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Post by Huntress on Oct 22, 2010 15:14:58 GMT -5
Hunty leaned on the ship's wheel.
Ultimately, it hadn't at all been a bad day, all things considered. The encounter with the mages had been awkward, but rather civilized. And now they had a wad of notes and copies about anything and everything snark-related the Manor had had to offer, which meant that she felt a lot better about the mission. At least now it wasn't a wild goose chase. Unless of course the snark would turn out to be a wild goose. It'd be just the sort of cold irony the world liked to throw at her on a regular basis, she thought grimly.
But nonetheless, they were on the road now. They'd left the mages on a fairly positive note, had a mostly eventless blarfback journey back to the ship, apart from a minor run-in with a very confused lumberjack who'd tried to give them anti-alcohol leaflets. Hunty, being a convinced teetotaller, would've accepted them gladly, but she'd gotten irked when the man accused her of being a delirium.
It was the afternoon now, the sun was shining high in the mostly cloudless sky, seagulls were circling the ship while it still hadn't left the coastal area of the mainland, they were making good speed and had a clear goal ahead of them. And even though they were on yet another backside-saving mission that a honest pirate should never have to do, they were still on the road, something they'd begun to miss a lot while grounded in Le Singe. And with all the information, she was in pretty high spirits about finding the Snark and repaying their debt. And she hadn't been to Port Parnassos in ages, so it'd be interesting to see if the place had changed. And Fraze was on board with them... which was good because it meant easy access to Spacefleet databases and maps and suchlike. Yep.
The captain shot a guilty glance at Bloody Mary who'd abandoned his usual shoulder-perch and was sitting on the railing. But the meepit had abandoned his usual uncanny reading-her-thoughts-through-the-back-of-her-head abilities together with the shoulder and was currently up to his neck in melon, happily oblivious to everything else in the great wide world.
"Wonderful things, melon islands," he said with his mouth full. "Except this thing is a bit watery for a melon."
"It would be, if it grows on a floating melon island," Hunty said cheerfully. "I think they're actually called watermelons."
"By people who don't know what a watermelon looks like?"
"By people who thought that there's no point in dropping a perfectly good descriptive name just because some stupid landlubber plant hogged it when it had no business hogging it." Hunty shrugged and squinted at the glimmering sea up ahead. "Back when most cartographers and explorers were seafarers and part-time pirates, you'd get this sort of stuff a lot. I remember when I was a kid and one of those came to our village to see if the rumors about undead penguins were true, cos we had a colony living up the coast. Big fellow, with a beard you could lose a hippo in, and a pegleg and so many scars that he looked like my Sue-sword. And all he'd ever talk about was animals and birds and bugs and whatnot. Huge enthusiast."
"Did he find the penguins?" Bloody Mary was now lounging in the sun, his eyes half-shut, slowly chewing the not-so-watermelon-watermelon, but there was curiosity in his voice.
"Yeah." Hunty leaned sideways a bit to correct the course, now largely steering with her body rather than her hands. "Got all excited and said that it was the discovery of the century and all that. Named them zomguins, as far as I recall. Except then they ate him and he never managed to actually publish his data, so the honor of discovering and naming the undead penguins went to some other less creative guy who came by two years later."
"Didn't your village know that the colony lived up there?" the meepit asked.
"Yeah, but we were locals, so we didn't count."
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Post by Speck on Oct 23, 2010 17:26:12 GMT -5
Speck sat cross-legged on the deck, leaning on one side of the galley's outer walls. She was surrounded by bottles of her flammable lemonade*, some hollowed out cannon balls, notes (held down by miscellaneous paperweights), a spool of fuse, and a container labelled Killinger's Incredible Super Sealant. An open book lay before her; it was one that she had borrowed from the Mage Manor library. There was nothing that said she couldn't take it out of the manor: it was a library book, after all. She just hoped that there wouldn't be any hefty overdue fines to pay later.
She grabbed a sticky funnel and began filling a cannonball with the yellow-tinted liquid. She stuffed one end of a long fuse into the cannon's hole, and sealed it with wax. Admiring her handywork, she held the cannon up to her head and kissed it before carefully setting it into a padded crate.
Speck giggled to herself before continuing her work, "Sealed with a K.I.S.S."
