Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

"I'm just saying I don't think it's a great idea just sailing right into a busy port before we find out more about what actually goes on there!" Lotan is saying, again. "What do you say?" he asks Kerilas. We've been sailing for three days. Supplies are running low. We can catch fish, but out here we can't catch any fruit or vegetables. Or bumwool for that matter, which is a source of growing anxiety on board. Someone's using too much.

The following morning we are all more than rested and starting to understand what 'cabin fever' means. Lotan... Dave had managed to spear a couple of fairly large fish with a boat harpoon in the night, so we had one of them barbecued for breakfast, which Jalese managed to make into something interesting with the dried fruit and some tangy spices and sweet potato she found in the small food store. It was delicious, and we were hungry. I was very hungry. I'd missed out on the sausages.

"So then what happened, we climbed all the way to the top of this mountain, only to find the old man got there before us, sitting there happy as you like on this tatty old rug he's put down where it's a bit flat. Now we knew there was no way he could've got past us on foot, ’cause we were, you know, hot-footing it ourselves." Lee isn't speaking English. He's telling the story to Jalese. His idiomatic way of speaking translates surprisingly well.

Fur, I have decided, is a very nice material to sleep in. I'm not sure what kind of fur it is, but it's very soft. I hope, if I'm not supposed to eat meat, that it's at least okay for me to use fur. Jalese didn't seem to think it odd of me anyway. And, I tell myself, we're in a primitive society, and fur is still a necessary material, so the whole modern attitude to the use of fur doesn't apply. I tell myself. It's simply practical.

Just a rough links page for now. Webcomics I like.

• Applegeeks
• El Goonish Shive
• Flipside
• Girl Genius
• Megatokyo
• No Rest For The Wicked
• Errant Story
• The Midlands
• Kagerou

"I have another question," Dave says a little later. The formality with which he speaks is weirdly at odds with his muscular, barbaric visage. "Where's the loo?" We all stare at him. I don't know what to think. "You still think this is a hallucination?" James says acidly. "You know, I think I prefer you when you're smoking grass," Dave bites back. "Yeah, so do I." James sulks a little, acknowledging the point, after a fashion. "Oh shut up, both of you!" I snap. "You're like fucking children." It's surprising enough that they both do actually subside.

"But I'm a girl!" Lee wails for about the eighteen billionth time. Well, maybe the third. Or fourth. "What am I s'posed to do now?" "Well if I were you, I'd play with my breasts," James points out, having about exhausted the sensible, intelligent and sympathetic responses. "Seriously." "What? Oh, yeah, that's a thought." Lee's usual sardonic grin flashes suddenly from the petite Asian-looking girl's face. It's kind of weird. Given the right cue, Lee could always be depended to switch into showman-mode. "No! Wait! You're trying to distract me!"

Someone is coming up from belowdecks. Footfalls on the steps inside the low door, then the door itself is pushed open. A man, tall and elegant, somehow even in that position, extricates himself from the cabin up into the cockpit. No, not a man, I correct myself. An elf, like me. Only, not like me. He has long fine white hair tucked in under a fur he's wrapped around his shoulders, and a beautiful perfect face. It has the look about it of immeasurable age, and yet it is the face of a young man.

The sky lightens and the wind gets a little stronger, and for a while I'm joined by a large bird of prey of some sort. We can't be too far from land, I think, because it's clear he's not a seabird. A coastal hunter, maybe. He stands on the gunwale proudly. His white chest plumage stirs and fluffs in the wind, and catches the first pink beams of the sun. "You're beautiful, aren't you?" I say, and of course he ignores me. He's almost close enough for me to stroke his feathers, but something tells me that would be unwise. So we sit and enjoy the dawn together.

It had been a good gaming night. We'd walked along the coast until we'd come to a tiny harbour that would have been all but invisible from the sea, and you practically had to walk into it from land before you saw it as well. It was clearly the slavers' main landing port. Luckily they hadn't heard the news of our escape. That wasn't entirely luck, of course, as we'd left no-one at the camp in any position to report the breakout. If anyone had been sent there from the port to find out, they hadn't returned yet.