"In that case ..." He got up, and Lucy moved in at his gesture, taking the wheel. "I'm going down to see what we have in the galley that could feed three people."
Lucy now found herself, a bit awkwardly, alone with Dane. She didn't distrust him, but she wasn't sure what they could possibly have to talk about.
However, Dane turned out to be a surprisingly comfortable person to be around. He seemed content to sit in silence, not awkwardly or as if he expected her to say anything, but simply in a state of apparent ease. Lucy wasn't used to being around people who didn't want to talk, and she found it unexpectedly restful. It also let her concentrate on driving the boat.
"Are we still going the right way?" she asked.
Dane got up to have a look at her gauges. "Yeah, looks good." He turned his head and paused.
Lucy looked where he was looking.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Can you—um—"
Dane nodded and moved to take the helm. Lucy hurried over to the door of the pilot house.
The trash griffins were out on the deck. She hadn't even realized that they were still on the boat; she had honestly forgotten all about them. They must have been down in the hold. Now they were wandering around, scavenging for trash and crumbs.
Lucy opened the door. They scattered.
"Hey, little guys." She got a half sandwich out of the cooler and broke off a piece of bread crust. "Anyone want some?"
She went down to one knee and waited. After a moment, the boldest of them, the raccoon one, crawled up to take a crumb from her hand.
The others were clearly too shy to come close, so she tore the sandwich into three pieces and laid them on the deck in the open doorway, then retreated to hang on to the back of the pilot chair.
The raccoon one scuttled forward and snatched a bite. The others all promptly decided they needed that exact piece of sandwich, and a shrieking fight ensued.
"Never saw anything like those before," Dane said.
"Eren said they were rare."
But now she was suddenly wondering about their appearance so recently.
Is it a coincidence that griffins are showing up all of a sudden?
A coincidence that they were drawn to me?
EREN
Eren cameup from below to report back on the state of the galley and found the pilot house full of screeching, squabbling trash griffins.
Well, okay, they were in the doorway, but that was still way too close and there were way too many of them. He'd thought they had been left behind on the island where he and Lucy had sheltered from the storm, and good riddance.
They also had gotten hold of a sandwich somehow.
"Are you two feeding them?" Eren asked.
Lucy and Dane's guilty partners-in-crime expressions were hilarious. Eren had to struggle to keep a straight face.
"Okay, whatever. I'm going to make us something to eat. One of you can run the boat, the other can come down and help."
"I've got the helm," Dane said.
Eren gave him a little salute and went below with Lucy. He looked around to find the raccoon trash griffin slinking down after them. Lucy looked so delighted about it that Eren decided not to say anything and resigned himself to cleaning up a mess afterwards.
But the raccoon griffin explored the entire space, poking its beak into things, and then came close—but not too close, out of grabbing distance. It didn't seem to want to be petted. When Lucy extended another crumb, it came close enough to snap it out of her fingers and then scuttled off to a dark corner.
Eren started making dinner. Meanwhile, Lucy found a bird field guide in one of the cabinets and began glancing through, looking up the seagull halves of the griffins.