Flashback It has a song -- It has a sting --

[Philomena]

17th of Winter, 492 AV
Early Afternoon
Archives of the Sailor's Guildhall, Zeltiva
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The Archives at the Sailor's Guild are a miserable place. It would be inaccurate to say they are not well-kept: on the contrary, they are marvelously, scrupulously, one might say, fussily preserved. But usually, they are kept more or less as eternal boxes of papers than as a living, interactive entity. Human beings do not, very often, interact with the archives.

In the first days of Minnie's attempts to mine data from the archives, she would take the box she was looking through, bring it out into the archivist's office, and flip through and notate there, for in the archives themselves there were no chairs or tables. But the archives were not, precisely, a small place either, and she continuously found herself having to run back and forth, to cross reference, to double-check, to retrieve, to replace. It only took a few days for her to realize this wouldn't do. Since that time, she'd taken to wearing a dress with a wide skirt and warm woolens underneath, so she could plop down on the stone floors with a board on her knee, and take her notes right in the halls of the archive.

It was tedious work, and she loved it.

Sometimes she found herself merely taking the barest of skeleton notes. Sometimes she had to transcribe whole pages. At the end of the day, she would go to her rooms, pull her curtains and strip to the waist, to let the warm sun soak her aching back.

It was in the halls of the archives, then, that she sat on a fourth-day, when she was supposed to have the day off. The archival office closed on fourth days, but for a skeleton crew of guards. They knew her by now, and while the bluff-faced guards thought little of the tiny, sallow-faced girl with the sloppy braids, they respected that someone had ok'd her for work in the archives, and let her through with a minimum of hassle. She gnawed at a wedge of the last of winter's cheese, for it was on toward lunch - she lost track of time, generally, but her stomach seldom did. And her eyes scanned an ancient ship's registry carrying goods from the Sunberth run.

"Gold and silver..." she muttered to herself, "But it can't be that much of it! And she was too smart to have sailed without more ballast than that... stone? Wouldn't that shift too much?"

"In general, yes, but cut stone can act as admirable ballast. Though, of course, that's only in an emergency, or if the stone has some intrinsic value. Its a damned nuisance to cut, not to mention the loading and unloading has as much potential to damage the ship as to steady it."

The voice... she recognized it, but only from a distance. Strong, with the slight croak of long shouting in the salt-sea-wind. She turned, staring up. There above her stood the straight back and worn smirk of Captain Charm Wright.

"Captain... Wright... I... Hello," her hands, white with the chilly archives and with terror, clutched at her neckline, at the hard knot of the tarnished penny inside.

"Ms Lefting. How funny, that name next to mine. Right and Left. Ing, that is. One would think we were destined to meet," her eyes sparkled playfully.

"I... I... didn't think... am I... in trouble? I didn't think my work would be of interest to..."

"Well, I am the Senior Member of the Administrative Council, you know. The archives are my purview. And then, I am also the eldest living member of a family which I am told you have taken a very peculiar interest in. This interests me as well."

"I only... I'm working on..."

She smiled, with an authoritative kindness, "Oh, yes, I've heard all about your work. Your friend, Ms Watchtower, told me all about her sponsoring it: you know, I'm sure, how fond she is of feeling important. Oh, now! Don't be offended! I love Hannah just as much as you, but love shouldn't make one unable to chuckle at one's friends."

"No, no, its... I was only surprised, at teh word 'friend.'"

"At friend?"

"Its... I am only her student, that's all. Not really her friend."

The captain laughed, "Well, Ms. Lefting, at some point you may need to learn how to identify friends. But I am only here to make sure you have what you need to be comfortable. You must forgive us, we're only sailors, we are not used to all this dust-digging work."

"Oh, no, it's fine..."

She laughed, "Fine? You're sitting on the floor."

Minnie looked up, and stammered, "Are you... I met you once."

The woman smirked again, "I had heard you could be abrupt. Have I, then? I will confess, I do not remember. You're an unusual looking woman, I would think that, perhaps, I would remember you."

"I was... I was only a girl, ma'am. I think you thought I was a beggar, at the time. I guess I was, more or less. You... you gave me..." she reached inside her bodice, her hand plunged into her bust, fumbling around.

Captain Wright laughed, and blushed slightly at this, "Oh dear, perhaps I should have remembered, if its all that intimate!"

"No, No!" she blushed hard, "No, I mean..." she worked the copper coin out of its hidden pocket, "This."

Captain Wright took the penny and looked at it bemused, "A penny? Well, you're welcome to it, Ms Lefting. I will trade it for a crown even, if you like. I've been blessed enough to afford that much."

"No, no! No, I've... you will laugh at me if I explain..."

"And, would it offend you if I did?"

"I... I think sometimes, things that are dear to you, they seem stupid when you say them out loud, ma'am."

Captain Wright looked more serious, "I promise, then. I will not laugh. Not even in my heart."

"Well... I've kept it, that is, its my oldest belonging, one of my oldest memories, I think my oldest positive one. This... I used to dream this penny, its burned into every part of my mind from bottom to top. I do not... have a family, Ms Wright. I do not need one anymore. But I wanted, when I was little, I think, to love a family, and I loved yours. Not... not ... I mean I didn't know you, I DON'T know you. I ... only mean, that... when you are young, you want a story. You want a legacy. I think this penny was my legacy."

