El Fuego y La Flor - The Storm

Chapter 15 - Cyclops snot and many other unsanitary aspects.

Cassia

I let him sleep until it was already night. At least from my perception of time, which wasn't exactly great. I didn't wake him up, he just stirred at some point and almost hit me in the face when he turned around. Lucky for me, I could dodge.
»Hey, you're awake!«, I then said, excited to finally break the silence. I hated to sit in silence. I constantly needed noise to relax. Weird, I know.
»Cotton candy.«, he replied tiredly and turned around again. Ah yes. I got dreams about drowning and being bitten by snakes and watching all my friends and my only home, drown in an awful flood, and he got dreams about another kind of horror: diabetes.

»Mhm, I understand.«, I nodded, while rolling my eyes. I decided to play along. One of the great pleasures of life was talking to people who were only half awake, and only spouting nonsense.
»May I have some?«
Silence. Then he shook his head. I saw it from the corner of my eye and turned my head towards him.
»No.«, he mumbled. »Gods forbid it.«
Those damn gods and their selfish needs for cotton candy! I'd never understand it.
I shrugged, a wide grin on my face, while I slid down again into a more comfortable position.
»That's too bad. Must be really good cotton candy.«
He mumbled something incomprehensible in Spanish, which made me chuckle. I just watched him now. For some time I hoped that his tired brain would produce some more, funny material for conversation, but unfortunately he woke up completely.

He turned around and sat up, now looking down at me. I raised an eyebrow, my smile still hadn't vanished.
»Did I just talk about Cotton Candy...?«
»Sí. You didn't want to share. Pretty rude if you ask me.«
He scratched the back of his neck and turned away to yawn.
»Why should I share my Cotton Candy with you?«, he then replied, turning towards me again, a smile on his lips now. I shook my head with a mock expression of sadness.
»Ouch. And here I thought we'd finally become friends.«
He turned away again and stretched. He didn't reply to my teasing. I couldn't see his face but I assumed he had become a touch more red. I grinned even more.

I sat up and tapped his shoulder. »What, are you embarrassed at that?« Forgive me, sometimes I simply didn't know how to shut my mouth.
»You wish.«, he replied with a confident smile in my direction. You know what they say. Fake it til you make it.
»Hey, are you saying we aren't friends?«
»Are we?«
»Do you need a formal invitation to be called my friend?«
He considered this for a moment, then he shrugged.
»I would really like one. With a pink bow, and glitter, and handwriting, like 'Do you want to be my friend YES _ NO _'«, he grinned stupidly at that idea.
I just shook my head and nudged his shoulder.
»You won't get one of those, unless you make it yourself.«, then I got up and stretched.
»Where are you going?«
»To find out where this ship is going, and how we get off it. You coming along?«

He did come along. I shouldered my backpack and snuck out of the alcove. It was night - of that much I was sure. The windows, which were high up in the container hall, were pitch black. We wandered around the hall, I took the lead, pretending to know where we were going. Truth was, I was just walking around, hoping a clue would appear right in front of us. Unfortunately, that didn't work. We found the exit of the hall and stopped in front of it. There was no noise on the other side of it. Which didn't mean that we were safe. We didn't even know, if those Cyclopses slept at night. We just trusted they would. After nodding at each other, we both carefully pulled open the double winged door and slid through it. There were no monsters or guards or anything. Just a long, empty hallway, with heavy, silver metal doors left and right, leading to more rooms. I didn't waste my time standing in the hallway. If a cyclops came out of one of the doors, it'd see us immediately. There was no option for cover here.

Our steps echoed through the hallway. Since the ship was constructed for Cyclopses, everything was about thrice as big as it would normally be. The hallway was longer and higher, and not as cramped. The doors to our left and right were heavy and four meters tall. And everything was pitch black. One time I accidentally kicked something soft, which slid away. I jumped back and softly whispered: »Eeeewwwwww!« while grabbing onto Leo. He ignited a small flame on his hand for us to see better, and I realised, to my horrors, that the thing I had kicked, were the underpants of a cyclops. At least I assumed they were of a cyclops. They could also be object of a very nasty 'Your mother' joke.
We took a huge step over the thing, and I kept whispering to myself how disgusting and unsanitary and gross this was. Leo just grinned next to me, obviously amused with my hatred for monster underwear.

