Woke up bright and early yesterday morning to deliver some cargo from the Moorland Forge to Fort Pinta. According to Mr. Moorland, Ironstar has comfortably done heavy shipment runs like this before, so I thought it'd be ok to take this order on for a little income boost, and getting more experience using the hybrid pack-saddle every native Jorvegian knows the ins-and-outs of like second nature was a good opportunity for me. I was so thrilled to pick up some extra shillings that I didn't even ask Conrad, the blacksmith, what was in the boxes or what purpose the delivery was for. I'm not even sure if Conrad knew what they were for now that I think about it, but in hindsight I probably should have
at least asked. Because even though I weighed and loaded the crates up onto Ironstar myself and was confident that he was capable of carrying them the distance with ease, he's been acting a little bit odd ever since we got back. Over the course of the few weeks that I've gotten to know him, I've never seen him as paranoid as he seemed to be last night. He kept suddenly looking over his shoulders every few minutes as if he was irritated and trying to see if the load was still on his back.
I first noticed Ironstar's strange behavior around lunch time and worried that he may have gotten a splinter from one of the crates despite my triple-checking the extra long saddle pad was securely and protectively in place. So, I looked him over on my lunch break, poked, rubbed, and prodded, but he just looked at me as if
I was crazy. He firmly pressed his muzzle into my shoulder as he affectionately always does and I was convinced nothing was physically wrong with him at all. I thought, "Maybe I'm the one who is paranoid?" But come to think of it, I
am feeling a little out of sorts myself this morning. Maybe I'm just tired and trying too hard to think...
There really was nothing noticeably strange about the shipment. The boxes looked like normal wooden shipping crates and were clearly labeled with red spray-painted handling symbols. The crisp paper print-out of instructions that Conrad handed me when I first arrived at the forge for pick-up was pretty straightforward and included a signature line I'm assuming is Jorvegian slang for goodbye.
FRAGILE. KEEP RIGHT-SIDE UP. KEEP DRY.
Destination: FORT PINTA DOCKS.
Stack crates on marked location.
Storage Shed 1, Dock 3
Knock 5 times
Spit in the water
P.
Other than that shipment, Ironstar and I didn't do anything out of the ordinary on top of our normal workload yesterday, and we didn't even have to interact with anyone we haven't interacted with before. We stopped by the Fort Pinta stables before heading down to the docks and I caught up with Sindra for a little bit while Ironstar got a drink. When we arrived at the drop-off location, I noticed it was freshly marked with chalk, a thickly-lined, dusty white, hand-drawn square on the gangway right in front of the shed's door. There was no way we'd miss it. I unloaded the boxes, stacked as instructed, and knocked 5 times on the door. It took us no longer than 10 minutes to unload before we were out of there and on our way back to Moorland.
I'll see if I can find some time to head over to the forge today and ask Conrad what he knows about the shipment, but I didn't get very good sleep last night so I might just end up taking a nap if I can snag any free time at all. I did find it a little strange (uncharacteristically rude) that Conrad didn't offer to help me load the boxes onto Ironstar, and he was very quick leave me to it, getting started on his own workload as soon as the instructions were in my hands.