Before long, the crew would have a number of new things to stuff down the barrels of the Weewoo's carronades. Maybe later she would get wild and sift the ship's gunpowder.
* So named for its semblance in color to lemonade, and the scent it gives off when ignited.
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Post by Nasuella on Oct 28, 2010 5:39:10 GMT -5
Shouldn't think about that.
...but what if I lose control at a bad time? I might disrupt the shower or something.
Shouldn't think about that. Might lose your head if you get distracted at a bad moment. Captain said that clearly.
High up in the crow's nest, Nasue grumbled. She'd taken her jacket with her and was wearing it, with hood pulled over her head and ears. She did borrow a telescope and had made some sandwiches in advance, but otherwise wasn't too focused on keeping a lookout at that precise moment. It was probably a good thing that getting up there hadn't been too difficult - training in the art of movement had proved useful after all - because since reading that book, her mind was occupied.
Why am I even arguing over this? This might be the only time I get to think about this at all. The coati sighed. So. Start over.
Anti-magic. That's what that yellow glow thing was. It kept me safe from that Underdeep ooze thing... but only disrupted the Manor teleporting me. So, it's only so powerful?
Wait. Didn't one guy in Le Singe say the Manor got overrun by the ooze?
...
Oh gods. Oh gods oh gods OH GODS. A-and I can't control it at all?! It might disrupt the ship's magic at the worst time... or a crewmate's magic... even healing magic! I-I might get injured and a healing potion could only save me and the anti-magic might--might--
Thankfully, something brought her mind back to reality. In her brief panic, Nasue had dropped the telescope and it landed on her bare foot. (She never wore footwear.)
Blinking, the blue-furred one stared at the telescope, then looked down at the deck where fellow crew members - and some strangers from space - were going around doing whatever.
Dangit. I'm just going in circles.
She bent down and picked the telescope up, thankful it hadn't dropped out of the crow's nest. That would be a long drop.
Guess I'd better ask someone who knows magic. Maybe they could help.
...later. She sighed. Need to keep a lookout.
--
While the pirates were more-or-less used to being on a vessel at sea, the same could not be said for some ninjas. The first few parts of Ginga's assignment had gone as planned, barring some accidents (the worst being Kovaran accidently knocking some NNPCs into the water). Now Draco and the Screaming Dragon (and a handful of NNPCs) were on a boat, trying to follow the White Weewoo.
It would have been easier were it not for a few problems.
Kovaran was very, very heavy, for starters. If he went too far to any side of the boat, his weight would cause it to lean in that direction. And that was without his colossal sword (he had to be persuaded to leave Zankantou at the dojo and take a smaller, lighter sword - but it was still a large two-hander). So for most of the voyage he had to sit roughly in the centre of the deck.
Fine, except he clearly didn't like having to sit still for so long. So he was spending much of the time singing, while occasionally shouting questions at the others. At one point he'd offered to blow into the sails to make the ship go faster - with his strength, surely his lungs could make a difference.
The NNPCs had declined.
"If someday it may well happen that a villain must be justiced I have a little list, I have a little list Of the Higher Law's offenders who may well be under... justice And who never will be missed, oh they never will be missed..."
--
Nasue's ear twitched. ...is that singing?
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Post by Draco on Oct 28, 2010 15:08:21 GMT -5
The plan went easily, at least for now. They spoke to the NNPC at the manor, who managed to hide and stay hidden when the pirates and fleet all left, and another NNPC in the library at the time (trying to find a book about Teleporting and Summoning for Dummies). Out of the corner of Draco's eye, he could have sworn he saw that mage that he fought back in Tabloid Town... He didn't stay to find out.
He now leaned on the side of one of their ships. It was large enough to hold a decent amount of passengers and supplies, but it still seemed dwarfed put next to the Pirate's vessel... And with Kovaran sitting in the middle, only made the boat look more odd.
He watched as the NNPCs and the Ninja Sailors (who know we had them?) run around making sure ropes were tied and that they were on course.... He tries to remember what the informants told them.
"Something about a Toves place and some Port Parnacles? Or something like that. I'm sure the guy driving this thing knows... I hope. And then there was this Snark thing the one in the library mentioned."
