Completed Shared Shores

[Maro]

Shared Shores 73rd of Autumn, 514 AV Everyday possible, Maro was getting up as early as he could and making his way out to the first hole near the Archway. The fishing had been excellent thus far, and he was pleased with the money he was making. He was hoping to save enough money to get Autumn a gift for the Arriving Night. When he arrived though, there was already someone else there, but they didn’t have their line in the water. Not wanting to be rude by beginning to fish in someone else’s hole, he waved at the person. Maybe he would receive permission from them, maybe not. The person looked up from whatever they were looking at in their hands and motioned him over. Maro wandered across the Archway and upstream until he was standing next to the person. The person looked up from the object in their hands, a right bird’s nest of a tangle of their line around their reel. “Hey, Maro.” The person knew his name, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember theirs. He recognized the face, with its narrow sunken cheeks and knew he had met this person before. He’d have to get better at remembering people’s names. “Good morning,” he replied. The person held up their reel and shrugged at the mess. “Not so good of a morning.” Pointing at a bucket, he added. “I’ve caught a few though, so at least the morning’s not a complete waste. You should get started on fishing before too many others show up.” Maro left the other fisherman to his tangled line and filled his bucket with water. Taking his rod, he baited it and cast it out into the gentle almost motionless water. After several long minutes of waiting and no strikes, he reeled his line back in and cast it farther upstream, watching the glass bobber drift slowly downstream to prove that a current still did exist on this portion of the river. He was about to settle down to wait when a fish struck the line. Leaping up, he followed the fish upstream and down, slowly working the creature in toward the shore. When it was close enough, he reeled in quickly and pulled the fish on to shore. It flopped about madly, trying to escape the hook holding it, and its mouth flashed open and closed for the want of water to breath. Maro knew that not being able to breathe was an agony he would want no creature or person to feel. Taking his bolas, he held it like a club and brought the heavy weights down on the fish’s head. The flopping stopped, and Maro put the fish in his bucket. After his line was baited once more, the next few casts were uneventful, and the gentle cursing behind him didn’t help him concentrate on his fishing at all, not that fishing required much concentration at all. It was more a game of patience, though knowing the right bait or lure to use would help immensely. Maro wasn’t nearly that knowledgeable about fish and their tendencies yet, but he was convinced he would with time. There were already several different types of fishing he wanted to test himself out on, two of those being coastal fishing in a row boat and lure fishing back on land. Finally, he got another strike, and the fish on the other end of the line battled furiously against him. This was the hardest he had ever felt a fish fight aside from the monster of a specimen he had lost in a hole much farther upstream. He played this fish with caution, never leaving too much slack in his line but allowing the fish to take the line out whenever it pulled too hard against him. Throughout the long battle, the fish never broke the surface of the water, just thrashed beneath it, and Maro waited in primal anticipation to see how big this fish would prove to be. Slowly, the fish’s fight left it, and as Maro drew it in to shore, he couldn’t help but laugh when he saw how small it was. It couldn’t have been more than eight inches; its spirit in the fight it had put up had made it seem like a fish three times its size. Bringing it up on to the shore, he killed it with a swift blow from his bolas and placed it in his bucket.

[Maro]

