Spice Pirates (part 1)
A not-so-swashbuckling tale of the not-so-high seas
Author’s note: This story is much more entertaining if you imagine all the characters as cats.
Origano’s ship arrived in the harbor at midmorning. There was nothing auspicious about it, nothing to portend that fortune and disaster would fall on the town or that the lives of its most prominent families would soon be irreparably altered.
The ship was an average merchant vessel: a bare-bones crew collected from ports around the world; cargo of varying worth from those same ports that they hoped to sell for enough of a profit to reach the next port, or at least enough to buy an evening of much-needed debauchery; a dozen or so passengers; and Origano.
He hopped off the gangway onto the dock with a satchel over his shoulder, a straw hat jauntily on his head, and a spring in his step. He’d made it safely across the ocean and was now free in the New World, with no overbearing family to tell him what to do or what to be. Free to find his destiny.
His stomach rumbled. Before his destiny, he must find lunch.
Rosamaria stood behind the counter of her father’s open-air shop, her mind only half on the task of selling the fruits and vegetables, pastries, sausages, and spices displayed before her. Her senses…
