Short Stories 366:30 — “Search for the Heart of Ocean” by A.J. Fitzwater

[image error]I was not expecting cute, and I certainly wasn’t expecting adorbs-aww-squee! levels of cute, but here we are, at the last story from Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) and I am overwhelmed with squees and adorbs and cutes and awws. Frankly, it’s a great choice to end the collection with, and as anchor stories go, it left me with a smile on my face as I closed the book and that’s definitely a solid end to an anthology, no?

A.J. Fitzwater brings us anthropomorphic pirates in this tale of a ship in search of a legendary jewel. Chincillas and marmosets and other wee mammals make up the crew, and the captain—Captain Cinrak the Dapper, of course—is taking the crew on this mission to try and replace a jewel she broke out of the queen’s crown previous to the telling of this tale, and as such, only the best will do.

There are genderqueer characters, trans characters, the most fabulously described mermen, and unexpected appearances of other, larger sea creatures that turn this from a tale of jewel-seeking into something much more sweet, and the overall effect is, well, adorable. I’d love to see this one in graphic novel form. But! More importantly? There are more voyages to come, thanks to the upcoming The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper, a collection of stories about this very Capybara pirate and her crew!