A Testimony to Remembrance

 I set sail once, aboard a ship, bound for unknown waters, as many had done before me. Perhaps they too expected mermaid lagoons and the caves of water dragons. Monsters with all number of heads. I expected, as well, an island run by the spells of sorcerers and a fruit, maybe, that surpassed all my prior tastes. I anticipated storms and calm and to meet several mad people. I wondered when we would come upon islands sodden with the victims of witches, where we would, of course, make a clever escape. Surely it was not too bold nor too strange to expect an island haven where heaven might have come to lay its head. Nor to expect sun-drenched sands bordering a haunted forest, nor chilling winds that carried nightmares. Naturally the ship would break, wreaked by storm and magic and its own hubris in thinking it could plunge through a tempest. Not long after, almost certainly, we would be thrown upon an island with the necessary timber for repairs, where I expected such repairs would make the ship better than before it began its journey. And I expected that we would make it home again, leaner, stronger, calmer, with psychic wisdom that only comes with getting the better of peril. It would be all valor without angst in living out the last years of my life. A testimony to remembrance.

    All these things came to pass.

    But it was nothing like I expected. 

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