She Was There - Prologue (Rough Draft)

I don’t remember much from that first night. I remember the violent peels of thunder, blinding flashes of lightning, the absolute darkness in between the flashes. I recall the feeling of fighting to keep my footing, as if it was my first day on a ship. I was made a rookie again, buffeted by sheets of hard driven seawater, while my entire frame was constantly restricted by the high winds.

I recall that we were only able to take in half the sails before the angry tempest overtook us, resulting in the loss of the Main Mast and two others. I recall hearing man-overboard at least six times, and being too powerless and frantic to do anything about it. I remember simply giving up on any hope of keeping the ship afloat, and simply squatting beside the ballast-barrels on the deck, just waiting for the ship to go down. If she goes down one of the barrels may save me.

However, the stubborn ship rebelliously bucked that storm hour after hour, blow after blow, until the tempest passed by. Leaving us to drift on sea like glass, without even the slightest breeze to tickle what remaining canvas we had left.

I remember very little in the way of details, but i remember that feeling. I know it better than any emotion now, and I embrace and love it, while it still petrifies me with anxiety. It was not nature, and not the fury of some ordinary storm that we fought for survival that night. It was her. She was there then, and I know that right in the very marrow of my bones. She was toying us, or perhaps just me. She was getting the measure of the resilience of her prey. I know now that if she had not found worthiness that night, she would have dashed us upon the rocks of her gods-forsaken island.

But she didn’t. Thusly our story begins on a mortally wounded schooner, filled with variously wounded sailors. Our once proud vessel bobbing about on a calm see like a little cork, while the oppressive son sapped us of energy and fluids.

And she was there. She was always there. Watching the reactions and results of her many instruments of punishment, basking in the yield of her perverse husbandry. Waiting for a crack, waiting for submission.