#coloringforfun

Wonderful coloring page! Old man portrait

my lineart of Morrigan the celtic goddess of war! 

she is one of the most powerfull goddess of the celtic panthon, that can mutate in a crow or a wolf.

My coloring book is now available at Aquarium of the Pacific!

Find them in Long Beach, CA & at Aquariumofpacific.org

I have this story I want to tell you…

Once there was a boy who’d lived most of his life on the deck of a ship. He had been left there at a shockingly young age by his mother, a woman of unsavory reputation, who nevertheless loved him enough to know that his prospects as a cabin boy would exceed any opportunities he might have as one of the street urchins she saw around her. She convinced the captain to take him on by telling him a tearful story about the boy’s father, a young sailor who had regularly visited her while at port, and then been killed in the line of duty (“…so young, so brave!” she wiped a tear from her eye while surreptitiously watching the captain’s reaction. He eyed her doubtfully but accepted her story at face value, always uncomfortable in the presence of a crying woman).

 The boy proved to be a hard worker, who thrived in the ever-changing landscape of foreign ports. By the time he had reached his twelfth year, he was a scrawny, scrappy boy who could climb higher than most of the grown men on board, and could fit in the smallest nooks in the hold. He loved the colorful stories told by the sailors, and the colorful port markets and the colorful girls in those ports that he was cheeky enough to talk to, having watched and learned from the other sailors, who were adept at sweet-talking their way into local feminine hearts.

 He took after his mother in this way: he loathed boredom above all else. This led him to mischief more often than not, and frequently brought him punishment, which he never learned from. Although he was a sincere, industrious sailor who longed to be a captain one day, long weeks becalmed on still seas never failed to cause him an itch for drama, despite the consequences. The captain, a kind but stern man, often tried to instill in him a spirit of responsibility but despaired that he would ever rise in the naval ranks.

This all changed one summer when the ship took on a small group bound for the East Indies on a scientific expedition. One of the scientists had brought along his son, an awkward, hulking boy, over-grown for his age. The sailors grumbled at the amount of luggage he had brought along, and were even more annoyed to find that the majority of the boy’s boxes contained books…a heavy, unwieldy library, out of place on a ship that needed room for food and supplies.

 The cabin boy was wary of the new boy at first, and scornful of his laziness. The cabin boy was used to long days of hard work, and the scientist’s son spent most of his time reading on deck, or seasick in his cabin. But an incongruous friendship began when the scientist’s son saw the small cabin boy struggling with particularly large buckets of food on his way from the galley to the sailors’ mess. He silently helped the smaller boy carry them, following him back and forth, assisting with more heavy loads. This saved the cabin boy a cuff from the ill-tempered cook, and in gratitude, he magnanimously offered to show the scientist’s son how to clean and prepare bait for fishing (which made the boy violently ill, but he stalwartly thanked the cabin boy and later helped him with this task regularly, when his stomach grew hardened to the heaving of the sea).

In return, over the next few months, the scientist’s son taught the cabin boy how to read. This was a huge, a monumental gift, though the cabin boy did not realize it at the time. Not only would this be a great boon for his future career, but it also saved him from his old nemesis, boredom. He took to reading with surprising ease, and for the rest of his life he never arrived at a port without seeking out a bookseller’s first thing. Over the next leg of their trip, the scientist’s son loaned him the simpler books in his library, and told him stories out of the books that were too advanced for the cabin boy to read.

Alas! The happy first days of this unlikely friendship came to an abrupt end when the ship encountered a violent storm, well off the coast of Ceylon. The ship was battered for several hours while the sailors tried to bring it closer to land. As it began to break apart and sink, the crew and passengers scrambled first for the lifeboats, then any floating piece of detritus they could reasonably hope would keep them afloat in the surging waters. The scientist’s son, ungainly and, worse, unable to swim, was swept into the rough waves when the lifeboat he was on tipped into the dark water. With a shout of alarm, the cabin boy threw himself almost out of his boat in an attempt to save him. Cursing, the sailors in his lifeboat grabbed the small boy who had almost upended their own lifeboat in his attempt to save his friend.

To be continued…?