Captain Wright frowned, hard, stared at the woman, then turned away, silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter when she spoke next, "Ms Lefting, if I tell you a story, will you leave it out of your history?"

"Captain, I... I can't let a story... its my ethics..."

She turned, her face was old, now, much older than it appeared, a certain wistfulness deepening the sailor's squint-wrinkles about her eyes, the hard leathery lines of her cheeks. She did not smile, but her eyes were soft, "Spoken like a true daughter of Qalaya. You remind me of the way Kena talked about Bethany Edgetower. Very well. Can you leave it out, at least, until after my death?"

"I... I promise, ma'am," she tried to suppress the excitement of her voice, feeling the sobriety she knew was appropriate, but unable to fully dampen the fierce glow of the discoverer.

"When Kena came home, of course, I was thrilled. But do you know, I was angry, too, for a long time. You have never been well known? Perhaps you would like it. I hated it. I still hate it, to be honest. I wanted to do praiseworthy things, but I did not want to be praised. I simply wanted to know I'd done praiseworthy things. When Kena came home... it was the worst of both. The world wanted to praise me, for the simple fact that I was Kena's sister, and there's nothing praiseworthy in that. They still do, really. Oh you can disagree, I know. I have a career on my own merits now. But ask yourself - why were you so honored to have that penny? Because I made the record time for running the Nyka trade route? Or because I was the sister of Kena Wright? There's no need to be embarrassed, I know. That's been... my life. I have come to understand that role, now. But in those early days, getting swept up in parties and politics, when I was just a girl who wanted to go out sailing... Gods above, I hated her!"

"I... I'm sorry. I didn't know..."

She laughs, it is a cursory laugh, devoid of mirth, but not cold, "Oh, don't be. It is not so uncommon. I imagine everyone hates a sister once in a while, if they have one. Seven months after she came home, when she was trying to write the Circumnavigation, and our house had become little more than beds, an office, and a reception hall. We were practically a public building. And, with her writing, that meant I played social secretary half the time.

So, I answered a knock one day, and at the door was this horrible man. He was a widower of one of the white fever sailors - I won't say which, and I'd thank you not to try to figure it out, please - from the voyage, and he'd been coming by, honestly, to try to weasel us out of money. He was a sop, to be frank, and he'd been given a settlement, though we owed him none, and he'd drunk it away.

And oh, holy fountain, I did NOT want to talk to him. And I was sick of playing the underling, sick of being the attachment, the sister of the Famous Kena Wright. So, I stormed upstairs, and I slammed open the door to the office without even knocking."

Minnie shifted uncomfortably.

"When the door flew open," she turned away again, "When it opened, Kena was bent over the desk, sobbing. She'd been... crying likely all morning. She looked horrible. And in that moment I saw what I'd willed myself not to see for seven months, I saw that Kena was suffering. She was exhausted, miserable, and more than anything else, she was tremendously, tremendously lonely. I apologized, oh how I apologized, and I started to cry to. And Kena drew up to her height, and came over and wrapped an arm around me, and she apologized - she said she'd been writing about Doctor Edgetower. She apologized to me.

There are, Ms LEfting, very few days I am truly ashamed of in my life, and that is one.

And then do you know what she did? She went downstairs and sat with that worthless old sop for 30 minutes, listening to him whine about his wife, gave him some money, and sent him on his way.

You see, Miss Lefting, perhaps... I can understand your feeling a bit, that sort of loneliness. I've felt that same feeling, many times, since I saw it on Kena's face - oh not with that same intensity, for I didn't have the same life, but that same feeling, the exhaustion, and more than that, the loneliness. And in the end, its a rotten deal, as far as I'm concerned. One's life is in one's work, not one's praise. I would thank you, then, Ms Lefting, for showing me, for a moment, that the fame, itself, is a work, perhaps even a good work. Perhaps some good comes of my place in the world."

Minnie stared at the floor. Her stylus rested in her hand, her tablet blank - she hadn't written a word of the story, "Ms Wright, I... I don't know what to say."

She smiled turning back, "You needn't say anything. Ms Lefting, if you need anything more here in the archives, let me know. And if you need anything I can tell you..."

Minnie stumbled out her words, "Your papers, and your sister's... are they, are they preserved?"

She chuckled, quirked her brow, "Are you seeking a job?"

"No! No, no... I... want to make sure. Your words, they... should be kept. They should be remembered. Written words... they are... they are the memory of the world."

"Very well. Perhaps, some time, you can help me with that. Whenever the inimitable Ms Watchtower is done with you."

"Yes ma'am."

"And for the gods' sake, girl, get a stool! My back hurts just looking at you."

Minnie smiled, quietly, and slipped her penny back into her bodice.

[Arcane]

Rewards and Treasure! Experience Points +3 Organization +1 Writing +1 Copying Lores Charm Wright, Hero-Captain of Zeltiva Charm Wright's Intimate and Dark Secret: One that May Only be Written After Her Death Charm Wright's Biography Offer The Legacy of Charm Wright's Coin Shipping Records of an Ancient Ship A Special Connection with Charm Wright The Perils of Fame Comments Yet another work of art. The NPC interaction here is excellent, I really enjoyed it. And the story, you added more of the human factor to Charm Wright by doing little things like this. I'll be sure to signal this to the higher-ups to make the events within official canon. Also, I'll see what I can do about your request. I can think of no better person to help develop Charm Wright's story than you. C'est merveilleux, Mlle Phil, vraiment merveilleux.