Chapter 11 Conquest of Chimera

Chapter 11

Conquest of Chimera

 

   Settled comfortably on a bale of cotton offered to them by Captain Marks, they soon found themselves facing a small menagerie of disconcertingly humanized creatures. Their lionized Captain sat atop a nail keg situated at the center of the deck. Fanning out behind him, his crew of five sat on their haunches like children eagerly waiting their afternoon story.

   However, there were no children here. A white furred possum like ‘man’ of about five feet curled up as if a cotton ball just below the captain’s left elbow. To his left rocking on his all too human looking ankles, a deep red heavily armored armadillo like creature, who was more than three foot tall, peeked over a long scaly snout with man’s eyes black and piercing.  Beside him a tall gray rabbit swayed on fuzzy fingered back legs, pink nostrils twitched nervously above his hair- lipped snout as eyes gray and soft surveyed the new arrival with inquisitive compassion.

   “Might I speak,” He said, turning his head and leaning forward.

  The Captain nodded, “Speak on Henry.”

  “These newlies are afeared. I kin smell it all ova’ dem. Why?”

  “Why indeed,” Asked Malcom, a brown two -foot bushy tailed squirrel with bare long fingered hands and a perfectly human face, squatting to right of the captain.

 “We mean no hurt little nakies,” his companion, a massive black bear with clawed human hands and large gray eyes that drooped behind a hairless pug nosed snout. “Penny says she found you floating naked in the sea.” The bears’ tone was skeptical.

  “Brue, must you always doubt her voracity,” Petra the armadillo man replied.

  “She was out in the storm,” Connor the possum man quickly added, “that’s all. She loves the wind, the pelting rain, lightning too I dare say, reckless darling child.”

  “Is that all,” The Captain reared back directing his question at Kian.

  Kian glanced down at Kia. She gave him a slight nod. “I, we, don’t want to get Penny in trouble, but there is more, much more.”

  “Trouble, Penny that playful scamp,” The Captain replied,  “da dear lass stays in trouble, tis why we love her so, now tells us true and tells us all and you’ll sleep warm tanight.”

  Licking up the last few drops of sea -water still clinging to his lower lip as he thought cherry cola, Kian began at his near birth out of body experience and ended with bringing Kia back from death. His audience devoured every detail. However, with every impossible twist and turn they, except for the Captain, inched further away. So that when he told them how Kia’s horrible lightning burn had closed up and how life had seeped back into her dead body they were pinned against the Captain’s cabin with nowhere else to go but into his private quarters, something they were not about to do.   

   The Captain had not pushed his keg seat back even an inch. However, he was by now, precariously perched on its back edge.

   When Kian finished, the massive lion man stared at him silent and still. Then he leaped from the small barrel so quickly he sent it spinning and rolling like a pinball.    

  “Stand up, the both ah ye,” He bellowed.

  “We, I, I’m not lying Captain,” Kia heard desperation in Kian’s voice. She trembled as she rose slowly from the cotton bale.

  “That we shall see,” The Captain replied. “Turn ‘round!”

  They did, making it impossible for them to see the Captain raise his right hand, clench his fist and raise his right finger. A curved black claw sprung out as he stomped toward Kian and ripped open the back of his poncho. Then before Kian could utter a word of protest the giant beast man did the same to Kia’s only garment.

   “Fah lie!” He roared a true lion’s roar that sent Kia’s long blonde hair billowing past her tear soaked cheeks.

   Kian snatched Kia’s hand and hunched his shoulders. White suddenly blinded the Captain as Kian and Kia wings exploded in his face and thrust them skyward like two rockets.   

   Seventy feet up Kian finally curved to a stop fluttering high above the ship, Kia’s trembling body snuggly nestled under his right arm.

   Kian looked down to make sure the crew most motley had no means of hurting them from afar. However what he saw made him shake his head and regret every word he said.

  The Captain and his crew were on their knees. Their furry up turned faces matted and glistening with tears.

   “What does this mean Kian?”

 “What do you think? We just invented a new religion and there’s our flock. We’ve got to fix this. This will never do.”   

  Arcing down with Kia trailing close behind Kian eased back onto the deck, “Please don’t,” he said kneeling down beside Captain Marks who had already bowed his head in acquiescence, “hear me Captain, we are not Gods. We just aren’t.”

  The Captain raised his head, “then, what are ye’.” The mighty beast lips were trembling.

  “Stand up,” Kian said, trying hard not make it sound like an order. “All of you please stand.”

  They traded looks of puzzlement, but they stood up, some a little taller and a little straighter than others but they all stood.

  “Ya’ de’na’ tell Penny everthin’ deed ye. She woulda’… ”  

   “Captain stop, please, there is much going on here that none us fully understand, but this is your world your home. Kia and I wish to make it  our home too, but not our Kingdom, not our Kingdom.”

   Kia stepped up to the great beast and gently curled her tiny fingers around his massive paw. “Friends that is all we want, all we need. Do you believe that, do you believe me?”

   The Captain sniffled, reached around and lay a soft heavy paw gently on the crown of her head, “I’ve went and torn ye’ only dress me darlin’ might ye allow me to properly address me’ grevious errah.’”

  “Only if it pleases you my Captain,” she whispered sweetly.

  “It does me’ dear, it does.”