Meanwhile, in the more or less shady part of the docks, a pale figure was squatting over at the pier, maintaining a silent vigil with his harpoon aimed at the murky water. He saw the reflection of his macabre face dancing in the water, a face he'd come to recognize as his own in time. He couldn't rightly recall what his faced once might've looked like. He took guesses, but hadn't seen many southeast-asian folk around here, especially not people with the same affliction as him. He still saw relatively abnormal people here and there. A gypsy with a hidden third eye here, a limp person resembling a clownfish more than a person there. He'd think his condition was more common.
So it was, that Irukandji, as he had started calling himself, was in an alternate life-state. Some old sea dogs tell tales of these so-called "Drowns", people who had drowned and continued living. The drown-curse lifts them back up, transformed into pale and slender husks of themselves. They spend their entire lives longing for the sea, but never quite reaching it. They stare at the waters hours at a time, only obsessively thinking about the depths they once drowned in. The Drowns know secrets kept hidden from the surface, but struggle to understand them, only seeing a glimpse of the big picture, forever wondering what is down there.
Irukandji snapped out of his thoughts, and struck his harpoon at his reflection. He pulled it up, and snatched the small fish lodged in the tip. He examined the scales and the eyes of the fish, whipped out his ice-pick and carved the eyes right off. He ate the eyes and put the fish into one of his pouches. He figured it was high time to get back to the Tavern with this week's shipment. He stood up and walked towards the Tavern.
The atmosphere inside was as chaotic as usual. The sight of this pale figure invoked the usual dread in a few select sailors, confusion and awe in a few others. Upon seeing him enter, the bartender stepped away from the counter for a while and met him in the dark corner siding the counter. Business as usual. He pressed himself against the bartender and hugged him, while slipping a murky green vial to his pocket with discretion.
"The usual, yes?", he said.
"Er, yes, take a seat and wait, will ya? I'll have the payment brought in a moment."
"Very well, fetch me a rum while you're at it.", he remarked as he sat down beside the west end of the counter. The bartender quickly passed him the rum and got back to his usual routines. The population in the Tavern was hardly sporting. There's the usual barfights, whores and manwhores alike mingling with one another, salty sea dogs getting their last bit of snatch before their voyage . . .
He couldn't remember the last time he had one, usually he picked the specific ones really into weird stuff. Not that there was anything weird about his manhood, it's as potent as ever. It's just that mixing and delivering shipments takes so much time these days. . .
He continued to spectate the tavern folk as he took swigs of his rum bottle and scratched the small yet itchy barnacle cluster on his back.