<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/2/24/Token_1.png)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Penny (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=300519.msg14693656#msg14693656)<br/><strong>Location:</strong>On the quay / Aboard<em>Esperanza</em><br/><strong>Time &amp; Date</strong>: Day 1 | Morning<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Open<br/><strong>Content:</strong>Larking About | Ratting<br/><hr/>"What is it again?" she asked, eyeing the dried bit of - well it looked like some sort of wrinkled, almost transparent skin only thinner and clearer.  If you turned your head just so it looked like the ghostly imprint of an infant's face.  The man who held it carefully on a moth eaten scrap of once blue velvet now gone the color of moldy cheese answered her.<br/><br/>"It's a caul, innit?  Very, very rare.  The best of luck too.  Nary a sailor will drown wot ship's got one of these on board."  He watched his prey, the ever credulous Penny, and thought he'd soon have all the contents of her purse for the bit of tea stained isinglass he'd molded over a doll's face then peeled off, presenting it as the real thing.<br/><br/>"A...caul?" Penny said, entirely entranced and completely sold on the magic of the talisman the man was offering her.<br/><br/>"A caul," he corrected her pronunciation.  "It's the bit of the birthing sac of the mother, see?  Only instead of being torn and tossed out by the midwife this bit was blessed by-" his lies failed him for a moment, unsure which of the many in his head to tell.<br/><br/>Eyes that changed from green to brown in the blink of them went wide at the word blessed.  Penny's mouth fell open, hanging on the man's every word and her eyes searched his.  "Blessed by...by angels?" she guessed.<br/><br/>"That's the thing," he seized the young girl's imagination and rode it to finish the deal.  "Blessed by the angels themselves and laid on the baby's face as it lay in the womb, swimming in the mother's brine, right?  And when it came out," he mimed squatting and catching a baby as if it had been squirted from between it's mother's legs, "it handed the caul off to us to bless and protect sailors.  Very rare," he repeated.  "Very expensive but you seem a nice lass.  Hate to see you in harm's way."  More like hate to see her purse walk off.  It seemed to be quite full.  "Let's say half of what you've in that purse and it can be yours."<br/><br/>"Golly!  That's a lot," Penny said but they both knew she was going to buy it.  Her hand went to the leather bag at her waist and tugged it loose.  After opening it she began setting things out onto the top of the barrel they were using as a table.  A redbird's feather, a dried mermaid's purse that everyone else said was just a dogfish egg case but she knew it was real, a heart shaped sea bean and, after a moment's agony, the magic needle on the silk thread that had brought her to the<em>Esperanza</em>.  Penny spat in her hand and held it out to the man.<br/><br/><hr/><br/>Nursing a lump on the side of her head where the man had cuffed her, Penny lay on her belly on the gun deck, peering out one of the holes the cannon shot through.  She'd tried to explain that her treasures, all as genuine as the caul he'd been about to sell her, were worth more than coin but he'd gotten mad and gone at her what for.  Penny had barely been able to grab her treasures before running off.<br/><br/>She'd seen the regal figure of the Captain when she'd come aboard and had knuckled her forehead respectfully before going below.  The Captain was a great lady, pretty and dangerous like a barracuda.  Penny didn't dare look at her after that first glance and had been glad to get below.  Now - now she was doing a bit of ratting, promised a quarter of a penny for each one she brought in dead.  They liked to climb up the lines that held the ship to the dock and the bigger and more agile ones made it past the round wooden discs on the lines that were intended to confound them.<br/><br/>In her right hand she held a belaying pin, the rock maple heavy and dense and a little splattered with blood and brains.  At her left side two big rats lay dead, the fleas abandoning ship and itching onto the girl's own skin instead.  From time to time she scratched at them but mostly she lay still and quiet save for her eyes.  One of the lines ran near the gun port she was looking out, near enough to offer an inviting crawl over a bit of curved hull and then right inside to go exploring and eating and making rat babies.  Too bad it was the portal to rat Hell as the two dead ones beside her had found out.<br/><br/>Tiny nails clicked across wood and the girl tensed, hand tight around the belaying pin.  She needed to wait until it got in the gun port proper before bashing it else it'd fall into the water twixt ship 'n quay and be a fortune lost to her.  Just two more and she'd have as much money as her name!