[piosenniel]

Rog

A few hours of sleep brought some respite. Rog woke in the stifling closeness of his cabin, his eyes opening on darkness. The little light Aiwendil had left for him had burnt out, and he did not bother to get up to rekindle it. His thoughts were focused on his stomach, now surprisingly calm, then drifted out to sense the motion of the ship. He could feel the lift of the waves as the ship rode them, but the waters must be calmer now as his hammock swung little as they moved forward.

‘And thank the One for that,’ he thought, rising gingerly from the canvas sling.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The flight along the main deck was harder than he’d supposed. Buffeted by the sea breezes, he made short, precarious hops from place to place, his brown moth wings taking a beating. The salt air was refreshing, and as he thought, his moth’s stomach suffered no ill consequences from the rise and fall of the Gull on the waves. His object was to make it aft, without being blown overboard. The captain’s cabin was there – secure from the elements and well lit during the day with natural light from the windows.

The ship was a small one, relative to the others he had seen at the quay in Harlond. A two masted lugger, she was used for trading voyages up and down the coast, from Harad to Mithlond. Hugging the shoreline, she made numerous stops along the route, taking on goods and selling or delivering loads as she went along. Rog flew in a crazy pattern from the hatchway to the rope securing a pallet of stacked barrels. Then, on, in a dangerous diagonal, toward the spar that held the lower end of the main sail, making it just barely . . . one more gusting breeze and he would have sailed helter skelter over the side rail. He waited catching his breath as he smoothed down his wings in the shelter of the rope that bound the sail to the spar. His eye caught the passage of a familiar figure. Faragaer! Leather satchel in hand, he was heading aft, nodding briefly to the figure that stood at his cabin door.

With a determined leap and the mighty flapping of his somewhat tattered wings, Rog dropped down, aiming for the captain. Success! His little feet hooked into the tail of the man’s tunic and he was carried along in a dizzying back and forth motion as Faragaer strode along.

Entering the door to his cabin, the captain made for his chair, motioning his First Mate to follow. Rog’s faceted eyes quickly took in his surrounds and he flew up to a secluded, shadowed corner of a crossbeam, just above the table. He settled in, his brown body disappearing against the darkness of the shadowed wood.

‘What’s that?’ asked Faragaer, seeing the last fluttering of the wings above him. ‘Naught but a moth, sir,’ said Haladan, shrugging his thin shoulders in a dismissive gesture. ‘And not long for this voyage if the gulls spy him.’

Faragaer nodded at the comment as he rolled out the chart for the southern sections of the coast and drew his First Mate’s attention to their stops for this trip.