"Hey Kovaran.... Kovaran!"
He was singing again... He knew he was singing, but still tried to call out to him. He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a apple, he then throws it at Kovaran to get his attention.
"What do you think that Snark thing is? The informant said she couldn't hear well about what it was, just they the Pirates were after it."
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Post by Zylaa on Oct 28, 2010 15:34:21 GMT -5
Zylaa had been wary going into the Mage Manor library. True, last time it had dropped her somewhere plot-convenient, but the notion of a library that, as you're reading in it, reads you back, had always somewhat unsettled her. Fortunately, as she stepped into the library, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Unfortunately, this meant that when the discussion of the Snark's location came up, instead of being taken to the appropriate section of the library herself, Zylaa had to ask the scowling Librarian for help. But her search had paid off-- she now had in her possession A Traveler's Guide to Tristan and Belle, 101 Ways to Avoid A Painful Death In Port Parnassos, Getting the Most out of Mare Mille Barcos, and Steve Rick's Guide to Tristan and Belle.
Steve Rick's Guide to Tristan and Belle opened with a tragic note about how the book was published posthumously. Steve Rick had apparently perished last year on the Isle of Toves. At least, his fellow explorers thought it unlikely that he was still alive after stumbling across his arm and foot in the middle of the jungle.
Oddly enough, this news didn't dampen Zylaa's spirits too much. It was a beautiful day, the crew was together and sailing, and the random 'fleeters were safely occupied. The weasels had at last settled in to a medley of traditional sailing songs. A few had started playing the love song from Titanic, but Zylaa decided that would be taken poorly on any number of levels, so employed those weasels in mending some of the frayed ropes they had on board.
As everyone who needed supervising was doing exactly what they were supposed to, Zylaa was happily absorbed in reading through her library books. It was vital research, after all. After skimming through the indexes in search of information on a Snark (none whatsoever), she started reading the Traveler's Guide, occasionally marking pages with any interesting or relevant information.
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Post by Strife on Oct 28, 2010 17:17:58 GMT -5
Haggoth was seated on top of a short crate in one of the corners of the deck. With one arm resting casually against the outer wall, he had been gazing out into the open sea, watching the endless pattern of waves bob up and down. In his opposite hand was one of the oddly-colored fruits he had brought with him, which he had been slowly chewing through. His lips were lined with green sauce from the fruit's core.
Sailing on the open sea was definitely a new sensation for him, especially with the way the cold, saltwatery air glided across his snout. The surface of his homeworld was 60% landmass, and most of the bigger seas were fresh water anyway. Sometimes he'd think about what it would be like to return, but in all honesty, he didn't really miss it that much.
At some point, one of the weasels running around the ship approached Haggoth and gazed at the shiny fruit core in his hand with big wet eyes. He thought about tossing it on the deck for the little guy, but decided against littering on someone else's ship. Goodness knows he'd have a rightful fit if someone did the same on his vessel. So, instead, he let out a huff and chucked the fruit core overboard, and was genuinely surprised when the weasel jumped and starting climbing up the outer wall to retrieve it. Haggoth quickly stood up from his comfortable position and gripped the little guy with his thick hand, watching with mild amusement as the weasel's arms and legs continued to move at lightning speed towards the waters. Eventually, the weasel grew bored and complied with Haggoth, leaping back down onto the safety of the deck.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, Haggoth caught a whiff of something in the far distance. It smelled a bit like barbecue, but he couldn't tell. It was very very faint. He peered towards the horizon, but didn't spot anything particularly interesting, so he dismissed it and walked over to the other side of the ship to find something else to do.
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Post by Speck on Oct 28, 2010 17:53:48 GMT -5
Crate full of filled cannonballs - cannonbombs? - in hand, Speck accidentally bumped into Haggoth. As much as you could with a crate in your arms, she flailed, trying to avoid dropping its contents. She gave a sigh of relief as she regained her balance.
"Sorry about that!" Speck had been admiring her work too much, and hadn't paid attention to where she was going, or who she was running into. She looked up at the warthog, and almost gave an audible gulp. She looked away quickly, then walked as fast as she could to the stairs leading belowdecks.
