Story of the Captain

“Captain, we’ve been here for days now. Why is there no one else here? Where are all the guards?”

The question was directed to a rather large Marowak, who was seated at the end of a table in the middle of an equally rather large library. Aisles of bookshelves stretched as far as one could see, with plenty more aisles stretching further than one could see. Hundreds of chandeliers served not only to light the room, but to fight off an almost innate ability of libraries to appear rather dull and boring.

Maybe “rather large” was a bit of an understatement. This place was absolutely massive. It’d take years to find what they were looking for, if they were lucky.

The aforementioned creature looked up from his book after a moment, and brightened the room with wisdom.

“There’s a librarian here. He guards the books, you know. It’s a very important job.”

The smaller Marowak sighed as he heard snickers come from behind some rows of bookshelves near him. He should have known he would have received such an answer, really. If the Captain knew the situation with the Castle’s guards, he most likely would have informed the entire brigade.

“Sorry, Captain. I guess I’m just a bit flustered, is all. When we were called way out here away from our home, I was expecting more.. I don’t know, fighting, I guess.”

Normally when a lower ranking member of a highly successful fighting squadron expresses his dissatisfaction with a mission at hand to its leader, consequences would be rather dire, and the outcome of the lower ranked member’s fate would not look good at all. This was not a normal squadron though, so he was lucky. This time. Probably next time, too.

The Captain closed his book and set it down. With a large yawn and an even larger stretch, he got up from the table and started to head towards the exit to one of the castle’s hallways.

“I’m going to take a break for today. I can only take so many consecutive hours of reading, and I’m sure all of you are in the same boat. For the love of everything holy, make sure you check out with the librarian before you leave. I literally went through torture to get all of you library passes.”

He didn’t literally go through torture, but he thought it made it sound like more of an accomplishment. It didn’t really fool his men, though.

---

“Hey! How come you have spikes on your back and your servants don’t? Why are you taller than them?”

The Captain snorted a bit, obviously amused at Merlot’s choice of wording. He made a bit of an effort to make her laugh, as she had recently worked up the courage to leave her room. Couldn’t let that bravery appear unappreciated.

“I believe you mean my soldiers, Merlot. I don’t have any servants.”

She laughed. Her sense of humor was a bit strange, but that didn’t matter much to him. She thought it quite hilarious that he didn’t have any servants, even though he did belong to a family line as equally aristocratic as hers.

“But! Since you are so small, I will answer your question. My family comes from a far away region, where we all have these spikes. Their families come from an area where they do not have them. It is as simple as that. I’m still the same as they are, I assure you.”

Merlot nodded. This answer was good enough for her. Wait..

“I’m as big as you, you know! That’s hardly small. How did that have anything to do with answering my question?” She wasn’t quite used to people playing around with her, as they were all afraid of provoking her temper. That usually accompanied her father being very angry, which no one wished to face.

“It had everything to do with it! Were you any bigger, I wouldn’t have been able to answer your question.”

She thought about this for a moment. It didn’t quite make sense, but he did say he was from a far away place. Maybe they had different customs. She wasn’t going to judge, though. She rather liked him.

“What if I get bigger than you? Would you still answer my questions?” She was a bit worried. Her dad certainly dwarfed him by a very large margin.

“Well.. I don’t know. I guess I could make an exception just for you. You have to come to lunch with me though, as payment.”

He struck a hard bargain, but she gave in.

---

“Can I have a piggyback ride?”

The Captain thought about it for a moment. It had been almost a year since he and his brigade first arrived at this castle, and Merlot hadn’t gotten any smaller. In fact, one could say she had gotten a lot larger. She was now nearly a foot taller than he was, and a few pounds heavier than him. A few dozen, actually, if one wanted to be a little more accurate.

“Don’t you think you’re a bit too big for me to give you a piggyback ride? I’m not overflowing with unlimited power, despite my marvelously toned physique.” He said the latter in a tone only his closest friends could identify as somewhat sarcastic. Merlot had figured out how to pick up on this only recently.

“But.. No one else can do it! Come on! I’ll let you play dress up with me later!” She thought this was a perfectly irresistible offer, as it was one of her favorite pastimes.

