Vignette 2 of 10: Survivor

 Perched on a wooden stool with his hand-stitched boots planted firmly in the ground, an old sailor waits. A soot filled pipe protruding from a bushy white beard smolders quietly. He has become too old to sail, marooned so close to the water he loves. Sea-salt etched hands, calloused from years of coiling rope, rest quietly on his weathered knees. Idly his black trench coat flaps in a moist breeze. That breeze he remembers, years of that breeze brushing his face, carrying him to foreign lands. His eyes like oil drops on water carry stories, stories of tides and waves, voyages and shipwrecks, poverty and treasures. Stories he can now only tell. Instead he waits next to the ocean, waiting for his last breath of sea. For he has been forced to walk away from the ocean, but she will not let him leave.