Going to the gun deck would keep her mind off of everything. Yes. That would do just fine. The carronades needed a good cleaning anyway. Perfect. She forgot to go back to the main deck to clean up her supplies. The book, her notes, the half-ful spool of fuse, the jar of sealing wax, and bottles of lemonade lay just where she left them for anyone to trip on. Or investigate.
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Post by Nasuella on Oct 29, 2010 23:43:58 GMT -5
"We are the ones who seek the answer; will it end life's greatest question? Does the journey have its meani--"
And then Kovaran got apple'd in the head. He promptly stopped singing, instead choosing to blink and look in Draco's direction. The NNPCs and Ninja Sailors were clearly surprised by the sudden lack of noise, but made an effort not to show this too much - work had to be done.
"What do you think that Snark thing is?" Draco asked. "The informant said she couldn't hear well about what it was, just they the Pirates were after it."
The big lizard made a "hmm", leaning forward. After a few moments, idly tapping the deck with his fingers, he spoke.
"I heard other ninjas say mention of things with that name. Snide comments made in response to negativity." (At least one NNPC facepalmed.) "They told that the pirates already do this, so perhaps they do not seek that. Other than this, I heard of giant fish creatures with many teeth--"
"You're thinking of sharks!"
"I see." Kovaran picked up the apple and tore it in half, then popped one half into his mouth and swallowed.
"Other than this, I know only as much as you, Draco." He sighed. "I may suggest asking the NNPCs and sailors - perhaps one of them should know something."
He ate the other half of the apple. After a moment a tune started playing in his mind - but he chose not to sing that one.
...why her?
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Post by Kengplant on Oct 30, 2010 13:02:00 GMT -5
Keng was busy proving that there actually were spots that people hadn't thought of cleaning while she was away, though to be fair, she had never thought to clean these places either. They'd gotten very thorough on the Weewoo. This meant that one of the few missed spots was underneath a beam on the main mast. It wasn't quite as white as it could be. So she hung rather precariously upside-down while griping on the the roped with one hand and scrubbing with the other and her legs keeping as good a hold as they could. All in all, she was perfectly safe, and had a rather good view of the deck below where she could see Hagoth looking for something to do. Speck bumped into him them scurried off, which reminded Keng of another fleeter that was somewhere on board. Well, perhaps it was about time they got their first sailing lesson. So, careful not to dump water on any heads below, she gathered her cleaning supplies then headed down.
"Oi, Haggoth, have you seen Zari and Fr- the Commander? It's time for you three to start learning how to sail. We'll be starting off simple, just knots and where to use them, you'll probably know a few knots from basic training already, and then move onto various duties around the ship and such. But if you're going to be sailing with us we can't afford to have people that will be useless should we hit a storm because that means we'll be busy looking after you instead of sailing the ship. Besides, you look bored anyways."
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Post by Fraze on Oct 30, 2010 21:05:56 GMT -5
Sploosh. Squeeze. Rub rub rub. Repeat. Fraze mused that cleaning the floors on the lower levels of a ship wasn't what most people would consider a vacation. Even he himself wasn't entirely sure it qualified, and yet here he was. He could at least give the job this much: there wasn't any politics involved. You're given the job and you do it. You may have to ask where the cleaning supplies are, but you don't have to sign five different forms, turn them in to an office somewhere behind the hydroponics storage bay, and then get told you need to wait three weeks for a security clearance. The 'Fleet seemed unfortunately like a bureaucratic MC Escher print, and while he was doing his best to streamline it--for his own comfort if nothing else--the progress was quite slow. Realizing what he was doing, Fraze shook his head and gave himself a few mental pinches. This vacation was supposed to leave the 'Fleet and all his duties behind. He had been trying to juggle so many things at once for so long that he found it difficult to focus on just this one thing. Slop. Squish. Scrub scrub scrub. It was therapeutic in a way. The water was getting murky. No, not exactly. It had gotten murky a while ago, and now seemed closer to mud than wash water. Not being sure whether he should have changed the water a while ago or whether he should keep going until he could sculpt a bowl out of it, he climbed up to the deck in search of Keng.
