The Dread Pirate Molly Hawke Ch. 02

Bess had been so startled that she'd forgotten to concentrate on the shielding wall of force which surrounded her and she'd stepped forward. At that instant, Pok lept at Bess, falling to her knees weeping and begging in words which Bess had no knowledge of. It wasn't until sometime after Pok had figured out how to make herself understood that she was able to tell Bess that she'd been facing a cavern full of large and ugly males of some sort in a place that she'd blundered into in naivete and found that her only way out had been blocked.

Pok lay next to her now, able to read a little of what passed through Bess' mind.

"You save me that day," she said, "You pull me to you. Pok must come, not know where and I so afraid. I see you, Bess, and I know you can send me back, so I cry then." She put her arm over Bess and slid her body onto her after it, "I know that I want to stay. Not know if you keep me. Not want go back."

It was true, Bess thought. She hadn't understood any of Pok's frantic blubbering at the time, but as soon as they could understand each other, Bess had promised Pok that she wouldn't ever send her back because they needed each other. So they remained together, two unlikely individuals, bound together by their friendship. Whenever Bess said that it was time to move on, Pok only nodded and off they went, wherever their fortunes took them.

"This is a nice place we have," she said to Pok quietly, "Why did we come here? Do you remember?"

"You say we had to go,"Pok replied, "Farmers angry, you say. Hunt Pok soon."

"Ah yes, "Bess smiled, "that's right."

"What right?" Pok asked, "Pok like it where we were."

Bess shook her head, "We had to leave, Pok. You were killing too many sheep and calves. They thought it was wolves at first and started to hunt them until you dropped out of the sky one day at high noon and killed a cow right in front of the farmer who owned her.

Then again," Bess sighed, "it might have been a bit much, the way that you were eating the cow right there and everything."

"Had to," the demon protested, "Bess say to stop dragging dead things home."

"You're probably right," Bess groaned as Pok settled against her and covered her with her wings so that Bess could pull the covers over them. "But I'm glad that I'm here with you and I'm happy that I seem to be remembering."

"Pok happy too," the demon whispered as she laid her head on Bess' shoulder and closed her eyes.

Feeling the wind in her face as she stood looking out over the low mountains the next day, Bess decided that where it came from must be West and so they began walking to the coast to where she was now. Pok never complained whenever Bess told her that they had go travel on. It was what she'd been summoned for and so they just went. Bess didn't know the place had ever had a name, but they'd been living in Earl's Cove ever since.

Her 'awakening' seemed to force her to take stock of her existence and in doing that, Bess had discovered that she still had a body of her own of sorts and it had been "coming back to her" ever since, though in a 'one step forward and two steps back' sort of way.

Until now, Bess had never wanted much of any sort of contact with another human being. Meeting Brian had been a startling discovery, but as she walked and wandered, she hadn't wanted much of anything to do with people. She was no longer one of them, she reasoned and like it or not ...

Aside from faithful Pok, who was a blessing to her, Bess was alone anywhere that she went.

-----------------------

Not Alone

----------------------

Her introspection was cut short by a sound far off in the deserted boatyard and she drifted quickly back to the large building where she'd spent the better part of the last long while, though she did hang near to the open door to try for a look at the source. To her surprise, she watched as a single human figure drew slowly nearer guiding a horse by the bridle.

As she watched him approach, her eyes widened as she saw the last of the washing that she'd left out earlier in the day and had forgotten about. Bess pointed, thanking her luck that she'd only put out the two sheets at the end. Pok worked quickly, snatching her laundry off the line silently and dashing away. Slipping inside, she closed the door in the darkness behind them and made silently for the little room where they tended to prefer to be.

Clayton Tanner was walking along a wandering sort of path that took him to what might be described as an aisleway between buildings. He knew roughly where he needed to be but he wondered a little after a moment. He hadn't been paying attention in much of any way, other than to make sure that he didn't land on his nose from tripping over something, but he now looked from left to right a little carefully and then off to his left at something which was not there.

