Listing to Port

I wouldn't sail this ship if I were you

Five unusual garments

1. The Revenge of Lost Pages. A dress that one may summon together by means of an ancient spell, known to the librarians at Alexandria and passed down in fire ever since. To make the Revenge of Lost Pages you will need a vial of old-book-dust, an inverted page thrice-dogeared, twenty shillings to pay your predecessor’s late fees and the legendary slice of bacon that librarian lore has it was once left in a returned book as a bookmark. The Revenge of Lost Pages summons from across time all of the remaining pages from books that you started but did not finish, stitching them into a dress of a design appropriate for the amount of material therein. If you have abandoned a lot of books mid-way through, for example, it is a relatively cheap way to get an unusual wedding dress. It is rather hard to remove the Revenge of Lost Pages, so you should be careful about summoning it to situations where it may be unwise to wear paper.  
2. The Emperor’s Old Clothes. A small travelling wardrobe featuring a selection of bodysuits designed to replicate the naked bodies of various current and historical emperors and empresses, allowing anyone who feels so inclined to re-enact the fable in more punishing climates without having to experience cold or nudity. The phone number to hire the Emperor’s Old Clothes is one of the things that rulers receive on accession to the throne, along with a nice shiny crown and a tea set from which to elegantly drink the blood of unicorns.
3. The Robes of the High Lord of the Navel. Woven from the delicately-spun thread of pure bellybutton fluff, the Robes of the High Lord of the Navel are a shimmering grey and can be used to pad around in unobtrusively at night. They may be hired from the London Guild of Navel Gazers for a small fee by people with interesting bellybuttons; for example, those who have had stomach surgery or have recently been pregnant.
4. The Message. There are eleven instances of the Message known about. They all were constructed in the same way: a lone walker would come across an object in the woods half in and half out of our physical dimensions, with moving things massed about it a little like calligraphy serifs. They would let it be known that the walker could become a host for a message to humankind. The beings were very persuasive. Taking their alien inks, they would write the message on the walker’s skin in great bold characters, layer upon layer of them, until the walker’s body was grey-black with alien inkstuff. The ink would dry into a thick, warm bodysuit that would later need to be cut off at the local hospital. No way of separating the letters could be found. Putting old, shed Messages on is said to be enormously comforting. They are normally kept in government Repositories of Things.
5. Hitler’s jumper. A white, woolly cable-knit number that may, or may not, once have been worn by Adolf Hitler. The right to wear Hitler’s jumper is awarded as a penalty for invoking Godwin’s Law in the face of an historically-appropriate comparison of something to Nazi Germany. As such, the roll of temporary owners is long and complex and generally the official custodian of the jumper, a rather morose dachshund, is not able to deliver the jumper to each owner before having to reroute in an attempt to reach the next one. Nevertheless, the jumper does sometimes reach its destination; so, if you should find a jumper-carrying dachshund at your door one morning, it may be worth reassessing your recent online activity.  

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