Doric

He wants to ask them when their big day is.

The small lady leans into the side of her love like fronds of a fern curling together. Their fingers brush as they walk, a familial mark of being and belonging, the kind that comes from quiet chatter over late nights and has been founded over arguments so large and so small that they could mean the world or not at all.

The lady is smiling. A piece of strawberry gold hair is caught between her lips, and she brushes it away while she looks up at the man by her side and chatters away.

Her love is as wide as he is tall. A lumbering lout with large ears and a shining head, he is a force to be reckoned with and soft under her eyes, the expression upon his face reserved for her, and her alone.

But Doric sees all.

He pops the tip of his quill into his mouth and sucks at it for several long moments, before pulling it out again and setting it to parchment. They’re happy, he scratches. The parchment is folded and shoved neatly into his breast pocket, and the quill is fastened between his lips once more. He fiddles with the feather in his cap and then pushes himself off the brick ledge and onto the road, skipping stodgily down to where the waves splash against the quay.

Cats are congregating as an evenly spaced clowder along the oceanside, waiting for the great ships to come and for the sailors filling their wooden bellies to feed them their spoils, the fish of their labors.

Doric skips between flicking tails and twitching whiskers, avoiding their lamp-like looks when they swivel his way. He was scratched once for impolite staring, and he does not want to feel the slices again. The white lines on his arms are healed now, but his pride is not.

He starts at an unexpected meow and swears he can hear the amused purrs vibrating the air behind him as he skitters away. They’re not on his list of things to check up on, so he can skip over them completely.

There is one boat swaying in the waves, the water lapping happily at her sides and splashing salt over her colors. Doric jigs down the quay to meet her, searching out the rope that holds her steady and keeps her from riding off into the horizon. He ups onto the deck and dodges hanging baubles that swing with the waves, glittering marbles with colors inside that refract the sunlight and spill rainbows over the bow.

“Doric? That you?” The harbormaster splutters into coughs as Doric pushes through the door. He really does smoke too much for his own good. Doric took a puff once, and it was bad.

Doric clambers into the galley, almost falls down the last step onto his red nose and catches himself on the railing just in time. “Me.”

“Thought ye weren’t comin’ back,” grouches the harbormaster. He’s bent over a rusted stove, poking at a cast iron griddle with a pair of tongs. Messy eggs and bacon sizzle and pop above layers of age-old grease. For taste.

The old man is skinny and stooped, but his black beard is bushy and magnificent, meticulously tended. Dark eyes hide between thick eyebrows and heavy lines.

“You.” Doric thumbs at an itchy spot under his chin and eyes the griddle hungrily.

The harbormaster grunts. He isn’t a bad man, only one who has had bad things happen to him. He is a wilted steel flower. He is used to Doric, caught him scribbling on the dock many years ago on a hot summer’s day and thought him to be a tax collector.

Doric was scared that day. He’s not scared now.

The harbormaster fiddles with the heat of the stove and mumbles curses out of the side of pallid lips. “Damned thing is gonna blow us sky high one day, Doric, don’tcha know.”

“Blow.”

“That’s what I said.” And he grabs a pinch of salt between gnarled fingers and sprays it across breakfast. There is a loud sizzle as the eggs are scraped across the griddle and turned upside down. The sea air of high tide sweeps through an open porthole, cool against the back of Doric’s head. His stomach growls.

“So, what did ye find? Back early if’n ye were comin’ back at all.” The grizzled man clatters around with wooden plates and shoves them onto a side table. Doric has to press himself against the wall for the harbormaster to get through. “Happy.” He chirps.

“Happy, eh?” The harbormaster squints. “Was that what ye were lookin’ for?”

“Ye.”

A seagull squawks while the flames die down under the griddle, and breakfast is shoved onto the plates. There is no cutlery; the unlikely pair walk up the stairs and onto the deck to eat under the light of the sun and watch the rainbows dance.

Doric shovels the food into his mouth with eager, stubby fingers, and he is so full so fast that he feels uncomfortable for ten long minutes, his stomach twisting and body shifting to accommodate. You would think that a body that did that for every meal would learn to acclimatize. Apparently not.

“Gonna comb when the tide goes low,” the harbormaster sighs, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed behind his head. He kicks one foot up to rest over the other and looks over the side of his boat into dark water. “It’s that time of year, Doric. Ocean’s treasures will wash up any day now.”

“Comb,” Doric burps uncomfortably.

“Search, comb the beach, seashells and driftwood from the Eastern current will be along. Maybe a message in a bottle.”

“Maybe.”

“See that?” The black beard shines while a rough thumb points to a green hunk of beach glass swinging just over Doric’s head. “Probably from Plevinte. Picked it up last spring. She was floatin’ by and I plucked ‘er up before she could sink.”

The way the sun hits the dull surface of the glass makes it shine like an apple. Doric can’t eat anymore, but he wants to. “Sink.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Florist.”

“Eh?”

“Butcher.”

The harbormaster sighs deeply. He rubs at his face with one greasy hand and proffers the other. Doric reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out his notebook, slips out the freshest page and hands it to him. The man unfolds it while Doric settles back into his chair and folds his hands politely in his lap.

“They’re…” The harbormaster drags a finger over the words, smudges the parchment. He can’t make out the next word, it’s complicated, it has two of the same letter but the letter looks like an upside-down one and it’s difficult. It blurs. It is frustrating. Embarrassing.

Doric waits patiently. He knows the p’s are hard for him.

When the harbormaster has furrowed his eyebrows together for so long that it looks as though they’ll stay like that forever, Doric finishes it for him. He likes to wait until the man has tried, even if it’s not his best. Sometimes if he waits long enough, the words will suddenly make sense.

Today the man doesn’t look like he’s trying. Any mention of the florist deflates him when he thinks Doric isn’t looking.

“Happy.”

“I knew that.” The man shoves the parchment back at him. “Happy, eh? Big lout. No visits, but he sees the butcher.” Doric puts the page away again and pats his pocket for good measure.

The man will talk now, and Doric will listen. So, he pulls up his legs under him and crosses them, patting his full belly while dirty wooden plates dry under the light of the sun, and the harbormaster begins to drone.