It was nothing more than a detail which he thought that he might have seen and not noticed at first, but now he was looking for it. He could have sworn that he saw ... at least one bed sheet hanging on a makeshift clothesline?

He stared for a long minute and saw no sheet or anything in the darkening gloom so he walked on. If it had been daylight, he likely would have seen the clothesline, at least and the thin figure who'd rushed to retrieve the sheets at best. But he saw nothing and so he wandered on.

When he found the building that he sought he was a little more confused, since he found the door to be unlocked, but he stepped inside anyway and set the lamp onto an ages-old oak desk so that he could see what his self-admitted foolishness had bought him.

Not that he'd been looking for more than a boat when he'd come the first time, but he still couldn't believe what he'd found, though he told himself that a look in the daytime would be infinitely better.

Clayton knew boats and ships and quite by accident, he'd found something which he could work on as a labor of love. He didn't know how it could be possible, but after staring for an hour, he'd found an old journal which told all of the tale -- or the most important parts of it at any rate.

Hundreds of years ago, before the great troubles of which he knew little, there had been a war which raged over most of the globe. Along with the battleships and cruisers, besides the corvettes and the destroyers, submarines, and the aircraft carriers, several of the navies of the world had wanted -- or thought that they did -- somewhat smaller combat craft, the better to kill each other off with. These craft had to be inexpensive to build, they had to be quick and they had to be able to rush in, toss a torpedo or maybe two and dash away again before they were noticed and shot to pieces.

The British answer to that requirement was the Motor Torpedo Boat. The American design was the PT boat, both of which carved out some adventures for themselves in the daring exploits of their crews.

The German reply was what the English called the 'E-Boat'; 'E' for 'enemy', but to the Kriegsmarine, it was the 'S-boot' or Schnellboot, meaning simply, 'fast boat'.

Since it was intended to be used in the North Sea and the English Channel, it had to be capable of rough sea operation and it had to have a good range, as well as being fast. A very few outlasted the war and one at least found a home among fans in a yard where once its enemies sent their own ships to fight it.

Somehow, somewhere, there was apparently one man rich enough to want one of these for his own. Not being able to purchase one of the survivors, he had one built -- a more or less faithful replica, though he had the hull made of aluminum rather than wood. At that point, the tale became a bit foggy after the boat was finished and launched. What happened after, Clayton had no idea about, but somehow it came to this backwater halfway up the British Columbian coast for a re-fit.

That was when the world changed -- while this craft was on the slips of this small drydock. Clayton looked from one end of it to the other, still not quite believing what lay before his eyes. What was left intact now was this little ship; not quite a hundred feet long and this building. It had taken his breath away when he'd first seen it.

After a while, he'd gone for a little walk and found the storage tanks of diesel oil, untouched after all of this time, and probably only because nobody knew what the foul-smelling stuff was good for. Clayton had spent a whole day and the more that he'd looked, the more sure that he was that this would work. He made his way back to the old man and asked about it all.

The old man knew nothing about anything even remotely nautical. He only owned the yard where nobody ever went. He looked at Clayton and said that he wanted a hundred and ten gold for it all -- the yard, the buildings, the sheds, and whatever was there. In the end and after a bit of careful haggling, Clayton Tanner walked away one hundred and six gold lighter, wondering just how big a fool he was, since there was only him to do any work which might be needed. But as with many people who hear what they interpret as the call of the sea, what he'd really bought was a dream.

Now here he was, all alone in the middle of the junk that he'd bought with night already here. He got his sleeping bag out and prepared to sleep on two of the old desks.

An hour after she'd been standing outside of the curtain to her 'room' listening to him snore softly, Bess crept out and walked over to where the man slept.

She looked at him and she wondered what all of this had been about and what it meant. She'd seen it when he'd come here a few days ago and watched as he'd poked around in all of the old junk in the building, but she'd thought that he was looking for something specific and that if he found it -- whatever it was that he'd sought, then he'd take it and go. It had happened before, though not often.

