ONE.
One must destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
Chelsee pondered this. It was his loneliness that drew him to this teaching, for he normally would not gravitate towards the later pamphlets. He found them too caustic in nature. He supposed he should lean into those now, in his current circumstance. There was nothing better to do. He had ten minutes left of his dinnertime, and the fat in the pork had put him off of his stew. Around him, the crew tore into their food, and spoke lazily. It was the only meal they spoke at all. Mostly their meal time seemed better conserved for eating. He'd seen it before that they were forced up before scarcely eating a bite. Because some line had snapped, or the sea's temperament had turned, or some secret information had to be dealt with that only he was not privy to.
A weaker part of him longed for those meals better, because it concealed the true feelings the crew had toward him. He sat among them, and yet entirely separate from their conversations. They talked of their day, mostly, or old voyages. Often they re-lived tales of drunken nights off, more often of whores whose warmth they missed. Nothing that Chelsee could contribute to, even if he had wanted to.
Thankfully, the interpretation of this text didn't come easily to him. The teachings of Iso encouraged man to dismantle his own belief, for the more comfortable he got in his own logics, the farther he strayed from his own Indo. He believed this, but as he watched sailors laugh and compare the sound of the wet cabbage in their broth to that of "good cunt," he wished sometimes Iso would follow through more swiftly with its promises. Then he rebuked himself for thinking it.
Still his own papers stayed blank except for the one excerpt. He weighed giving up on it for the eve.
"You can laugh, lest you think it will forfeit your Iso."
Chelsee looked up to see Akil staring back at him coolly.
"Though if it does, that would mean you aren't holding your end of the bargain."
Chelsee reached for his spoon listlessly. "I appreciate the camaraderie you all have aboard. For myself I try to hold more reverence for the women we encounter off-board."
"Right, right," Akil waved him off before he could finish. "You consults of Iso have a pamphlet where your prick should be. You've no taste for pleasure."
Chelsee studied the first mate. He was exceptionally muscular, browned like a native Edenian, probably pirating for his whole lifetime. He was purple with bruises, scabbed, rubbery from the sun; but he sat straight up like a horse, radiating health somehow. And in that respect he alone excelled. The ship looked to him with a respect Chelsee was bemused by, although for how high his revere was he wasn't overly friendly with anyone. This conversation was the first he'd struck with Chelsee.
"Iso doesn't rebuke pleasure," he said delicately, so as not to lose him. "I believe approached with discipline, pleasure is Iso's gift to man." "I believe it cautions us against succumbing to the Temptations of Flesh, but that that great adversity is what creates meaning."
Akil remained wordless. If not for his gaze, Chelsee would've thought he stopped listening altogether.
He touched his empty paper. "I devote my time to documenting this great balance in my own life, then I send it for the consults to read. Or anyone that wants to." He thought about adding that many people did want to, but guessed the opinion of the devout would not mean that much to Akil.
"So as you can see, my parchment is kept very far from my prick."
A faint smile pulled at Akil's lips. "A writer then. Not a consult."
Chelsee weighed explaining that this was a great honor. The consults were few, and fewer of them still were gifted the responsibility to document. Few of Iso's consults possessed the unique ability to so detach from their personal feeling that they could recount and assess where Iso breathed its influence in their life. Men were too far often blinded by their wants.
He pointed at the piece of bread floating in Akil's stew.
"Well. If, upon closer inspection, you noticed this bread had molded,"
Akil raised his eyebrows, and snatched up the bread. "Has it?"
"I- no. For the sake of the teaching..."
"Here we go."
Chelsee dropped it. The crew would often buck if he offered his opinion. He was now used to letting it go. It once hurt him to see such little curiosity among such a large gathering of men. Among the consults, which were much fewer, one could freely ponder. It was welcome to discuss anything, and challenge others' notions of the world. Here he went so unstimulated, the thoughts he could come up with now he was no longer sure were worth pondering.
"What then, consult? You've lost your nerve?"
He looked up again. Akil looked expectant, holding the unmolded bread in his hand.
A small flame danced in his stomach. "Well. You'd be upset if it molded."
"Of Iso, we do believe and accept." Akil's tone was icy with sarcasm, although it was not lost on Chelsee that he somehow knew the familiar close-chant to begin with. He made a note to ask about it later, but he kicked himself for his clumsy choice of wording.
"I believe that is your want casting a shadow on the way things are, on the reality of the bread," he said. "Perhaps the bread would be a portion too much of food, and send you to empty it all overboard, thus losing your dinner. Or perhaps you consume the mold, and it makes you sick, but tomorrow morning the swells rise so large they slash against your post on the upper deck and would've knocked you overboard had you been there. It is these musings, in my own life, that I ponder and assess."