We made our way down the hallway, glanced at every door and hoped to see any signs of an office or a bridge or maybe just a sticker that read where we were going. Finally, we had no choice but to ascend the stairs at the end of the ship, to get up to the second, and coincidentally the last floor. I looked up between the railing of the stairs and noticed that, further up, only stars were visible. It was beautiful, and I had to resist every cell in my body to not go up there. We made our way down the next hallway. Somewhere here had to be the quarter of the cyclopses. There was no other way to explain the loud snoring, which blasted through the halls. I was amazed that we hadn't heard it downstairs.

When we finally reached the end of the hallway, we found something which could, remotely, be considered an office. Leo extinguished the flame on the tips of his fingers and I turned the door knob. It was open. I slowly, carefully to not alert any of the Cyclopses, slid open the door. A loud snore was audible behind it, and I almost slammed the door shut again. After having calmed down, I pushed the door further open and lurked around the corner. The office looked like a normal principal's office. The one you'd sit in, one afternoon, while your parents stare at you judgingly and the teacher explains that you 'accidentally' set the school cafeteria on fire. (This had never happened to me. But it was exactly the kind of thing I would get blamed for. And, on second thought, it had probably happened to Leo.)
The most striking aspect of the room however, was the giant, sleeping cyclops. His head rested on a bunch of papers, which tried to escape from his weight, with every loud exhale he managed. A black strap was wrapped around his head and, for a long moment, I thought ht was wearing a bandana. The idea of pirate cyclopses was weird enough, but ninja pirate cyclopses? That's too much.

I then realised, that the bandana was actually the strap of an eyepatch. The giant bulge in the cyclopses face was covered by an even bigger, black patch. Did the cyclops want to look cool or intimidating with that? Did he just follow the newest trends he had discovered in the cosmopolitan? I didn't know. Fact is, he was blind, and looked like an idiot. I caught Leo's gaze and nodded towards the papers below the head. They looked awfully much like formal destination letters. Leo nodded and snuck around the cyclops. He tried to take one of the papers with his fingertips (there was cyclops snot all over them. Had I mentioned yet that I hated the unsanitary conditions on this ship?) but the Cyclops let out a yawn, which was as loud as the combined snoring of the whole cyclops crew, and smelled like all their underpants together.

Leo jumped back. I ducked behind the desk. The cyclops sat up, stretched, and then turned his head to the other side, rested it on the desk again, and kept snoring. I felt my breath hitch in my throat and my heart doing somersaults. I lurked over the edge of the table to Leo. He was standing right behind the Cyclops, his eyes wide. I nodded slowly and got up, snuck around the desk and carefully pulled one of the papers away from the desk. They rustled slightly, interrupting the Cyclops' snoring for a moment, but he didn't wake up. Never in my life had I had as much luck as now: the paper had all the information we needed. The destination the ship was going to (right in front of the coast of London), the fact that a helicopter would dock on top of the container transporter in three days and bring wares and boxes to the United kingdom. Even a formal signature. The letter T. T like Tantalus or Thanatos or Taco Bell.

I frowned. Leo lurked over my shoulder at the paper and did the thumbs up, while raising his eyebrow. We couldn't talk here. Not right next to the functional ears of a blind cyclops. I nodded and did the thumbs up, then I carefully placed the paper back on the desk. Then we snuck around the table again towards the doors. If we had been normal mortals, with phones or electric devices, I'm sure one of them would have rung by now. However, since that wasn't the case, something had to destroy our streak of perfect luck in another way. When we opened the door, a giant cyclops, who looked remotely like Justin Bieber (just, you know, bigger) stared at us quietly. I almost dropped my backpack, Leo almost dropped, well, himself. For a good five seconds we just stared at each other, then the cyclops began to scream.