Inktober 2026 3
Inktober 2026 3, Miniature
Captain’s personal log, day 3
Tea’s gone cold again. The Pennywhistle is parked next to the mug, where she’s sat since we left dock. She’s about as long as my forearm, and she’s held together with solder and stubbornness.
She was my first command, a Class-4 cargo tug. Eleven years of hauling ore pods through the belt in a hull that rattled and leaked and stank of coolant and old coffee.
She never made a delivery on time and she never left us stranded. The habit’s my grandfather’s. He built sailing ships inside bottles, rigging threaded through the neck with bent wire and patience, and he said a captain should keep a copy of the first ship that scared him. I started with a brigantine at nine. Every command since has earned a miniature, but the tug is the only one I built myself, from scrap lifted off the dock a pocketful at a time.
She’s all wrong.
The struts are too long, the panelling’s guesswork, and I gave her the dent in her port sponson that the real one earned in the Ceres yards. The crew call her sentimental, and I let them. When the log gets heavy I look at her beside the mug and remember how small she was. She carried us anyway, and I’ve never found a better reason to keep going.
