FictionPress.com - let the words flow| FictionPress.com - let the words flow |
| Home Just In Communities Forums Beta Readers Dictionary Search | Login Register Extras |
The SPAN of the SEA
But now, boredom is my only companion out here in the middle of what I’m guessing is the East Elais Sea, my only partner on this bare, hollow ship that shames the name of Carolyn. I tell you, you don’t know boredom until you’ve been out at sea for Eschcus, peace be upon his weary soul, knows how long, staring into the deepest blue you could possibly imagine that stretches beyond the ends of the earth. I can’t seem to steer The Sweet Carolyn to land. I’m lost. In fact, I’m probably going in neverending circles, doomed to a death with nothing but boredom to accompany me.
Though that’s partly my fault.
I threw my mother’s letter, the last reading material I’d had on board, into the sea a few hours ago, in a fit of rage and insanity. I can’t say I regret it, though; in fact, throwing the letter almost rescued me from my own madness.
If you can, imagine being TOTALLY ALONE. In fact, don’t even try because unless you’ve been in my situation, you can’t even imagine this feeling...so just try to empathize with me here. Anyway, now imagine that you are not only TOTALLY ALONE, but have been abandoned by your entire crew in favor of your own brother, who has a much more organized ship. Now imagine that, while angry at your brother for stealing away your shipmates, you leave port for your original destination against better advice. Without a navigator to read the only map you have on board, which isn’t in English but in Mandarin, the mother tongue of about half of your backstabbing crew (including said navigator). Imagine floating around for...maybe three days or so before admitting to yourself that you are totally lost and TOTALLY ALONE, and then imagine floating around for three days after that to foolishly try and find your brother’s trade route so that you could board his ship and leave the entire embarrassing episode behind you.
Now, friend, imagine the food expiring so quickly that you have no choice but to eat as much as you can before it is all worthless...now imagine the nights getting colder and colder as all your clothes are eaten away by salt water over a great many long, lonely nights, and being so cold that you have no choice but to burn every book you have on board. Imagine that reading has gotten you through very tumultuous periods of your life and you hold books in general in high regard. Imagine watching these books go up in smoke, and you can’t do anything but cry and hope you live another day.
Imagine your mother had sent you a letter the day before you reached the port, and you had forgotten it until you took off your last tattered shirt and seen it flutter out of the bottom and onto the deck. Remember, you have been TOTALLY ALONE for a few weeks or so now, living off of some mice you’ve roasted over Mark Twain (an old U.S. writer for those who didn’t pay attention during their Past World Society classes) and Charles Dickens (another old U.S. writer).
This letter reminds you that there are other human beings on this earth, that perhaps not all is lost as you bob hopelessly at sea. That somewhere, you have a woman who pushed you out of her...womb and calls you ‘sweetie’. That there’s actually someone who might just be suffering this boring, dangerous hell-at-sea with you.
Imagine that you go for weeks eating countless roasted rats and burning countless shelves of books to eat them and to help bear the freezing nights at sea with NOTHING but a five-page letter from your mother to comfort you.
Imagine going for a few more weeks deluding yourself into believing that you will find salvation.
Imagine finally looking at this letter, looking out into the azure sea, and wondering if it’s really worth it – to hope. Imagine wondering if maybe everything, your mother, the ship (named ‘Honorable Carolyn’), the forever sea, the span of the sky, the rats, and the dying hope you have are all just lies. Imagine looking at this letter for days after your epiphany of lies and feeling your mind slowly slipping farther and farther away, threatening to go up in smoke with The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms (Twain, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, I’m a big fan of the old American authors as you can see) if you have to see your mothers long, languid signature one more time.
Now, friend, do you blame me for tossing that wretched thing into the East Elais Sea?
Thus I am TOTALLY ALONE...do you understand, now?
Ah, but as my ship wafts away from the area where I think that I threw the letter, I look off into the horizon and lie to myself that any minute now, beautiful land will expose itself to me. That I will hobble onto the beach with shaky knees, and I will fall to the ground in elation and lick the dirt that I never knew I could love so much...when you are lost at sea, you find yourself falling in love with the idea of land when, like boredom, you’ve never much thought about it. I don’t care which of the two continents I land upon, even if I find myself wandering lost in a forest of cannibals. Alright, that might be bad, but...
...hmm, my hands are pained and the ink is drying off my pen.
Is that another trick of my eyes, or do I see a small boat off in the distance? A small, sallow black-haired fellow sprawled underneath an umbrella of tarp, looking in my direction, but possibly – like me – thinking that this is just an illusion, another trick played upon him by Eschcus, peace be upon his weary soul? I think he’s shouting...yes, he’s sitting up and screaming now, and now he’s standing, rocking his small boat, emerging from the tarp...oh, this sun, if only I had the strength to yell back to you, my brother...
