Riddle of the Sands
It was a morning like any other, the pale brown sea churning gently in the distance. My head hurt from too much alcohol and not enough sleep. Another rough night of riddles that left me baffled and unsettled. Glimpses of things I instinctively knew in strange settings. I'd given up trying to comprehend; I simply let him lead me where he wanted me to go, show me what he wished me to see. I wasn't altogether convinced there was any sense behind my nocturnal visions. Perhaps the simple answer was that I was slowly going mad like my mother before me.
I made my coffee and seated myself in my father's chair by the window to watch the boats go out. The steady life of the fishermen appealed to me – the constancy of routine altered only by the vagaries of the weather. I wondered how my life might have been if I had grown up the son of one of them instead of my father. I wouldn't have read, wouldn't have done anything so foolish as to get a BA in English ("And what can one do with that?" Clarissa's words came back to haunt me).
At the age of 23, I felt like a sexless old man with nothing and no one to call my own. What history I had was best forgotten.I had accomplished nothing for all the upheaval so why dwell on it? I sighed and reached for my book, trying to ignore the fact that my youthful idle existence owed itself entirely to Ivo's work ethic. I pulled the piece of paper marking my place out to relocate it to the back of the book. I didn't know it at the time but I was holding Danny's first communication to me in my soft tired hands. I thoughtlessly shoved the note between two other pages.
I imagine now that he was watching me at that moment - as he always did - from some corner of the room. Was he sad that I was so careless with his feelings? Angered by my lassitude when he had been robbed of his own passionate existence? Did he want to trade places with me – come back and send me away?
Oblivious, I read, my life as non-descript as the color of the ocean water just beyond my window.