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Description
Captain Marique quietly sat in his personal quarters, his gnarled old hands laying humbly laced over his desk. He only very lightly felt the rock of the wooden deck below him; the sea was being cooperative today, a most welcome change to the venomous contempt with which it usually treated seafarers. Indeed, the old barnacle encrusted ship was very much skiing across the waves, a breath of fresh wind held in her worn sails.
The Captain closed his eyes and smirked, reminiscing about how the sun would dully bounce off the hull. It was under no light that anyone would mistake the aging merchant ship as anything but worn, but if such a feat were possible, it would be under a radiant sun like today's.
Captain Marique craned his neck over to the starboard porthole and gazed down towards the bottom of his ship, gracefully floating upon the water as if chauffeured by legions of angels, like she had years ago. The sea spray left in the ship's wake exploded in intricacy and beauty, as if some creation god of old were willing it into existence out of nothing.
The Captain averted his gaze to the calendar hanging from the adjacent wall. He had to squint his old eyes to see past the distance and the cataracts which so obnoxiously blocked the lines of thin black text. The neat trim of his grey beard shifted into a smile when he read and then reread the date to make sure.
"One couldn't wish for more fitting weather." The Captain mused. He slowly rose to his feet and winced in pain, resisting the urge to fall back down into his seat. He forced his right foot in front of the left and then the left in front of the right, continuing in that awkward mechanical tango around his quarters. As he strode about his office exercising his aching limbs, the captain gazed half-mindedly at the various trinkets scattered about. There was a lot of paper; charters, inventory sheets, maps, payroll. Paperwork was always one of Captain Marique's most annoying chores, but lately he found he could not think of what he would do without this most convenient alibi.
Every day after Captain Marique would rise from his bed, he was forced to sit in his office until the pain from his arthritis had subsided. At first, he only need lay in bed for a minute longer than usual and wait for the weariness of his years to drip off of him, but now he found himself forced to drag his aching body into his study for two hours and wait for the agony in his joints to subside. He told his crew that these morning hours were when he took care of his books. The Captain, much like his ship, could not be mistaken for anything but worn, yet he refused to allow the crew to treat him like a frail old man just because of some lazy old bones. Captain Marique could handle pain, but disrespect was something he would not tolerate.
The captain stumbled over to a small chest where he kept his mementos. Captain Marique didn't like sappy personal items, but not even he could help but to acquire some over his long years. Those very few things which the Captain couldn't bring himself to discard were locked in the chest. "So today's the day." Captain Marique muttered, undoing the simple knot that held the leather necklace around his neck and taking from it a tiny wrought iron key, warm from the contact with his flesh. He bent down and pressed the key into the lock, a prompt click marking the chest open. "40 years," The captain coalesced as he gingerly lifted the top of the creaky oaken chest. The captain was struck with a plethora of smells, and with it, countless memories. The heavy aroma of the ocean clinging to the clothes of old friends now claimed by the sea, The wispy smell of gunpowder residue on a pistol that had once saved his life at another's expense, The faint fragrance of perfumes still sticking to the letters from loves long lost. The Captain delicately sorted through the random array of objects that told the story of his life, careful as he removed the chased glass bottle of brandy lying at the very bottom of his chest.
The amber liquid sloshed lazily about as Captain Marique brought the intricately patterned glass container up to his eyes. "Erbinot 1652" the dull black label bragged with angels standing on either side of the eloquent cursive lettering. The gowns of the divine sentinels had been dazzling white once, and those horns they so proudly trumpeted a shining brass, but the tarnish of time had ravaged the heavenly host just as cruelly as anything mortal. So oft had the Captain been tempted to sell the valuable liquid within, or even to drain its contents himself, though he did not. The fine amber liquid was a covenant, and the Captain would not be the one to break it. As Captain Marique gazed upon the old brandy, he felt himself sinking back to a time when his hair was a rich brown and not grey, and his muscles were powerful and loose instead of brittle with sea salt and countless suns.
