I never thought someone could sleep so much; not to mention, so soundly!

I had anticipated the voyage to her home to be full of laughs and story weaving; however, all she has done is sleep. I brought dice to entertain myself and it seems to have captured the attention of some of the crew. We've begun wagering and I'm rather pleased that I've come out on top... most of the time. The men of the ship speak with a thicker accent than my ears are used to, but coin is coin and we all speak that fluently.

We should reach her homeland soon, after that I'm not sure what we'll do. She hasn't told me much more than the names of her family members.

Late last evening I wandered up to the Captain's cabin and we had a nice discussion of the seas. I recounted to him my story about the Admiral's ghost in the Lighthouse south of Dundee and he seemed to enjoy it, even if he didn't know what some of the words meant. He told me of his family, all lost to the unforgiving seas of time. A beautiful wife; slender and noble in birth. There was a sadness in his eyes as he told me of way she would scrunch her nose up at the mere mention of the ocean.

She loved the man, that much was evident, but she did not love the tempestuous waters that laid claim to so many over the years. Having loved the Captain, she was abandoned by her wealthy family. Without the means to support her, the man returned to sea to earn his wages in the shipping lanes. Each winter he would come home to her; but just as the air grew cold and the tree limbs brittle, so did she.

Several years swept by, each one leaving a heavier ache in his heart to stay with her, until one late winter morning she woke with the uneasiness and sickness that would trouble her only when she was on the deck of a swaying ship. With child, she was, he exclaimed as the sadness in his eyes burned away with a bright fiery sense of pride. He told me of the first few years of their son's life, how the love of his youth became gaunt and sickly. They would picnic on the shoreline and he would recount tales of brave men that served with him, then as the 'rifter would set, he would pick her up in his arms and carry up to their cottage along the shore. It was the home he built with his own hands.

Her distaste for the sea was slowly ebbing away with each step her son would take towards the water. She knew, he admitted in a quiet voice, that one day the sea would claim their only child, but not for the dark deeps below. No, he would be claimed by the seas to be its master, to charge across its roaring waves as a man just as resolute, and knuckleheaded, as his father. Until then, she was thankful that the sea turned him away, into her waiting wilting arms.

She died a few weeks before the boy's fifth birthday. The boy, a year later.

Just over a decade the man had with his wife, half of that stolen by the seas, and six years of joy with his son. He spent the next five in the bottom of a glass, drinking away the pain and hatred he felt towards the gods for taking the one light that always brought him home.

By that point in his story, the 'rifter had started to rise over the horizon and the First Officer was calling out the next shift.

I'm not sure what brought him back to sea, or what made him never touch the drink again, he didn't say and I didn't ask; however, I think he is searching for her, for them, for the day the sea finally takes him and he can go home one last time, never to leave again, never to be without their warmth, their laughter, their love, again.