“I came here looking for ship parts. Maybe even a whole ship. Instead I found an X. X marks the spot.”
“You’re in over your head,” she said back, the first female salvage related person he’d met. And the 1st person of color, period. She rezzed in to help, to be truthful. RDBH had the perfect angle for an opening shot. He didn’t want to mess it up.
“Or a spot marked by an X,” he changed the wording of his former sentence. Now that she had come he could look down.
Ah yes, a bunch of stuff named Mare: cigarettes, beer, ‘nother different kind of beer. “Why are you running an, er, eatery stand? Salvage person.”
“I have to make ends meet,” she said plainly, matter-of-factly. “Else how could I offer goofy looking scavengers like you such good prices, eh?”
RDBH looked over, took her in better. Pretty face. Jewels on head and body. Attractive. But the prices were still too expensive. More than one way to skin a cat? “What’s your name, dear?”
“Pearl. Black Pearl most call me. To differentiate from other types of pearls: grey, white, so on.”
“Black Pearl,” he parroted back, making the birds on his shoulders share a smile. He seemed to have heard the name before. But where?
(to be continued)
Sunklands 