Captain’s log #127, 1703

Dr. Howsabout and the rest of my mates have asked me to write down what is possibly the most interesting event regarding my Captain's birthday. I still remembered like it was yesterday, despite that it was just a month ago that our crew’s doctor Howsabout had kindly asked us to take the day off. I figured this was for something major as the Captain never let us have any breaks at all, my suspicion was right as we landed in a local village after months at the icy sea.

There we all headed to the bar, the warmth from the fireplace burning the wood into piles of smoky ashes, from the amount of rum being served and drinked, and the cheer from my mates finally being somewhere warm in this snowy hell. Then, the Captain came in. His big broad shoulders that could break a door, half covered in snow that dripped down to his very black boots. He stormed in, I swore he was struggling to get past his crewmates just because of his sheer size. He stood in the middle of the bar, amidst the drunk and cheering crew singing sea shanties.

“My crew, Avast!”

He shouted, then pinning his sword to the ground “I know this is not usually what I put you men through, but I thought I could perhaps serve you well considering how it's soon my special day”. Then it became all clear, it was just his birthday! Everyone, including the bartender and the ladies cleaning the tables expressed cheerfully about his special day being tomorrow. After a couple of meals and songs, we eventually head off to an Inn. The blistering snow storm falling onto the village was nice to look at, and figured that the snowy cold ground is better than being on thin ice. We rest upon our rooms and my matey comes up to me

“Joey, don’t you think we should bring our captain a nice gift for his big day? After all, he didn’t try to kill us unlike our last crews.” he said as If i wasn’t thinking the same, “Well you suppose I’m not considering the same now are we?”

I chuckled with his anxious unease being washed away from sudden relief, I still have no clue on what he was worrying so much about. We head off the bed and live for another day in peace.

We woke up in the bed that was soft like the finest silk found in the middle of dreamland. My mate and I reunite from the rooms and head off outside to the farmer’s market. The smoky smell radiating from the meat made us consider giving our Captain his favorite snack after so long months. We had 5 doubloons, sadly the meat cost 5.1 doubloons upon closer look. As we were bummed out as we imagined all sorts of horrible things that could happen to us, a quiet beautiful snowflake dropped onto my friend.

This was the fourth leafed clover as suddenly, a small doubloon piece hit the back of my head. “Oh hey! Lucky doubloon for lucky ol’ us” said my mate as he picked up the piece of doubloon out of my frozen hair “Where you supposed that this piece came fr-”. Before suddenly, a strange cloaked woman approached us, and took notice of the snowflake on top of my friend. “You better heed this warning young man, if you choose not to. Then you’ll suffer a fate worse than Davy Jones's Locker.” then promptly walked away without any explanation on this warning she warned us about.

We obviously went ahead and bought our Captain some Historically inaccurate Kebab. I didn’t make that up, it's just called that okay? There, we looked in awe at the snowflake my mate now has. “It makes me feel pretty, I wonder what else we can take advantage of” he says with a joyous expression. We went off to the carnival that was near our ship and there lied the strength test of the mighty hammer. “Take a step up and man up for all just one doubloon!” The showman says near a sign that reads off the exact name I just called it. Conveniently, a doubloon is just near my boot and as I pick it up, the showman takes notice of me “You seem like a good man, give this a try with that doubloon on your greedy fingers!”.

Sure I said, and gave the doubloon to the showsman. Then proceed to hit it as hard as I can but all of us know that carnival games are just disguises to steal doubloons. “Oh well my friend! Looks like you didn’t hit the bell, sad day for you unless you give me another d-” Then he accidentally slipped on the edge of the bridge and fell into the cold cold water, before resurfacing as a giant ice cube with him trapped. “That serves well with rum” My mate jokingly says before I hit him in the side for making a horrible joke.

We approached the center of the village to meet with our crew before we left. There lay massive tables of cake and sweets. The aroma was enough to entice our sweet tooth to just steal some for ourselves before the grand reveal of the Captain’s cake. There we sang good ol sea shanties before a yellow snowball hit the Captain’s eyepatch. “Who dares throw this at me?” He angrily says looking at his crew before briefly getting hit by another yellow snowball.

Then another.

Then another.

Before long, we are in the middle of a snowball fight. It was like war, men going to the fronts before being pelted to the ground like flies. We took shelter behind a rough snow wall built by little kids “Joey, I don’t think I can bear to look at the tragedy” My friend cowardly says hunched up like a fetus but I couldn’t bear to look at him in this state, I fought back. It was a cruel and awful fight hurling snowballs, using cannons to launch giant balls to the walls.

We were making progress before being met with the leader of this fight, General Whatshisname. He was an awful and evil man, playing dirty with those yellow little bastards of hell. Marching forwards while dragging my mate to each wall is not what I expected to be doing, but I felt proud. “YOU BETTER THROW SOMETHING” Before I got hit with an extra yellow snowball. It felt like I got hit with a sharp sword up to my brain.

I went down and got dragged to our crew doctor. I screamed out his name in terror and told him to throw something, anything to end this. “You just have to believe, mate! You have to believe in yourself like eating yucky soup when you’re sick!” I thought he wasn’t able to listen to the blistering snowball falling as more and more men were falling down, even our Captain. Then, the snowflake on top of my friend flew off to General Whatshisname, a doubloon hit him in the back of his head and since he didn’t have frozen hair, he fell down to his yellow icy hell which was just a hole.

The war chants ended, the Trauma ended, the balls stopped falling and everyone came to cheer the sudden end. The soldiers joined us because they didn’t like their apparent self centered General and sang Happy Birthday to our Captain. We finally get to eat cake, get a eyepatch from Dr. Howsabout while infected from the yellow snowball. We head off the ship before my mate and I bring the Captain the gift we bought him for. “You guys didn’t have to get my favorite!” He says happily before devouring the kebab like there was no tomorrow. There, we sailed off to the snowy sea to claim many prizes and claim serenity.