Jac Singleton
Visitor
The sun beats down mercilessly across the face of the deep ocean waters as they lapped against the edges of the tiny log raft. Six rough chopped tree trunks encrusted with salt and laying side by side no more than a little bigger than a cottage door and lashed together with thick dark reddish-black vines wobbles constantly in this cauldron of endless blue. Like a salted herring drying on the beach, a sun-toasted figure lay sprawled across the raft, the tatters of a pair of what may have been black pants at one time clinging around his waist, now salt stained and bleached. His hair is unkempt and blackened in spots, pinkish in places on the ends and brown by his scalp. A dirty leather bag with stains of varying colors across is laying next to him, tied to his waist by a dirty scrap of cloth. In his hand, a stubby charcoal pencil is grasped and he is crudely making pained efforts to scratch wobbly letters on a grubby piece of scorched parchment that appears to have been torn from a book. Squinting at his work, he grunts in satisfaction at what he has written:
HELP. IN DIRE NEED OF RESCUE. LOOK FOR CEDRIC OF TRINSIC. LOSING FAITH. JAC
Digging in the bag, he pulls out a dirty brown bottle and crams the note inside. He produces a stub of a candle, the wick burnt down and the sides covered in some kind of bluish stains, and wedges it back and forth into the mouth of the bottle. Holding it up, he whispers hoarsely through cracked and bleeding lips: "Get to my Boyo." Weakly, he slips the bottle into the water and watches the surging pulsation of waves take the bobbing plea off into the distance until he can no longer see it. He drops his head weakly to the raft again and dips his fingers into the water, dripping the undrinkable drops onto his face, the salt trickling over his broken lips making him wince.
The blazing sun slipped over the horizon and brought the freezing darkness over him once again, another day in the string of endless floating ending like all the others...
HELP. IN DIRE NEED OF RESCUE. LOOK FOR CEDRIC OF TRINSIC. LOSING FAITH. JAC
Digging in the bag, he pulls out a dirty brown bottle and crams the note inside. He produces a stub of a candle, the wick burnt down and the sides covered in some kind of bluish stains, and wedges it back and forth into the mouth of the bottle. Holding it up, he whispers hoarsely through cracked and bleeding lips: "Get to my Boyo." Weakly, he slips the bottle into the water and watches the surging pulsation of waves take the bobbing plea off into the distance until he can no longer see it. He drops his head weakly to the raft again and dips his fingers into the water, dripping the undrinkable drops onto his face, the salt trickling over his broken lips making him wince.
The blazing sun slipped over the horizon and brought the freezing darkness over him once again, another day in the string of endless floating ending like all the others...