There had also been a few times when a few men had come who were more interested in drinking and once they'd felt the flush of the liquor, they'd begun to destroy things. She'd acted then, since this place might not be much, but it was where she and Pok existed and since she liked it here, she considered it their home. The things that she'd shown them then ... giving them reasons to run for their lives and never come back.

There were even two of them still here, rotting quietly under the wreck of the shack that Pok had flattened on them. She asked herself how long it had been since and she had no answer to it. She only knew that it had been maybe a decade or two.

Bess crept a little closer after a time, not wanting to know, but not being able to help herself at the same time. He was perhaps thirty years old, from what she saw and seeking a little deeper in him, she gleaned that he was a month or so shy of that mark. She saw a man who looked to be unafraid of work and she allowed herself only a few moments more to observe him before she went back to lie down in her room, feeling things inside of herself that she hadn't felt in so long.

Mostly, what she felt only upset her a little. They didn't look too much alike, but in him, Bess saw a stranger who had only really been in love once in his life and finding nothing there but pain, he'd moved on, trying his best to tell himself that he wanted no part of that foolishness ever again. Bess knew exactly how he felt.

At least she thought that she could relate.

----------------------------

Bess grew more than a little perturbed over the course of the next few days. She'd been here alone with Pok for the longest time, having the run of the place, but now this newcomer was poking all over as though he owned it or something. It was unsettling to her.

What was perhaps worse, she told herself often, was that she couldn't help but want to be near him a little, since without even knowing that she was there, he was intriguing to her as she watched him.

She tried to force herself to leave him for a while, but there was really nothing for her to do here, other than exist quietly and so she kept returning. Sometimes, she stood nearby in a puffy dress, an old favorite memory of hers. Sometimes she was there as she'd been when she commanded a crew as a privateer -- and sometimes, when she wasn't feeling too cold, she just perched herself somewhere with nothing on at all.

The trouble to Clayton was that since she'd been here alone for so long, she'd forgotten to really pay attention to her appearance. She had a tendency to drift a little, her body becoming either a little more or a little less solid now and then. She wasn't aware of it, but there were times when she was at least a little visible to him.

Clayton was a man who could deal with the real -- the here and now and like that. He neither believed nor ascribed to the tales of ghosts that he'd been told about this place when he'd first heard about it. He was looking for a boat and he knew where he wanted to go. All of this was just the machinations which were required to get him there.

The first time that he thought that he saw someone; it had startled him a little. But after blinking once, whoever he thought that he'd seen wasn't there. It happened every so often, and he thought little of it, other than feel a little twinge of fear in his breast.

Clayton was perhaps only really afraid of one thing -- that he'd develop the malady of the mind which had taken his father when he was a boy. It had been years by now and his father was dead, thankfully, but the last few times that he'd gone to see the man, all that there was to see was a bound and quivering form hunkered down in fear of his delusions and on his knees in a corner of a padded cell. He knew that whatever the strangely-named sickness was which had taken his father from him; it had begun something like this. He worked all the harder, hoping that he wasn't about to lose his mind now.

Washing was an issue out here and Clayton always hauled some water for the purpose, placing the buckets near to the old wood stove that he kept lit. Where he was here, the winters were seldom cold, but the climate was wet and damp.

He didn't know it, but Bess and Pok could have kissed him for it.

--------------------------------

A Little Stolen Love

--------------------------------------

Bess could have done far more than kiss him as she sat watching him wash both nights afterward. She noticed that he never used all of the buckets, either.

Once he was asleep each night, the first thing that she did was steal over and very slowly wash herself, trying not to splash or slop any water around. When she was done, she saw that what she'd dripped was not more than he might expect to find there from his own washing. She was quiet about it and it was a bit of work being so careful, but she was able to take the bucket outside, pour it away slowly and bring back a three-quarter full one, placing it near the stove.

She was glad that she'd done it the next day, since that was the water that he shaved with.