Young Marique was born into a family of luxury where he was afforded every freedom. Indeed, he could choose to wear the gray suit or the black, choose to dine on oysters or the fresh tartare, choose to marry the blonde socialite heiress and have a brunette mistress, or to have the brunette heiress with the blonde mistress. Marique was a strange boy though, and would oft run away from his lessons of etiquette and grammar, away from the life so carefully tailored for him, and take refuge on the nearby shore. The young boy would enviously look out across the endless stretch of blue, harboring dreams of sprouting wings and flying away from his father's estate, over the ocean and to the sun.
As Marique grew into a young man, these boyish fancies did not die, but grew, grounding themselves firmly into reality. Marique would find his wings in the form of the S.S. Frauline, a second class merchant ship bought not with a fraction of his father's wealth. He ignored his family's ridicule of his foolhardiness and their foretelling of his failure, and took a loan from a less than reputable banker for a less than reputable rate.
The day Marique was bound to set sail with his first shipment of wool and flour, his father came to greet him at the dock. The scrawny little man looked so out of place among the roughened seafarers with his fancy silk vestments and silly feathered hat that the wind seemed determined to steal. He handed the young Captain a bottle of his finest brandy.
"For when you find just what a cruel mistress the sea is, so that you can have a taste of what you have left behind." he whispered, gently handing his son the bottle before turning and walking away, off the docks and out of his life. The young dark haired Captain frowned after his father, but refused to let his intrusion mar an otherwise fine day. Marique would bury the brandy bottle into a dark crevice of his ship and come to stand at the hull as it set sail eastward into the dawn. The wind was generous, the seas were fair, and the sun hung low in the crystal clear sky, almost as if it could be plucked like an apple from the great blue orchid.
And now Marique found himself forty years later staring at that gift from his father, every single drop of it still intact. A slight grin cracked the Captain's weathered face as he shut the casket of his memories and rose to his feet. Marique hid the brandy bottle under his coat and gave one last stretch to his weary legs, opening the door out of his cabin and into the fresh ocean air.
"You better have these decks clean tonight boys!" The Captain shouted to his less than emphatic crew as he stepped on deck. "Tonight we're going to be eating off them."
"Aye Captain." they responded in despondent unison. The Captain smiled down on his hard working crew, filled with equal parts pride and sadness. His men were well organized, so much so that they did not even need the guiding hand of their Captain to keep them in line.
Marique began to inspect the ship, the metallic chime of his boot buckles accompanying the dull thud of leather against wood. The crew members would grow silent as the Captain came to hover over his area of work, leaving only the scratch of the sudsy brush against the planks and the occasional call of the gulls riding in the Frauline's tailwind. Though none spoke, Marique was all but deafened by the thoughts they were shouting at him. "Why are you still here?"
Marique smirked slightly as he continued his inspection. It was an honest enough question; In his years, Marique had acquired fortunes enough to many times dwarf even his father's considerable estate, why did he insist on weathering the hardships of the ocean with them?
The Captain went to stand over young Erikson Leewright as he zealously scrubbed away at his section of deck. In his eye was a familiar gleam, one the Captain remembered greeting in the mirror once. He did not sense the question from the boy as he did from the others; ironic that one so young would be the only to understand.
"Not bad Mr. Leewright, not bad at all." The Captain nodded to the youth. "I can almost see my reflection in this brine encrusted wood." The boy squinted up through the sweat of his brow at the Captain, smiling widely. "Almost, Mr. Leewright." Captain Marique was sure to add with his turn. The boy almost knocked over the wooden bucket beside him with the grand sweeping return of his scrub to the deck.
Finishing his rounds, the Captain went to rest at the front of his ship as it sailed eastward. He leaned against the rail, looking out as the great pole that made up the nose of the ship tore onward into the morning. The sun hung low in the crystal clear sky, almost as if it could be plucked like an apple from the great blue orchid, just like Marique remembered from that first glorious day. He removed the bottle of brandy from his coat, and held it up to the light.
