The Private Journals of Eamon Cassidy

Entry 2

~I knocked upon her window, to try and ease her pain.

She then rose up and let me in then barred the door again~

April 15th,

1668

Just shy of two full days have passed since I last wrote in this journal, and yet it seems as though it's been a lifetime. I feel as if my life has been radically changed in the last two days. If I thought my future was a mystery when I arrived ashore, I am certainly unsure of it now. Let me begin with the morning after I wrote last.

I rose at first light, facing the sea. The sun making way above the horizon burned brighter on this day, or at least that was how it appeared to me. I made my way back into town, I was to meet Oscar the following evening, but before I did I needed to pay a visit to an old friend of mine. As I mentioned, this was not the first time I'd visited Havana. My visits were brief, but when my family was in the city, the gentlemen at Warmaiden's were indispensable. They were blacksmiths in the southern part of the city. My parents were always in the market for new weaponry, so having a friend who could always keep them resupplied was an absolute necessity. My parents scourged the seas and fought with demons so fierce there lived not a single missionary so bold as to attempt to return them to the light of god, and just two men gave them the tools to do so.

"Fumnaya!" I shouted into the empty shop as I rang the bell by the door. The shop was not a place of a particular elegance, I'll admit. The floors were swept, the counters clean, but past that not much of an attempt was made to make the place presentable. Nevertheless, some of the finest weaponry crafted outside of Europe hung from the walls and sat in the glass cases. The right half of the room was where the shopkeeper displayed his swords, so naturally I drifted there. Rapiers, cutlasses, sabres and short-blades, each constructed with precision that even a pacifist could appreciate. I reached across the counter and unlocked the case, and reached for a dagger that caught my eye when I heard someone approaching from the back.

"You would do well to put down the dagger, my master does not take too kindly to thieves" uttered a deep, thickly accented african voice from behind me.

"You can drop the 'Master' Naya, I know you haven't been a slave to anyone in years" I turned to face the man in the doorway. He stood at nearly six and one half feet tall, built like a warrior. His black skin did little to hide the soot and dirt that he was so covered in. He cleaned his hands with a rag as he stepped out into the shop.

"Eamon Cassidy" He said, in a much more friendly tone. "Oh my friend it has been a long time since last we spoke, how are you?" Fumnaya embraced me. "Do you travel with your parents?"

"We've much to catch up on Naya, but first I've known you and the old man long enough to know that at this, and most other hours of the day Seamus is asleep, and I need to have a word with the both of you, could you wake the old bastard for me?"

"Of course, young cassidy, Give me a moment" Fumnaya turned into the back room of the shop, in the distance I heard, "Seamus, wake up we've got company"

After a few more rumblings from Naya, the old man finally spat back "You can sell perfectly fine without me what's the goddamn need to get me for!"

"The young Cassidy boy is here! He's waiting in the shop"

"Cassidy?! Oh for God's sake why didn't you wake me?"

"I just did you old drunk! Best we not keep him waiting." I couldn't help but chuckle as Seamus stumbled out of the back room door. Never in my life have I met two people who bickered as much as these two did without a wedding ring on either finger, and I couldn't adore them more. Naya followed closely behind as the old man put a hearty grin on his face and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me with more ferocity than a man his age should still be able to muster. He invited me into the back room where he promptly and unsurprisingly proposed rum accompany my arrival. I told him and Naya about my parents, and their defeat.