Rolling Dice

Slice-of-life short. Two men on a pirate island have a friendly conversation one evening.

More of Achiel Vermeer and Haughty Paris, just some Gen slice-of-life, about 1k.

Note: I am unfortunately still recovering from this nasty virus I had at the beginning of the month, and whether it was Covid or another influenza, my recovery is very slow and writing is quite difficult.

Thanks to everyone for your good wishes and your patience as I slowly continue to heal up, I absolutely abhor when sickness prevents me from writing properly, and I am unspeakably impatient about it all, as I ever am.

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“It’s going to squall,” Paris murmurs, leaning his elbows on the balcony railing. Now and then, a few of Vermeer’s coworkers look curiously up to the two of them through the open doors to the balcony. Now and then, Vermeer will chat to him in a coffee shop or — he prefers — on the bench outside Tom Bale’s haberdasher’s, their backs to the stone wall.

“A day or so’s storm, that’s all,” Vermeer says, not looking up from his log of numbers, which he’s reading through line by line, tracing his progress with a pencil, before paging onto the next one. “After the storm is done battering your battened hatches, you’ll make quite the pretty penny from the enforced break, as you always do.”

“I suppose,” Paris agrees, sipping from his drink.

Vermeer doesn’t like it in the brothel — he doesn’t like brothels in general, finds they’re too…