Those first years were difficult, fighting the forces of both man and God who seemed so intent to make his father's prophecy come true. The young Captain would fight against storms driven by the winds of hell, only to arrive at a port and find the price of his wares having plummeted. He would cast off without sale in search of better prices, the eyes of his hungry crew stabbing threats of bloody mutiny at him. He remembered diving into the oceans to save men from bloodthirsty sharks, only to return to land to find those even more vicious hungry for his purse.
Yes, those first years were difficult, but Marique loved every minute of it. If there was one thing the ocean could be known for, even more than its crashing waves, was its forever changing. Each morning brought something new, each day was a roll of the dice to see if you would live or die. Always forward, forever forward.
The Captain continued to study the bottle for a small while, turning it in the sun and watching the shimmering prisms of light it cast. He heard as well as felt the Frauline being lifted by a large wave and dropped back to the ocean below, tasted the salty mist of the ocean spray whipped up by her crash. He wafted the air through his bulbous nostrils, smelling that life giving breeze as if for the first time.
With a hollow pop, Captain Marique removed the stopper from the glass container of Erbinot brandy, polluting the fresh ocean breeze with its pungent bouquet. He took a long swig of the liquor until his eyes watered, before flinging it to the Frauline's deck, shards of glass and flickering brandy waltzing through the air.
The sound of the crash had gathered all the eyes of his crewman, awaiting their Captain's word of explanation and command. All they got was a flash of the Captain's grin, that same devilish smirk he cast at his father when he told him he was leaving his house for the sea. The Captain then flipped himself over the rail, ignoring the pesterering protests of his aching knees. He ran up the nose of the ship, balancing upon the slippery pole with the dexterity of a cat, leaping from its tip into the air, reaching out with his right arm.
Suicide was not the Captain's intention as he soared on the wind's breath. That was never his intention! No, the Captain was simply doing as he always had done. He was reaching to the sky to pluck the sun, like an apple from the great blue orchid.

Description
Captain Marique quietly sat in his personal quarters, his gnarled old hands laying humbly laced over his desk. He only very lightly felt the rock of the wooden deck below him; the sea was being cooperative today, a most welcome change to the venomous contempt with which it usually treated seafarers. Indeed, the old barnacle encrusted ship was very much skiing across the waves, a breath of fresh wind held in her worn sails.
The Captain closed his eyes and smirked, reminiscing about how the sun would dully bounce off the hull. It was under no light that anyone would mistake the aging merchant ship as anything but worn, but if such a feat were possible, it would be under a radiant sun like today's.
Captain Marique craned his neck over to the starboard porthole and gazed down towards the bottom of his ship, gracefully floating upon the water as if chauffeured by legions of angels, like she had years ago. The sea spray left in the ship's wake exploded in intricacy and beauty, as if some creation god of old were willing it into existence out of nothing.
The Captain averted his gaze to the calendar hanging from the adjacent wall. He had to squint his old eyes to see past the distance and the cataracts which so obnoxiously blocked the lines of thin black text. The neat trim of his grey beard shifted into a smile when he read and then reread the date to make sure.
"One couldn't wish for more fitting weather." The Captain mused. He slowly rose to his feet and winced in pain, resisting the urge to fall back down into his seat. He forced his right foot in front of the left and then the left in front of the right, continuing in that awkward mechanical tango around his quarters. As he strode about his office exercising his aching limbs, the captain gazed half-mindedly at the various trinkets scattered about. There was a lot of paper; charters, inventory sheets, maps, payroll. Paperwork was always one of Captain Marique's most annoying chores, but lately he found he could not think of what he would do without this most convenient alibi.
