| The majority of those on this humble vessel could be described in as few words as, rootless, or floating. Something which is at once, both a great pleasure, a mystery, like the import of spice from faraway lands, and yet also a kind of burden gladly, willingly borne.
One member of this crew, is an escapee, fled from a tyrannical potentate. The son of a vizier and his wife, from the clockwork desert-land of do-nothing, where all is mostly grey, barren, thirsty and chaste. There are many houses here, indeed, it spans an entire continent. Many houses yet few homes. Statues line the streets, the beaches and the boardwalks; statues that used to work, sometimes they even paused to dream, eventually forgetting what the dream was, and crying. The dreaming ceases. And for all their work no reward is ever garnered, or granted.
Hearts here are mostly blue, break easily, and die young.
One day, our young lordling decided that he could not, and would not stand any more. What was this? His? A legacy of dust and drought.
This was not for him. That night, he made his way to the very top of the bleak tower that served as his living quarters. The stairs alone took years for him to summount. Clinging to the edge of the parapet, looking out past starless night, he tied a rope to his left leg. And knowing full well the distance to the land's below, the likely result of his decided course of action, and murmouring a prayer of sorts (to whomever might be listening at the time), flung himself from the edge...
The day that he landed upon deck, was the very same day which he told me his tale, his escape from a plight which threatened forever. As the sun dipped 'neath burnished waves, we sat and talked.
"The worst prison's are those to which the captor has the key."
"Aye." I nodded agreement.
Likened to a bird trying to take flight, without aid from it's parent's, or a stranger in a strange place, sitting on the curb outside his familiar twenty-year home, and thinking, 'I don't want to go back in.'
Sometimes, somebody listen's.
There are over a dozen way's to pick a lock, or so a master thief once told me. And more than half of these escapologists begin with a yearning, a friendly ear, and the utterance of two sacred syllables.
Set Sail.
Go well, rogues.
P.S~ Thanks to b1n4ry, for a timely reminder. "Believe in your strength." |
