Avery

A sweet half smile crossed his youthful face as he held the gleaming brass compass between his hands.

"Adventure!" he countered with an unexpected calm enthusiasm. "Can you really turn your back on this kind of adventure? On the chance of...five lifetimes?"

Kelly sighed a she folded her arms across her chest, as she tried to give the very pre-adolescent her sternest of gazes.

Unfazed the boy kept at it.

"This could solve all of your problems! Imagine..." he exclaimed as his eyes beamed with an animated excitement. "...no longer needing to beg for money! Never having to go door to door, or before those...stuffy board rooms..."

"Well there is the mater of dying a drawn out and gruesome death."

Charlie skeptically raised one eyebrow.

"That won't happen." he sternly replied as he pocketed the compass. "Not when we have the Shooting Star!"

He gestured up at the wooden warship that floated overhead...