Every day after Captain Marique would rise from his bed, he was forced to sit in his office until the pain from his arthritis had subsided. At first, he only need lay in bed for a minute longer than usual and wait for the weariness of his years to drip off of him, but now he found himself forced to drag his aching body into his study for two hours and wait for the agony in his joints to subside. He told his crew that these morning hours were when he took care of his books. The Captain, much like his ship, could not be mistaken for anything but worn, yet he refused to allow the crew to treat him like a frail old man just because of some lazy old bones. Captain Marique could handle pain, but disrespect was something he would not tolerate.
The captain stumbled over to a small chest where he kept his mementos. Captain Marique didn't like sappy personal items, but not even he could help but to acquire some over his long years. Those very few things which the Captain couldn't bring himself to discard were locked in the chest. "So today's the day." Captain Marique muttered, undoing the simple knot that held the leather necklace around his neck and taking from it a tiny wrought iron key, warm from the contact with his flesh. He bent down and pressed the key into the lock, a prompt click marking the chest open. "40 years," The captain coalesced as he gingerly lifted the top of the creaky oaken chest. The captain was struck with a plethora of smells, and with it, countless memories. The heavy aroma of the ocean clinging to the clothes of old friends now claimed by the sea, The wispy smell of gunpowder residue on a pistol that had once saved his life at another's expense, The faint fragrance of perfumes still sticking to the letters from loves long lost. The Captain delicately sorted through the random array of objects that told the story of his life, careful as he removed the chased glass bottle of brandy lying at the very bottom of his chest.
The amber liquid sloshed lazily about as Captain Marique brought the intricately patterned glass container up to his eyes. "Erbinot 1652" the dull black label bragged with angels standing on either side of the eloquent cursive lettering. The gowns of the divine sentinels had been dazzling white once, and those horns they so proudly trumpeted a shining brass, but the tarnish of time had ravaged the heavenly host just as cruelly as anything mortal. So oft had the Captain been tempted to sell the valuable liquid within, or even to drain its contents himself, though he did not. The fine amber liquid was a covenant, and the Captain would not be the one to break it. As Captain Marique gazed upon the old brandy, he felt himself sinking back to a time when his hair was a rich brown and not grey, and his muscles were powerful and loose instead of brittle with sea salt and countless suns.
Young Marique was born into a family of luxury where he was afforded every freedom. Indeed, he could choose to wear the gray suit or the black, choose to dine on oysters or the fresh tartare, choose to marry the blonde socialite heiress and have a brunette mistress, or to have the brunette heiress with the blonde mistress. Marique was a strange boy though, and would oft run away from his lessons of etiquette and grammar, away from the life so carefully tailored for him, and take refuge on the nearby shore. The young boy would enviously look out across the endless stretch of blue, harboring dreams of sprouting wings and flying away from his father's estate, over the ocean and to the sun.
As Marique grew into a young man, these boyish fancies did not die, but grew, grounding themselves firmly into reality. Marique would find his wings in the form of the S.S. Frauline, a second class merchant ship bought not with a fraction of his father's wealth. He ignored his family's ridicule of his foolhardiness and their foretelling of his failure, and took a loan from a less than reputable banker for a less than reputable rate.
The day Marique was bound to set sail with his first shipment of wool and flour, his father came to greet him at the dock. The scrawny little man looked so out of place among the roughened seafarers with his fancy silk vestments and silly feathered hat that the wind seemed determined to steal. He handed the young Captain a bottle of his finest brandy.
"For when you find just what a cruel mistress the sea is, so that you can have a taste of what you have left behind." he whispered, gently handing his son the bottle before turning and walking away, off the docks and out of his life. The young dark haired Captain frowned after his father, but refused to let his intrusion mar an otherwise fine day. Marique would bury the brandy bottle into a dark crevice of his ship and come to stand at the hull as it set sail eastward into the dawn. The wind was generous, the seas were fair, and the sun hung low in the crystal clear sky, almost as if it could be plucked like an apple from the great blue orchid.