I lurch the boat in his direction and heave myself to the rear to drop anchor. I yell to this man that I will help him, though from even this distance I know he doesn’t speak a lick of English. He’s frantically rowing toward me with a broken-up paddle, and finally he reaches the side of Honorable Carolyn and gives her a good ‘thwack’ with his palm, as if to make sure she’s real.
I help him on board.
Friend, I am no longer TOTALLY ALONE. My sin of abandoning my mother for my sanity and boredom in the same way my crew abandoned me for my brother and better pay has been repented with weeks of burning books and eating what could have been plagued rats. The man grabs me roughly with his calloused fingers, and while he’s barking at me in Mandarin I realize from the scent of his breath that he has been reduced to drinking his own urine for nourishment.
I hold this poor, kindred soul close, my friend. This man who must have a story similar to mine if he’s been brought down to pissing into a container and drinking from it. His entire body smells of excrement, but I do not cringe, because I can only imagine what my own being could reek of.
“--------------,” he blubbers into my hair, shaking my shoulders with his weary hands, letting his boat float far away from Honorable Carolyn.
He says a few more phrases in his tongue and I bring him to my hand-made shelter from the sun, covering him with a thin sheet made from the final scraps of my clothing. Both of us naked, neither thinking much of it. I sit and listen to him as he rambles on, and I offer him some rat jerky which I am well sick of and he wolfs it down eagerly, nearly crying as he does so. I heard some words that I learned from my crew; ‘Family,’ ‘ocean’, etc., and I piece these together with what little I have left of my conscious thought. It’s hard, I was becoming used to only hearing waves, but now another human voice...in fact, if it weren’t for this journal, I doubt that I would still know how to talk.
Looking at his face, I decide that he couldn’t have been a shiphand. Even with tears marring it and a very deep tan, which is highly unfashionable in Chinese upper society today, I can tell that whoever he is he must have been part of a pretty well-off family. His eyes slant elegantly, like an emperor’s would, and his hair looked like it had been long before he’d become lost in this limitless sea. Even in his retelling of his tale, this Chinese man’s words were fluid and practically enunciated.
The man’s story was long and refreshing. He isn’t pushing me to tell my own; he’s lying in a strict position with his eyes gently closed, in a sort of disciplined form of sleeping. Like something that they would teach one in an army. Perhaps this man is part of the New Beijing Guard, or was I should say. The little wind that there is blows my hair off my shoulders and whistles through the hairs of my beard.
He’s still asleep. The arrival of this man has led me to think about my old crew, most who were from China. The others were from Russia or India, and those all spoke English. But I remember that the Chinese half of the crew would rarely look at any of the English-speakers, unless I was giving an order. This went beyond the code of conduct regulated by the officials of each continent. It wasn’t even an angry avoidance; the Chinese-speakers just didn’t bother interacting with the English-speakers and vice versa, unless I gave orders (then my Russian translator would retell the orders in Mandarin).
In the seafaring world today, the First Continent and the Second Continent pretend to have much to do with the other when really all that binds them together are men such as myself, who steer ships over routes to deliver trade from one port to the other. Don’t judge my ship-driving brethren beside my own questionable character, friend; most captains and their corsair never become nearly as prideful as I am.
In fact, if it hadn’t of been for the root of hatred for my younger brother within my heart, I’m nearly positive that I wouldn’t have been left TOTALLY ALONE. In fact, I’m sure that if I had merely given my crewmembers, Chinese and otherwise, bonuses in pay instead of being the stingy bastard that I am none of this would have happened and I wouldn’t be scribbling away in a journal in the middle of the East Elais Sea (or what I think is) right now.
But anyway, I wondered what this man could have been doing out at sea when I’m sure he could have been somewhere else drinking expensive tea picked by Solvian monks right now (Solvus is the god of farmers of crops). Perhaps he’d caught a bit of – excuse my obsolete term – ‘wanderlust’ and headed off to find his independence somewhere away from the politics between the First and Second Continents.
Ah.
Ink is running out. And he’s waking...I wonder if I should tell this man about myself, about my mother’s letter and about how bored and TOTALLY ALONE I was, even if he can’t understand. Strange that I was worried about running out of paper and now my ink is nearly gone, oh well, I’m sure that there’s an extra pen somewhere...
The first entry of a potentially promising tale of an alternate reality, in which there are only two continents, and all other languages are slowly being dominated by Mandarin Chinese. As you've probably insinuated, the protagonist is a lost, somewhat brash, captain of a ship known as Honorable Carolyn who's discovered another lost soul at sea.
Please let me know if you think that this is a story worth adding to...I understand that biography isn't really my biggest genre, but feedback would certainly be holy. Thank you.
A/N
