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It was the first day in many that the sun was shining and the sea was calm. The Siren's Call rode the waves majestically, while her sails danced gracefully in the winds.
Hawke was in a good mood that morning. He hated being cooped up in the cabins, but he hated slogging around the deck in the rain even more. Now that the rain had finally let up, he was going to enjoy it as much as possible.
Seating himself comfortably on the quarterdeck, ensuring he's not in the way of the crew, Hawke unbundled his impressive collection of daggers and laid them down. Some of the blades badly needed attention and others, well, Hawke did actually enjoying playing with his daggers. Perhaps not as much as Varric did with Bianca, but it was a close second.
As he happily cleaned, buffed, polished and sharpened them one by one, a grizzled old deck hand shuffled up to him to inspect his collection. He nodded his approval.
"Nice, but you'd better not be leaving your bits and bobs around the deck," the deck hand said. "Cap'n ain't gonna like it."
"Isabela runs a tight ship, doesn't she?" Hawke asked with a smile.
The first mate, who was stood by the wheel, chuckled. "You don't know the half of it."
"Oh?" Hawke looked up at the man, intrigued.
The first mate turned to the deck hand and said, "Remember, Peg-Leg Smitty?"
The deck hand sniggered. "Oh, aye."
Turning back to Hawke, the first mate elaborated. "Always leaving his personal effects lying here and there. Now, see, he has a good eye, can see miles further than any o'us. So, Cap'n has him in the crow's nest all the time. But Smitty's walking peg leg makes it a mite difficult to climb the ratlines, so he has a special one for climbing. He has a few different ones for all sorts of things, actually. Never knew what half them legs were for.
"When he changes his legs, the numbnuts be leaving'em lying around on the deck. Cap'n keeps telling him to put them away, but Smitty's a lazy bugger.
"One day, we be flying fast and hard, trying t'catch up to someone or other, Cap'n trips on them legs and goes flying overboard."
At that, the three of them burst out laughing heartily. Hawke could scarcely imagine the graceful, stealthy Isabela stumbling off her own ship.
When they had stopped laughing, the deck hand continued. "Once we has fished the Cap'n out, she was ready to keelhaul Smitty. Luckily, she still needed his eyes, but she surely put the fear o'the Maker into him."
Hawke grinned. "So... what did she do with his legs?"
"Ah, nice boy like you, ain't want t'be knowing what she did," the deck hand gave him an evil grin and a cheeky wink. "Trust us, mate."
~FIN~