He watched Akil turn it over in his mind.
"If I had been sick, someone would've been at my post to replace me. So the poor sap picking up my slack is the better man to die instead?"
"Yes," he said, and despite Akil's objections, "Through Iso, the bread is but one link in the chain. Perhaps it molded because it was meant to pass that your second mate would go Home, and below the waters is a fledgling whale weak from starvation, whose time has not yet come. Or perhaps, back on Eden, his wife has this month healed from her bruising, and has hoped something might deliver her from a husband of this temperament."
"Ansar is no beater!" Akil protested.
This objection caused a few of the ship's heads to turn in their direction. Chelsee spread his hands. "I merely say it to illustrate a point: all of our lives are but links in a chain, interconnected, and there to serve the greater will. It is not for us to deliberate on what has happened to us, for it simply is. We are introduced into each other's lives for a greater purpose, always. We must go in the direction of this, even when it feels most vulnerable for us."
When the door to the mess flung open, it slammed against the wall with such force it smashed two of the wooden planks. He recognized the older of the twin hunters: Illya. They both existed in this state of looking subhuman in a way that unnerved him. It was told in their pale skin, their purple eyes, their extreme height that he and his sibling hailed from the outskirts of Acacia. It was in part because of this culture that they composed themself so abrasive and uncaring to their surroundings. It was in part their complete estrangement from Iso.
But where was twin Jordana?
Chelsee thought this fledgling of irritation he felt at being interrupted, just as his point had been made to Akil, was what he should write of. Undoubtedly the twins were the
wisdom of the wise
aboard this ship. And here they were, as assured to enter at this moment, as the point of Iso was to land on Akil. Perhaps the scripture was a warning to the devout: that this culture of individuality could easily corrupt those that had even a passing wonder about the spirit of Iso. They held a certain charisma aboard due to their experience, and their utter success carrying out what was asked of them. But offboard, the twin hunters were nothing more than brutes. They barreled through their lives wanting and taking, and because of this, their wants cast shadows on the way things are.
Jordana bent down to enter into the mess hall, and with it he hauled a girl Chelsee had never seen before. He, along with the ship, watched her silently.
She looked as roughed up as the twins, her arms tied back by rope. She looked afraid, and she hung barely upright in Jordana's hands. A chill crept down Chelsee's spine watching her.
"So the captain is a cunt muncher after all," Milton said loudly, which erupted the table into laughter. Jordana smiled, his lizard eyes shining.
"That'll be the bounty, idiot," Akil said lightly. Chelsee could feel that Akil's stare had not moved from him. He avoided his eye, which was easy to do considering the state of the room.
"Listen good," Illya called out. "Is orders direct from Captain Wilona."
The girl squirmed, but she did not resist hard. Chelsee felt grief for her. The weight of Jordana's grip must have been difficult to bear. Had he any reason to hold so tightly on a woman of such small stature? But the twins, especially he, relished in the brutality. It made them efficient hunters aboard, and to Chelsee, had cost them every shred of their Indo.
"In week's time, this bounty will be dropped off in Delton."
Conversation erupted immediately.
"SHUT IT!" Illya bellowed, which shushed the room as quickly as it had been disturbed. "We will be on mainland for one night. We will discuss terms of shore time after bounty has been dealt with. Only then."
"But no one is to fuck bounty. She is to remain untouched... by all."
Illya delivered this news so matter-of-factly it made Chelsee's stomach turn.
She wore a linen dress, sheer to offset the summer heat, which left little to be desired by the imagination. Her cheeks were round, her lips plump, her eyes wide, though Chelsee guessed that could be the immense fear.
The feeling it evoked for him, Chelsee didn't have a name. He found the whole circumstance, even as it still unfolded before him, completely disturbing. What was even worse, he could still feel Akil's eyes on him. Observing something. Undoubtedly a vulnerability Chelsee would prefer the chance to unravel himself first.
"If terms are broken, Jordana will retaliate in same manner, and won't be gentle. Though probably, you lot would like it too much."
Some sneering from the crowd.
"Then I will kill you myself," Illya said simply. "That is all."
As he watched her ushered away, she looked as helpless as a doe. He'd watched many of them slaughtered in his time in the countryside, and never once had he felt his Indo at peace, nor that that was just the way of things. He witnessed it as a greed, as someone's want casting a shadow on the way things are.
Then, she looked at him. Briefly, as she was to exit the mess hall for the aft, she had honed in on him and met his gaze precisely. Speechless, Chelsee watched her.
"You know nothing of pleasure - " Akil realized. There was a flatness to his statement. Chelsee would've thought he said it in jest, if not for the curiosity in his eyes.
