Disclaimer

This tale was started long ago, back in 2013, and is now being translated. I was young and have since matured into an even less adequate sorry excuse for walking metabolism.

It was also written in Portuguese for a primarily Portuguese audience.

This means some jokes might not click and you may miss the complete absence of nuance that would make a person reading the original text go “who let this guy near a keyboard?” The answer is that I let myself near a keyboard, you’re not the boss of me, and I’ll do what I want. And if I want to write nonsense that barely passes for prose and leaves my parents thinking they should have produced more offspring or at least adopted, so be it.

Also, I may have been much more edgy and less empathic to the consequences of my actions back then. If you’re in a fragile place mentally, I propose you might like reading something else. Just not the news. The news are much worse than anything I could ever think up. I’ve reviewed the story, and it shouldn’t be that bad, though.

Safe travels and on with the show!

The little barge of the flower guy arrived at the harbor at around noon. The sky was shinning, and the seagulls flew around the marine life viscera ridden sailors. This olfactory landscape was further complicated by his complete lack of rhinitis, a consequence of the copious amounts of forcibly inhaled seawater of his latest days at sea. This was not the idyllic scenario the flower guy expected to greet him at the start of his adventures. Despite that, he needed some information, a map, some sponge cake, something to give him some sense of direction and a goal. This thought reminded him of his brother’s remarks, to not go on an adventure without a specific actionable goal, a damsel to rescue, a bi-dimensional path to traverse from left to right of the screen. With tears in his eyes and missing some curry, the flower guy kneeled on the moist wooden planks of the harbor while sobbing profusely.

It was not before long that his stance caught the attention of a ship captain, who addressed him.

“Hey you, you look like a sailor, but there are no fins in your hair or gill bracelets on your wrists. First day on the job?”, inquired the captain in an unsurprisingly course voice. He had a white feather in his hat, clothing too golden to be taken seriously in a middle-aged disco party, a sword that was duller than his coat and his face had the sun dried skin akin to the leftovers of a tannery, too rough to put anywhere but away from the good stuff, lest it gets mixed up.

The flower guy pulled back his snot and replied, “no, I just arrived in a little barge, I came to Belruf looking for adventure. I’m the flower guy, who are you?” The flower guy could not contain the thoughts that the captain was probably either a pimp or a transit officer.

“My name is Captain Estrela, of the most noble and quite notable ship Engracia! If you’ve come looking for adventure, I believe I have a quite appealing proposal. Do tell me, have you gotten a place to stay and sleep? The travel agencies usually take care of that but judging from your hardly passable floating thingy, I’d wager you’ve come to adventure without taking the necessary precautions.”

The flower guy stood up but kept looking down. “You’re right, I still visited the Abreu Travel Agency but they were too expensive and the stays were only bed and breakfast. It was only when I arrived that I found the grandest craving for an omelet, hence my despair. Please tell me your proposal, captain Estrela.”

The captain laughed and whispered to him “first, don’t say Belruf like that, you need to drop that silly accent, lest people start hauling fish sticks at you. It’s pronounced Belruf, you understand? Anyway, as you have most likely noticed and why you keep looking at the floor, I’m missing a sequin in my most illustrious coat. It looks absolutely ridiculous like this and I’ve been avoiding handling the crew, this is more than enough to warrant a mutiny! The jacket was given to me by a long time friend that lives right here in this municipality, about two kilometers away north, near the center square. I’d talk to him directly but I can’t walk around looking messy like this. So I’d like to employ your services, you would go meet him and figure where to get an adequate replacement sequin for my coat. Since you don’t have a place to stay, I can lend you my youth hostel membership card and some money, so you can go to that breakfast truck to get an omelet or some cake. What do you say, lad?

“Can I think about it”, asked the flower guy, fearing the journey in this unknown land. The captain grudgingly acquiesced with a “yes, of course, you have until the end of this paragraph.”

“In that case, I accept your quest and apologize for only giving you my decision in the next paragraph”. The deal left a smile in both of them. Farther away, a seagull flushed the toilet.

  • The flower guy received: 20 golden coins
  • The flower guy gained experience: 10pt
  • The flower guy started a new quest: recover the captain’s sequin