Ashon had gone on watch, aware of the ship's growing tense mood and wanting nothing more than to cook, to cook up some great vat of soup they could all gorge themselves on. Images of all the soups he had ever made seemed to dance around his head, making him near to ill with nausea. He had, so far, managed with all his might to keep himself from garnering too much attention or being too obvious.

Sooner or later he worried the captain would find he and Rosie and kick the two of them off, for having somehow brought this on her. But it hadn't come up in the sail from the Erins to Mercer! No ghost. Nothing. Not 'til Rosie stepped on board, he thought. But then, Ashon saw ghosts all the time, when he slept. Long before Rosie was back.

When his watch was over, his body rang with nerves and exhaustion but his mind would not let him sleep; he gave it a pretty good go, he thought, got absolutely nowhere but even -more- awake, and pulled himself doggedly out of his hammock, glad Rosie was up on deck doing something useful so she wouldn't go on at him about how bad he looked. Haunted, he thought. Word I'm looking for's 'haunted'.

He stopped his walk, roughly ten feet from the ladder to go up top, and started to laugh at how absolutely perfect that word was. There was an edge of hysteria to his laughter he could not seem to quell.

Spider had bundled up in two pairs of trousers and her old jacket with the pockets and her fingerless gloves (one could not sew in full gloves) and an ugly pilly knitted cap pulled down over her eyes and clear to her eyebrows, and was still cold. The sea was slightly grey with mist that had not yet burned off. "Oi, Nibenay. I've got the watch. Get some rest, you look beat."

Ashon himself was bundled up as much as seemed sensible, which meant he was still cold and trying very hard to be masculine and not admit to it.

"Already tried sleepin'," Ashon said with a friendly shrug, managing to quell the laughter. A thoroughly inappropriate chuckle kept trying to work its way up his throat, but that was just nerves. Was just the not-sleeping finally getting to him.

"Didn't work. Figgered I'd just walk 'til I feel like I can give it another try."

He wanted to go into his galley and cook some damn food. That was the only thing he wanted to do. His scope of wants had narrowed down essentially to wanting to go into his galley, and wanting Rosie... the last one hadn't gone away for a second since the first moment he'd come enough of age to realize he wanted girls.

He wanted to ask Spider how she was. How she was doing. But he knew how much he hated it, how much his skin crawled, every time someone asked him those questions with that well-meaning concern in their voices and their eyes.

"I could do with another stop in port," he muttered, not exactly to himself. "Any port at all."

"Don't I know it," Spider said with feeling. "Spent six months landlocked tellin' meself that if another ship ever offered me a place again, I'd take it . . . and it's this one." She sighed, and shrugged. "Gods must've heard me."

"I'd've rather sailed on the big-arse duck our other ship turned into," Ashon replied with a barest edge of a sincere smile. Still, hearing someone else as bothered as he was made it easier to relax. Even if he'd known Spider hated this ship, he hadn't really talked to her about it. There was a large part of him very eager to just not talk about it.

"At the least it were a pretty cheerful duck," He pointed out. "And this isn't exactly a cheerful ship."

Oh god above, he was going to do it, wasn't he.

"How're you doin' in all this? You been all right?"

Damn it.

"Can't complain." She shrugged. "It's been an easy run compared to some of 'em, ship notwithstanding. That's one advantage to bein' with the witch--there's no end of wind and you get a full day's notice for rain."

"True enough, that. I think Rosie's still havin' a bit of trouble with th' idea of the captain bein' able to actually -do- all that. Not that she don't believe it, 'cause what's in front of your eyes lends itself towards bein' believed, but that she herself is -on- th' ship captained by the Sea Witch."

He gave a little dreamy, cheerful smile just mentioning Rosie's name.

"Still and all, we deal with this ghost much longer, I'm gonner find myself settlin' down on land just so I don't have to worry 'bout this ship bein' on the water."

"You get used to that part," she said with a half-grin. "Judes doesn't like to do anything sea-witchy if she can help it. Most of the time when we take on new folk, they spend their first run just gettin' used to that she's so damn small."

Her smile faded. "She's pissed. We had a ghost on the last one, too. I think she's tired of dealin' with this mess. Mayhaps after this run no one'll have to worry about this ship again."

"I've give that woman my firstborn if she'd let me light the fire that burns this thing down," Ashon said with entirely too much vehemence.

"Although, hell, I don't know anything about spirits. Maybe it'll just attach itself to somethin' else. I don't know how that works."

Spider just laughed. "I said pretty much that same thing to Andre today, only without the firstborn bit. It gets a bit harder to promise firstborns once you've actually had them in your hands, so to speak."