A short story, a dream …

Dreams of travel, exotic fare, women, wine, and wandering. These were the things that kept my youthful mind active, forever seeking a way to go beyond my land-locked home.

I dreamed, yes, but I worked at that dream. Each season I worked with my parents, with my neighbours, with surrounding properties and traders. From before sunrise until well into the dark of the night I toiled, knowing all the effort would help fulfil this dream.

Yes, this dream.

The day I gained my freedom and took myself beyond the confines of earth and sky was the day I took on the ocean as my mistress, and the sailing boat as my wife. I was a man content, with wilfulness in my life at every turn, a wild ocean that demonstrated the dangers of passion and fury, and a wife to keep my path steady, a constant form of peace powering my sails.

Ah, but things change, do they not? The sea is beauty, the wild nature of all things thrown together and shaken until the soul is bared. And storms come of these moments, to tear away the veils and conceits of safety, security, certainty.

The storm came, the world turned upside down, the wife crashed from my life, and left me in the arms of my mistress.

And here I lie, blasted to white bone, a monument to passion driven by the dreams of a young man seeking adventure and life.

---