Who, as it turned out, just so happened to be looking for him. His eyes lit up when he heard what they would be doing. "Great, I'd love to!" he said sincerely. "I've been hoping to learn a bit about sailing, but it seemed like I was expected to lounge around for this whole journey. So I just found a part of the ship that looked like it needed cleaning and, uh, started cleaning it." "Speaking of which," he added, recalling what he had come up for in the first place, "should I change this water out yet?"
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Post by Kengplant on Oct 30, 2010 22:47:25 GMT -5
"Oh, good timing. Now we just need Zari. As for the water, if it looks like you're painting the deck brown instead of cleaning it white it's probably time." Keng replied. "We'll meet at the main mast in about 6mins. Hopefully I'll have found our professor by then." She then ducked below deck to search for Zari there.
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Post by Zylaa on Oct 31, 2010 9:07:34 GMT -5
"Under no circumstances should you attempt to convince native islanders that you are a god. Most of the native islanders have seen several thousand explorers and the like go by already, and will naturally be greatly offended by your assumption that they are stupid and naive. The other tribes have long ago gotten angry with their gods for sending floods, hurricanes, and kraken attacks on a regular basis. Anyone claiming to be a god there will be sat down for a good talking-to and then tortured to death."
It was amazing the sort of things the Traveler's Guide covered, thought Zylaa.
Looking up from her book, she noticed that Speck was no longer at her workplace, but all her things were. She hopped over to investigate. Noting that most everything there was harmless-- well, except possibly the lemonade, which Zylaa had never been sure about-- she climbed down to the gun deck, hoping to find Speck there.
"Glad to see the weapons upgrade is coming along well, but you might want to clear the rest of your stuff off the deck. I'm not sure if any of it's explosive, but still, clutter and ship decks don't go well together."
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Post by Huntress on Oct 31, 2010 12:41:03 GMT -5
After many failed attempts, Hunty's half-asleep brain finally managed to get through to her that the edge of the wheel was beginning to dig itself into her ribcage. She straightened up and turned to look at the compass, solely because you had to do that every now and then. The needle sat firmly in its pool of white spirit like a drunkard in his favorite bar on a Friday night, pointing north without fail. They were on the right course. The sky was still blue, the seagulls were still circling the ship every now and then, they were still sailing on a broad reach, the wind was blowing from northeast without an inch of change and it was overall a sickeningly nice day.
"Bloody Mary?" Hunty asked, turning back to the wheel and focusing her attention on the small group on the deck instead, because it was much more interesting than the Big Boring Blue.
"Mmyeesszz?" Meepits didn't sleep, but they could zone out no problem and Bloody Mary was now flat on his back on the railing, taking in the sun. The waves galloped by forty feet below him, but animals don't have much of a concept of vertigo.
"You have a good nose- are those sunglasses?"
The meepit grinned and winked at him over the sunglasses. "There's a good thrift shop in Le Singe. When I need to bring stress levels down, I go shopping."
Questions were all of a sudden floating to the surface like bubbles in a boiling pot. Hunty grabbed the nearest of them. "For what money?"
"Ah yeah, I sort of owe you three shinies for an Elvis costume," the meepit said. "The glasses came free with it."
Hunty stared up at the mainsail. A seagull rose high above it before circling back down towards the surface of the sea, looking for fish the ship's voyage was churning up. A huge dark shadow was looming under the surface. "O-kay. What I was asking is, is there a storm coming?"
"Nope. Barometer's higher than a hippie, I just checked." The meepit pulled the sunglasses up again and laid back down. "Look, I know that you always say that the sea is unpredictable even when it's calm, but couldn't you accept for a minute that this just is one of those quiet-"
Hunty snatched him off the railing. "Hold on!" she barked to the crew down on the deck.
The seas broke. The kraken rose.
Blarfs aren't graceful creatures by any stretch of the imagination, less so in water that isn't their natural element. They also have limbs all over the place, which doesn't make them particularly aerodynamic. But what they lack in grace do they make up with sheer willpower.
The black heavy mass of fur and tentacles and claws and spikes crashed out of the water in a flurry of glittering foam, flailed around just long enough to give anyone who hadn't seen him before everlasting nightmares and then fell back in more or less sideways. For a moment, time seemed to slow to a crawl as a round pillar of bright white water climbed higher and higher. Then gravity noticed what was going on, had a word in and the pillar came crashing down into a circular wave that extended outwards in huge ripples, crashed into the side of the ship and sent her skidding sideways for a good hundred yards before the drag on the keel stopped her and the sails caught wind again.