“By “Dress up”, do you mean the thing when you make your servants wear those embarrassing maid outfits? The servants aren’t even French, you know.” He wasn’t too sure what French was, but he read in some book in the library that it was the style of outfit Merlot usually subjected her servants to.

As she thought of her response, he picked her up from behind and allowed her to come to a textbook piggyback position.

“I will consider your generous offer of dress up, Lady Merlot, but for now, where shall we head?”

This question was far easier to answer than the previous, since she already had a destination in mind.

“To lunch!”

The Captain shook his head in mock disappointment.

“Merlot, we had lunch only a few hours ago. How about a new destination?”

“To the pre-dinner meal!”

This response was met with a hearty chuckle from the Captain, and the journey to the Pre-Dinner Meal (which was Definitely Not Lunch) began.

---

"Which one would you like to wear? I have a black one with a feather duster and a mixed one with a hat thing!"

"Merlot.. neither of those are outfits for men. Allow me to look for something more appropriate."

That was going to take a while. Merlot's collection of dress-up material was very.. extensive. There were numerous walk in closets along some of the walls, each containing articles of clothing that would embarrass all but the most emotionally vacant of persons. The Captain was not part of this small group. The first walk-in closet afforded him views on clothing that would only adorn the most shameless of the shameless.

"Did you find anything you like in there? That one has some of my favorites!" She asked this with a bright gleam of hope in her eyes. The Captain knew he had to shatter this hope, before it grew into an expectation from which he could not easily escape.

"Merlot, do you really make your servants wear these things? Some of them seem rather.. inappropriate. For anyone. At any time."

"What do you mean? I tried really hard to pick out only the ones I liked! That is my Favorite Closet, so only outfits that I really like can go into it. There can be nothing more appropriate to put in there!" The nature of the Captain's query flew right over her head, but he wasn't really going to press the issue further. She also didn't respond to the first half of the question, and he wasn't going to press that one, either.

"Well.. How about your Least Favorite closet? I'd like to take a look through that one." He had an idea. Surely there would be something in her Closet of Dislike that would save his pride and still let him say he participated.

There was. It was less of a "closet", and more of an "old, battered box gathering dust in a corner of her room", though.

"Merlot, I'll wear this c-"

"Oh! That frilly bow tie! I don't know why I put that in there, I rather liked it!" She could barely contain her excitement as he placed it upon his neck.

"I'd say I look rather dashing in this, don't you think?"

She said yes.

---

“Merlot, what are you doing up so late? I’m usually the only one awake at this hour.” The Captain asked this question quietly. He felt this hushed tone was necessary, as the tranquil silence of this night was beautiful to him.

He was sitting along the edge of the castle’s walls, which allowed him a very beautiful, if not somewhat lonely view of the forest spread out beneath him. He wasn’t worried about falling, as there was no wind tonight.

She sat next to him on the wall, looking out into the night sky before answering.

“He’s really gone, isn’t he?” He knew what she meant. He delivered the news to her a number of years ago, but she was a bit too young to fully understand the implications at that time.

“I wouldn’t say that I never lie, but I wouldn’t lie to you, Merlot. I plan to finish what he started.”

This was true. He did his best to be somewhat of a role model for her, as her former one had vanished without a trace. If one were to ask what he thought of Merlot, he wouldn’t be able to easily answer them. Initially, he had seen her as someone he had to take care of out of duty to his family line. However, she had long ago proved she was perfectly capable on her own. She did have some weird habits, though. He was glad he wasn’t a servant.

“Well, at least I got to meet you and your servants! I’m very happy for that.”

Were those tears? He couldn’t really make them out in this light, but it didn’t really matter to him. Emotions were always good to have, even sad ones. It was important to be able to feel strongly about things, even if the cause of them was less than desirable.

“Merlot, I don’t intend to leave once I’m done! I’ll be back when I’m finished, and we can have lunch together.”

For a while into the night they sat on the wall and looked out on the forest, talking about whatever thoughts that happened to cross their minds. Sometimes, there was laughter. Mostly, there was just talking. It had been a good few years since he and his brigade came to the castle, and he was very glad to have done so. He did like her a lot. She would grow up to be even more beautiful than she was now; he knew it. She blushed, then dismissively agreed with him.

He laughed. He would return to Merlot, for certain. There was nothing more important to him.