Gull

Also fairly old and recently dug up and finished. No polish added.

A young man decided to take his father's boat out fishing on the wide ocean alone for the first time.  He was not much of a navigator, but he knew that he could follow the sun back if he ever got lost.  Without asking the village elder what he thought the weather would be, the young man set out early one morning alone.  The man had no luck close to the shore, where his uncle often fished.

 

The young man decided to fish where his father often did, as his father brought home even more fish than his uncle did.  The young man decided to sail out until he could barely see the coast.  After hours and little catch, the man decided niether his father's nor his uncle's place was right for him.  He would go after the truly great and decided to sail to his own place even further off the shore.

 

There, the man ran into a great storm, the storm spun him around violently for hours, taking from him his sense of direction, the storm finally left, but the clouds did not, so the man could not find his way home by the stars or the moon.  Reluctantly he spent the night out at see, the next morning there was thick fog and mist so he could not see the sun rise, and it was overcast all day.  He was forced to stay adrift for yet another night.

 

With his rations and drinking water exhausted the previous day thirst and hunger began to sap his strength.  With the little strength he had remaining he was able to keep his ship from becoming damaged in a thunderstorm.  When he awoke late into the following morning the little fish he had remaining on his boat had started to rot, and worse off it was still raining lightly.

 

The young man tossed his catch overboard and lay on the deck truly feeling lost.  The young man, now feeling like a boy, felt as if everything he did was in vain.  The boy cried out for his father and mother.  He cried at never seeing his siblings faces again and never participating in another festival with any of his villagers.  He cried out, his hubris claiming him utterly.  He regreted not counceling with the village elder about his trip.

 

Just then the young man heard a loud caw from the bowhead.  Upon it sat a small white gull.  The gull sat and looked at him sideways, peering into his soul.  Cawwing loudly the bird began to flap, and slowly lifted off.  After circling around the ship it flew off into the mist on the starboard side, cawwing the entire time.

 

The boy watched the gull dissapear into the low hanging clouds and listened to it cawwing until the sound faded into nothing.  The boy jumped up to the help and gripped the wooden wheel, pivoting the boat towards where the gull dissapeared.

 

The boy navigated in silence, never quite knowing for certain if the direction he traveled in was the direction of the shore, just a string in his gut pulling him along.  When he would grow nervous as to whether the course he was on was true, he could fainly make out the phantom gull's cawwing and would slightly alter his course and travel in silence once more.

 

As the sky began to darken and the boy feared he would spend another night on the water the boy saw a break in the gray.  A faint aura of illumination pierced the fog and he could make out a large campfire flickering just a few hundred yards ahead of his boat.  Overjoyed the boy kept his course straight and as his boat entered shallow water he released the anchor.  As he barely lifted his body over the side of the boat he again realized how weak he had become, and how strong his thirst and hunger was.

 

The boy meekly paddled through the shallow water and collapsed at the base of the fire and rolled onto his back.  Above him stood the village elder, a slight smile on his face.  In one hand was a gourd of water and the other a large piece of bread.

 

The boy, with tear-stained cheeks, begged for forgiveness for his foolishness.  The elder knelt beside the boy, and kissed his forehead.

 

The man realized that though he thought himself a man before the incident, only just indentified what kept him a boy all these years.  As he accepted the water he saw a stripe of white in the elder's black hair.

 

In his hair was the feather of a gull.