Seafarer's tomb

Seafarer’s tomb - a tale from Shagmouth

- I only wish you were still breathing - says the man in the boat while pressing the boot down.

In the vastness of the ocean, the worn-out figure struggles to keep the balance. He leans towards the edge of the vessel and grasps it.
The wave’s constant efforts to drag him further away from inland were futile, for he gave no opposition to their will. Guiding him towards a nameless and wretched sea, where the sun has long set and the early stars make their appearance like preemptive watchers of what is to come. They watched him set foot on this vessel for the last time. Since then he had time to develop a new appreciation for darkness and what it offers to a ravished soul. If he could call it a comfort. He would.

In his hands rests a blade with a name - “Sahle!" - it has the intricate design of a contorted sea monster carefully engraved along its tinted shaft. Memories of longing etched in wood. Was I to blame?
- How would I know, I wasn’t here. Never was! - The feeble mind wanders, fabricating images of different times with unfamiliar kin living their lives as ghosts that never were.
A father surrounded by his sons and daughters; A cherished captain and a crew that respects him; A wife unburdened by bloodshed! Visions that get devoured by the dark void that grows inside.

The tide that rocks the boat back and forth splatters more than water against his face. Each wave that’s comes crashing in brings the lies and deceit suffered from so many years away, and ultimately it carries the dead.
Which no one will remember, they didn’t even had time for it. No memories, no sunlight brushing against their tiny pink features, no first words; just water in their tiny lungs. Wave after wave, one after the other.

What was once distant and smothered by darkness, reveals itself as multiple rows of behemoth jagged rocks lashed out by the sea.

And so the air grows thin and there is the invisible grip of something long forgotten laying here. Forgotten.. - This is the perfect place - the grip loosens, the blade drops against the blood-soaked wood of the vessel.

A veil is lifted and everything that anchored him to the physical world is no longer. His actions become weightless and continuous, he stands and begins to hover.

-shhh, quiet thy mind, you can rest now! - says an unfamiliar voice in his head.

All that is left is a decrepit and beaten boat where the corpse of his betrothed lays, slowly drifting towards the edge of oblivion.