Shelby - Nicole Ryan
The following post was chosen as one the grand winner for our Return to Cantha contest.
Therefore, both of their submitted entries can be found below.
You can find the author (Nicole Ryan) through the following links:
Twitter: @GemmaBabbler
Website: https://www.gemma-babbler.com/
Profile: Shelby Cole
“So, where ya from?”
The salty captain filled their glasses from the bottle on the bar. The spirits were weak, but they had to do. Luxuries were few and far between on a ship at sea.
“Kryta. Queensdale,” Shelby answered as she glumly contemplated the glass in her hands. She looked like a caged bird, didn’t she, the captain pondered to himself.
“Ain’t been there,” the captain answered after a big swig of his drink. “Fella you’re with, he from there too?”
“Yeah. Grew up near to each other. His family is friends with my aunt and uncle. Practically grew up in each other’s houses,” Shelby blandly explained as she looked at the miserable little square that pretended it was a window for the small galley.
“How do two kids from farms in Kryta end up out here?” the captain asked with a chuff of amusement.
Shelby sighed. She drank her glass in one go and reached to refill it, something the captain did not seek to dissuade her from. Ordinary girl like her, at least she wasn’t trying to pull nonsense he thought.
“Converging and diverging interests,” Shelby finally said. “He’s fascinated with magic, with knowledge. Me? I want to track, study, sometimes even tame or trap. I mean, you saw Pumpkin when we loaded him into the hold right?”
“That ya call that damn thing Pumpkin girl…,” the captain laughed. “It’s a gods forsaken bristleback! Went after two of my crew it did!”
Shelby rubbed her face as she grimaced. “Yeah, I warned them to let me handle him and they didn’t listen. I’d say I’m sorry, but I did give them the chance to avoid it. Took your doc a good few hours to get the spikes out of that one guy’s arse I think. But this is what I do, been doing it for so long now I don’t know anything else. Cynric said we could get on this ship so here we are.”
“Here ya are,” the captain answered, eyeing the woman up and down. There wasn’t anything lascivious about it, strangely enough. Not then, anyway. Scrap of a thing that she was, the captain felt more paternal than anything else as he spoke with her. “Cantha has its own ways. When they cut everyone off they took their own path. Ya ready for that?”
“I think so,” Shelby answered somewhat studiously. “I mean if Elona didn’t eat me whole and Maguuma didn’t make me a plant monster I got to be doing something right. I have to be careful Pumpkin disrupts nothing of their fauna but otherwise we should be okay. I’m eager to learn.”
“Just be careful, kid. Don’t let adventure harden your heart or spirit. Don’t become a gristled ol’ dog like me.”
Shelby raised her glass. “I won’t, Captain. I won’t. To adventures, Pumpkin and safe seas.” The captain chuckled and toasted with her, shaking his head. Ah, youth.
To the East
“If someone had told me I would be spending my days in this wild foreign land shoveling the shit of overgrown rabbits I’d have told them they were softer than… well…”
The shovel full of dung plopped wetly onto the heap as Shelby cleaned up the springer pen under the snickering watch of a few nearby adolescents. She made a playfully rude gesture their way and sent them scattering from their perches with gales of laughter. Shelby turned to look at the man she’d been speaking with again.
“What has you all the way out here though? You’re far from Kryta now, Cynric. Don’t they need you on the farm?”
The lad laughed as he raked a hand through his sandy hair, a sheepish look soon turned to Shelby as he contemplated his answer. She’d changed since he’d seen her last, but he couldn’t place how definitively. Her freckles seemed more numerous thanks to time in unrelenting Elonian sun. She had a few more scars on her lanky limbs from her adventures. Her features were still familiarly common yet astute, her dark blue eyes seeming as sharp as a hawk’s. Maybe it was the refinement that came with experience and exploration that marked her now. The gawkish best friend of his youth was now a more self-possessed woman now, wasn’t she. It was a fleeting thought that left him glancing away as he cleared his throat, something Shelby couldn’t miss but only raised a brow at.
“Your aunt said she hadn’t heard from you in a while. They said you usually send something and last she heard you were in Amnoon, or near it. The farms are doing well, both of them,” Cynric indicated somewhat slyly. She had not asked after all.
Shelby shook her head, leaning on her shovel as she eyed her friend. “Me not writing doesn’t send you running out into the wilds and you know it. What gives?”
Cynric sighed. “So remember Maguuma?” he began so delicately. “We went there on a lark Shel but the adventures we had. Remember learning to glide? Being chased by jungle beasts while trying to find young you could tame? And let’s not even talk about the wild nights…”
When Cynric’s words trailed off Shelby turned scarlet, something that must have jarred a memory in the man for his cheeks soon mirrored hers. Shelby took her turn clearing her throat before answering. “That was a while ago though. You went back to Kryta to marry that girl, right? Paulina?”
The awkwardness was brutal as silence weighed heavy between the two. Cynric shifted his weight before answering. “Well that didn’t happen,” he said, the words rushed. He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked around, his attention slow to return to Shelby as she remained watching him. “Shel we’re not the unseasoned explorers we once were. We have your friends with the Whispers now. Maybe it’s time to consider a new adventure together?”
“Maybe”, was all Shelby answered. Then she walked away. Cynric was left standing there like a loose end before he gathered the wits to hasten after her as she approached the stable full of springers awaiting their feed. He followed close, animated in his excitement as he reached to stop her.
“Cantha, Shelby. Cantha,” he started. He reached for both of her hands as he went on. “I heard of ships going that way that will take us. Fair price. No pirates,” he hastily qualified, silencing an interruption from her immediately. “Shing Jea, Echovald Wilds,” he enticed further. “Untouched lands of beauty we’ve only heard whispers about. Cities unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. I hear there’s sparkling fields of jade and precious metals and I know there’s got to be plenty for you to track and study.”
Shelby looked down at her dirty hands clutched so fast by her oldest friend, a friend that looked at her with the same brimming enthusiasm and eagerness he’d had as a child. Years had made him sleek and handsome, but they had not diminished that light. He was the social powerhouse; she was the studious loner by comparison. Something in recognizing that sent a flash of pain crossing her features that she quickly swallowed down as she tried to formulate a response to him.
“I do kind of like it here,” she began slowly, trepidatious enough to give Cynric’s exuberance pause. “Cantha? I thought no one went there, that it was impossible to reach after. Are you sure you’re not being fooled?”
“I’m not being fooled,” he answered with fierce determination. “This is real. It could be an absolute mistake, or it could be the adventure of a lifetime. There’s no one in all of Tyria, all of Elona, all of anywhere that I would rather go with though,” he pleaded.
“But we don’t know the language and if I end up offending the locals like I did when I first got to Amnoon,” Shelby replied warily. “That took almost a year to overcome!”
Her words said one thing, but her actions said another. She drew her hands from Cynric’s just so she could freely pace before she started doling out food to the anxiously waiting springers. She caressed one of the younger steeds on its fuzzy head as it ate, smiling absentmindedly before she looked back to her friend.
“Are there really phoenixes, you think?” she asked, her voice wistful.
Cynric let out a laugh and swept her up in his arms, spinning her around in an embrace as the springers chirruped and chittered their complaints at the human interruption to their meal.
“If there are we’re sure going to find them! It’s going to be amazing, Shel. Our best adventure yet. We’re going to see everything,” he declared with a bold smile as he set Shelby down. She could not help but to smile back.
A new adventure indeed.