Hunty, spinning the wheel frantically to get back on course, couldn't help but giggle. Annoying as this could get, the blarf did this for the same reason whales did, namely for no real reason whatsoever, and you just couldn't get mad at that.
"Hoozagooboy?" she shouted over the railing. "You are! Yes you aaaaare!"
The blarf, now floating along on his back, wiggled all his six paws, sharklike jaws open in a pant. "Blarp!"
"Other ships," Bloody Mary moaned, hanging on her arm, "have dolphins following them."
"Can't even recall the last time I saw a dolphin, our little coochiepoo eats them all," Hunty said with a grin, righting the ship and getting back on course. "Right, you lot, sorry 'bout this interlude, the blarf likes a nice sailing weather as much as we do. Lesson number one: when I shout 'watch out' or 'hold on'-"
"Or 'jibe ho'," the meepit pointed out.
"Or 'jibe ho', yes, that's even the most common, or even just 'duck!', you do as told at once or risk getting either washed overboard or your skull smashed in by something."
"Sometimes her crossbow," said Bloody Mary, clambering up to her shoulder again and adjusting his sunglasses. "And when she says 'duck', it's a fifty-fifty whether you'll need to look out for a loose beam or find a shotgun. ...what? It's been ages since we had roast duck."
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Post by Draco on Nov 4, 2010 1:45:00 GMT -5
Draco lays back thinking of possibilities about the Snark.
"If they wanted snide remarks, they would have bagged up Huntress, or at least found someone to kidnap. So I doubt it's that."
It's been a while since they discussed this last. The Ninja Sailors didn't know to much. Only a couple stories about a strange animal, a plant, a object, and in one case a mime named Snark. In each case they were only stories they heard from intoxicated sailors, except for the mime. He was annoying a man, and the man ended the mimes life.
"I guess when we catch up, we'll have to either ask around, or spy on the pirates to get info."
He looked out at the water.
"Is it true there are sea monsters out here? I mean I know the pirates have the Blarf, but are we in danger out here?"
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Post by Kengplant on Nov 4, 2010 2:38:36 GMT -5
Keng came back up to the deck, swaying with the rock of the ship, her knees bending to keep the rest of her level with the planet. Her search for Zari had been unsuccessful, and she didn't feel like wasting time looking for her, -even on such a relatively small ship as the Weewoo there were just too many nooks and crannies- so she left a note on Zari's hammock instructing her to report to Keng for lessons. She would catch her up she did.
In the meantime she was sure Haggoth would be plenty enough for her to handel.
"Right then class, Zari will be joining us later I guess. For now we'll start with a nice and common, simple knot, the square knot." Keng explained, picking up two spare lengths of rope and snapping them taut. "So, start off by making a loop, like so. Doesn't have to be a big one, smaller will be easier to work with. The loop is the rabbit hole, and this," she held up an end of the second length of rope, "is Mr. Rabbit. Mr. Rabbit is going to come up out of his rabbit hole, run around the tree trunk here," Keng paused and indicated where the rope forming the loop criss-crossed, "then it jumps back into the whole. Now just pull that tight, and you have yourself a square knot. It's a useful knot for putting two ends of ropes togeather. We use it in quite a few places, tieing the flag up for one."
Keng held up the knot she made for Haggoth to see, then undid it, and repeated the process, this time without the Mr. Rabbit explanation.
"And when you're done that one, this one is my favourite. It's also nice and easy. Good for tieing up boats that you may have to untie in a hurry. Just make a loop, do a quick wrap around to secure it, then put a loop through that loop, tighten, put another loop through the new loop, tighten, and keep going for as long as you feel like." Keng demonstrated by putting loops through loops through loops through loops until she ran out of rope. "Now, if I want to untie it, I just grab this end here and... pull!" she gave it a tug and the loops unraveled themselves quickly and easily. Once they had returned to a straight rope she began to repeat the process rather absentmindedly as she talked. "Alright, now let's see you, start with the square knot. Remember Mr. Rabbit."
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