a good age. "I am Shahid. Son of Othman and Esra Gad El Rab. Eldest of three brothers and sisters." Scratching under his tubby chins, he confesses, "Well, four. Mother has a baby now. In her stomach."

The room was damper than their own cabin that the dark man who was friends with Captain Emilio brought them to. Shahid hopes to sleep outside of the confides of his mother's sharp gaze, though. When on the Al-Qari’a, he find himself the empty cot of a crew member who had night shift or, on rare nights where Captain Sharkas smelled like the tang of clementines, he would stay up with his idol charting the stars in five different languages.

Thinking about Captain Sharkas in that moment with the sea water pressing against the groaning boards made Shahid want to stay here. "And yes, stories are good." He wants to tell the man that he knows a few good stories himself, but he holds back.

Ben Sr. was out of liquor at this point. Normally this would be the time when he went to find more (even if it meant mosying around in other people's quarters), but he kept himself from doing anything of the sort...yet. His morals died with the rest of him --they truly did, that day-- but for some reason Ben Sr. thought that leaving after hinting at more conversation with the child was a whole 'nother level of rock-bottom. Perhaps he'd hit it later, when he was alone and had scavenged some more fluid hells to digest, but at the moment he was painfully sober.

"I'll tell you a good one then, boy." He made room for Shahid to sit next to him; close enough to smell the foul stank of alcohol and self-deprecation, but far enough that he could explain such seating arrangements to the boy's mother.

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