Shared Shores The fishing picked up after that. Maro was sure it was a miracle, because the amount of commotion his last catch had created had to have alerted the other fish that something was amiss. Thank Laviku fish were as dumb as they looked. Before the hour was out, Maro had landed several good-sized fish and quite a few smaller ones. A few more fishermen had arrived in that time and joined the fishing. He would have kept going, but the gentle curses behind him escalated to a sudden, indignant, “I give up.” He turned to see the fisherman from before throwing his pole on the ground. Maro reeled his line in and returned to his troubled peer’s side. Not wanting to appear to be giving the other man charity, Maro knelt next to the pole with the tangled line. “Mind if I take a look at it?” The other fisherman shrugged. “Suit yourself.” Holding out his pole to the other fisherman, Maro gestured to the river. “You might as well take my rod and do some more fishing while I take a look at this.” While the other fisherman wandered a little farther downstream, Maro picked up the tangled mess and turned it over in his hands several times to see how bad the knot really was. It was worse than he had imagined. He couldn’t fathom how someone could get their line in a tangle this bad while it was still on the reel, but this man had managed. As bad as it was, it excited Maro. Knots were puzzles, and if there was anything that could grab his curiosity, it was puzzles. He began his task by testing the knot, pulling a loop here, threading another back through there. After nearly an hour of this, he felt as confused as before. Misfortune tied better knots than the most skilled Svefran sailor. Rather than give up though, Maro started to try to undo the tangle. Beginning at the free end, he removed the hook and threaded the line through the intertwined bird’s nest of fishing line. Slowly, he worked at the knot this way, sometimes backtracking as he skipped a spot or pulled the wrong line in the confusion that was this knot. He stopped to eat the small bit of food he had brought with him from the market on the way. Several hours had gone by, and now the shores were teeming with fisherman. Many of them were waiting for space to clear up as they did not want to impolitely crowd their neighbors. There were ten fisherman with their lines in the water over the short span of the three consecutive holes, one of them being Maro’s fishing partner from earlier. One of them, straight across the stream, was a father teaching his daughter his craft. With the infinite patience of a parent, he was instructing her on how to properly cast. Demonstrating several times, he handed the rod over to his daughter and let her try. Drawing the rod back over her shoulder, she flung it forward with all her force, sending it sailing across the river and over Maro’s head. He ducked as the hook sailed over his head and landed behind him. The father lifted his hand in apology, but the daughter was already reeling her line in to see what she could catch. What she caught was Maro’s arm, and he flinched as the hook dug through his skin. Immediately, the father stopped his daughter from reeling and looked to Maro in horror, but Maro reassured the man with a gentle wave of his unhooked arm. Grasping the hook tightly by the eye, he strung it back through his skin, no easy task with the gnarly barb that was sticking off of it. Finally, it ripped through his skin, and threading another worm on to the hook for the girl, he tossed it back in and waved at her. She beamed a smile and returned the gesture a thousand times more jubilantly, as only a child could do. Maro’s smile broadened. She’d make a good fisherwoman. Maro ignored the slowly oozing wound on his arm and returned to his task. It took him another two hours before the line was completely untangled. He’d found his fellow fisherman’s problem toward the end. The line had not been wound tightly enough around the reel, allowing the line to slip beneath the layers that should have been at the bottom. It was a rookie mistake, and Maro was glad he had had good teachers to instruct him in proper preparation of one’s fishing pole and reel. Keeping the line tight, Maro reeled the line in until only a small length was left. He anchored the line to the handle using the hook he had tied back in. He proudly looked over his accomplishment just as the other fisherman was returning with his pole.

[Maro]

Shared Shores “The morning wasn’t a complete waste,” the man informed Maro. “I caught a couple more.” Maro nodded appreciatively at his fellow fisherman’s catch. One of them was decent-sized while the other was pretty small. The two men exchanged fishing poles, and Maro instructed the man on his mistake and how he could keep it from happening again. The man’s catch wasn’t much, and Maro knew he wouldn’t get paid well for it today. The man was about to leave when Maro stopped him. “Hey, why don’t you take some of my fish with you? It’s the least I can do to show my appreciation for allowing me to share the river.” The man shrugged and accepted Maro’s offer. He sifted through Maro’s fish and took enough to equal out the number they had caught for the day. Maro didn’t object when the man took the largest fish. The two thanked each other and parted ways. Maro’s path back to town took him past the father and daughter, and as he walked by, the daughter ran over to him with a fish in her hands. “Look what I caught with the worm you gave me.” She was ecstatic with her accomplishment and beamed a smile brighter than the one she had given him earlier. Maro’s eyes widened, mostly in an attempt to compliment the girl, but the catch was pretty impressive. “You caught that all by yourself?” She nodded. “It’s my first one ever.” “That’s amazing.” She beamed even more, so much so that Maro thought she might burst. “Are you going to eat it?” She shook her head. “Nope.” “Why not?” “Because I want you to have it.” She pushed the fish into Maro’s hand. “Are you sure? It’s your first one ever. It’s good luck to eat your first fish.” Her smile disappeared, and she looked hesitant, now that she heard she might being missing out on the chance for good luck. Maro smiled at her. “It’s even better luck to share it.” Her smiled returned, and she ran back over to her father. Maro thanked her, took his catch to town, and sold it. While he was there, the market offered to buy the fish in his hand from him, but Maro refused. Instead, he bought a pan and some oil and headed home. If he could have kept the fish for forever, he would have, but he knew it would begin to rot within a day. Still, he was proud of this accomplishment, and he showed it to Autumn and explained where it had come from. She beamed in pride at his gentle heart. They talked as he took his knife, slit the fish down the middle of its belly, removed its intestines and organs, chopped off its head and tail, and cleaned it in the water. He drizzled a small amount of oil in the pan and warmed it over the fire. When it was ready, he gently lay the fish in, listening to oil sizzle as the smell of cooking fish filled the room. Together, the two ate, Maro feasting on his fish and Autumn eating the Soulmist he had prepared for her that morning.

[Matthew]

Maro

Experience Points:

• +1 Cooking
• +1 Diplomacy
• +3 Fishing
• +2 Observation
• +2 Socialization

Lores:

• Cooking: Simple Fish Fry
• Diplomacy: Simple Kindness
• Fishing: Untangling Complicated Knots
• Fishing: Playing the Line
• Socialization: Charming Small Children

If you have any questions or concerns relevant to your grade, don't be afraid to send me a private message so that we can work it all out! Please remember to mark your Grading Request as Graded.

A shout-out to Ollic Rimesage, who was kind enough to make this template for me.