"There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean? I asked. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said and then he pulled his eye patch down and turned and sailed away." ~Brian Andreas


When Percy was little, his mom used to tell him that his dad got lost at sea.

In the mind of a three year old, it was fantastic, whimsical. Percy liked to imagine his dad braving the swells, a scraggly beard fluttering in the wind.

He thought that surely his dad would look like him—after all, people said that he didn't look much like his mom, so it only made sense that he would look like his dad (his mom told him that kids usually looked like one of their parents more than the other).

So Percy just knew that if he ever met his dad, he would have the same eyes as him—bright green, sparkling with adventure, as his mom liked to put it. He would have big hands, good for sailing, after all, and skin tanned by the sun.

Each night, his mom told him bedtime stories of his dad's adventures. Each day, Percy went to school and bragged about his dad to his friends.

The thing Percy didn't quite understand, though, was if his dad was as great as his mom told him, then why was he lost for so long?

Why couldn't he find his way back?

He contemplated asking his mom, but he thought that would make her upset. Usually, questions about his dad made her have a sad face. She didn't tell him that outright, but Percy knew that she didn't like to talk about it.

Still, when the sun went down, her voice echoed off the walls of his room, her hands created shadows against the pale blue bed sheet as she told story after story, and for just a moment, Percy could see his dad sailing across the sea, trying to find his way home.