After working all day at something, he'd eat something which he'd prepare for himself and then check that he'd locked the doors and he'd crawl into his sleeping bag then. He kept it unzipped as more of a blanket and she'd noticed that.

That would be the start of Bess' trials -- knowing that there was a man right there naked and she probably wasn't anything which would be of use to him or the other way around. It had made her want to cry again.

But after getting hold of herself, Bess began to wonder about things and she'd crept forward very slowly. Knowing without a doubt that he was deeply asleep, she'd lifted the edge of the sleeping bag very slowly and he'd rolled onto his back.

Bess gazed at his body, suddenly knowing that this was going to get far, far worse for her because she already knew that she wanted him. Almost before she knew it, she leaned down and kissed the thing that she suddenly found that she ached to touch.

Her kiss lasted far longer than she'd have ever had the thought of.

A minute later, and Bess was pressing her face against it very softly, pleased to suddenly find that she was fairly solid. She inhaled his scent, happy that she was able to and she kissed it again.

When she drew back to admire it, she noticed that it was hardening. Bess knew enough about the way that things were to know that most all men have many erections every night as they sleep. While she smiled a little, she saw that it was hardening fully and it made her ache again. Rather than just curse her rotten luck as she'd been doing for who knew how long, Bess carefully took him in her hand as gently as she could and she leaned down again as she opened her mouth and used her lips and tongue to very carefully and gently ease his foreskin back.

Her first taste of him almost drove her to her knees and she had to fight to remain still and gentle for him. She sucked very gently and she was rewarded after a time, though she was more than a little distracted, having to keep at least some of her awareness on his state of consciousness and stay ready to disappear if he even twitched his eyelids. When he came, it was without fanfare on his part. He made no sound, he just gushed a ton into her mouth and she kept her motions gentle, refusing the urge to suck even one bit harder in order to get more, if that were possible.

She stood back up and looked at him, a little worried for a moment that there had been a few drops which she'd missed, but she knew that a lot of men also came in their dreams, so she didn't think that he'd particularly notice anything.

"I don' know who you are," she whispered so softly that even she had trouble hearing herself, "but I thank you and I 'ope that you don' consider what I have done here as thieving from you at all. If it mean anyt'ing to you sir, I want you to know that you're very fine to this girl. You sleep well now."

She began to cover him slowly, only a little quicker than she'd pulled the covers back. She was almost inside her little room to lie on her bunk there when he woke up a little and wondered why it was that he felt a little wet. He didn't really think about it until the following day when it crossed his mind. His skin had been a little wet and he knew that he'd ejaculated; only there were a couple of things which were wrong with that.

He never had 'wet dreams'. He'd never had one in his life before -- or at least, before now.

The thought was based on his knowledge of himself, just as the one which followed was; He always came a lot. Never just a few drops -- a ... lot. It was a mystery to him how there could be so little, if he'd let this go in his sleep.

Most curious of all to him was the way that the tip of him was dried and sore from being exposed.

Clayton had always been one of those males with a slightly tight foreskin. Retracting it was never an issue, but afterwards, putting in back was always something that he did himself. It never did that automatically.

It also never retracted by itself while he slept.

So he had a conundrum for which he had no explanation, wondering if masturbation could be an act which could be done as one slept and if so, then was that what this was? Thirty years old and this was beginning now?

The next night, it was the same thing, pretty much. Bess found that she couldn't keep the hope of having a chance to do it again out of her mind. This time, she was just as careful and gentle, finding that she had some feeling for him somehow. Sure, he was asleep and she supposed that she was using him in a way.

She thought about that for a moment and then her clothes disappeared so that she could at least touch herself as she did this. She still had no answer to her wondering thought about whether she was stealing from him. All that she knew was that she could get him to come again and this time, she was feeling even more thankful to him for all of this. The thought that she could take the seed of a living man -- even like this - pleased her a great deal, because to her, it made her feel just a little like a living woman again, rather than just some lost thing.