And now Marique found himself forty years later staring at that gift from his father, every single drop of it still intact. A slight grin cracked the Captain's weathered face as he shut the casket of his memories and rose to his feet. Marique hid the brandy bottle under his coat and gave one last stretch to his weary legs, opening the door out of his cabin and into the fresh ocean air.
"You better have these decks clean tonight boys!" The Captain shouted to his less than emphatic crew as he stepped on deck. "Tonight we're going to be eating off them."
"Aye Captain." they responded in despondent unison. The Captain smiled down on his hard working crew, filled with equal parts pride and sadness. His men were well organized, so much so that they did not even need the guiding hand of their Captain to keep them in line.
Marique began to inspect the ship, the metallic chime of his boot buckles accompanying the dull thud of leather against wood. The crew members would grow silent as the Captain came to hover over his area of work, leaving only the scratch of the sudsy brush against the planks and the occasional call of the gulls riding in the Frauline's tailwind. Though none spoke, Marique was all but deafened by the thoughts they were shouting at him. "Why are you still here?"
Marique smirked slightly as he continued his inspection. It was an honest enough question; In his years, Marique had acquired fortunes enough to many times dwarf even his father's considerable estate, why did he insist on weathering the hardships of the ocean with them?
The Captain went to stand over young Erikson Leewright as he zealously scrubbed away at his section of deck. In his eye was a familiar gleam, one the Captain remembered greeting in the mirror once. He did not sense the question from the boy as he did from the others; ironic that one so young would be the only to understand.
"Not bad Mr. Leewright, not bad at all." The Captain nodded to the youth. "I can almost see my reflection in this brine encrusted wood." The boy squinted up through the sweat of his brow at the Captain, smiling widely. "Almost, Mr. Leewright." Captain Marique was sure to add with his turn. The boy almost knocked over the wooden bucket beside him with the grand sweeping return of his scrub to the deck.
Finishing his rounds, the Captain went to rest at the front of his ship as it sailed eastward. He leaned against the rail, looking out as the great pole that made up the nose of the ship tore onward into the morning. The sun hung low in the crystal clear sky, almost as if it could be plucked like an apple from the great blue orchid, just like Marique remembered from that first glorious day. He removed the bottle of brandy from his coat, and held it up to the light.
Those first years were difficult, fighting the forces of both man and God who seemed so intent to make his father's prophecy come true. The young Captain would fight against storms driven by the winds of hell, only to arrive at a port and find the price of his wares having plummeted. He would cast off without sale in search of better prices, the eyes of his hungry crew stabbing threats of bloody mutiny at him. He remembered diving into the oceans to save men from bloodthirsty sharks, only to return to land to find those even more vicious hungry for his purse.
Yes, those first years were difficult, but Marique loved every minute of it. If there was one thing the ocean could be known for, even more than its crashing waves, was its forever changing. Each morning brought something new, each day was a roll of the dice to see if you would live or die. Always forward, forever forward.
The Captain continued to study the bottle for a small while, turning it in the sun and watching the shimmering prisms of light it cast. He heard as well as felt the Frauline being lifted by a large wave and dropped back to the ocean below, tasted the salty mist of the ocean spray whipped up by her crash. He wafted the air through his bulbous nostrils, smelling that life giving breeze as if for the first time.
With a hollow pop, Captain Marique removed the stopper from the glass container of Erbinot brandy, polluting the fresh ocean breeze with its pungent bouquet. He took a long swig of the liquor until his eyes watered, before flinging it to the Frauline's deck, shards of glass and flickering brandy waltzing through the air.
The sound of the crash had gathered all the eyes of his crewman, awaiting their Captain's word of explanation and command. All they got was a flash of the Captain's grin, that same devilish smirk he cast at his father when he told him he was leaving his house for the sea. The Captain then flipped himself over the rail, ignoring the pesterering protests of his aching knees. He ran up the nose of the ship, balancing upon the slippery pole with the dexterity of a cat, leaping from its tip into the air, reaching out with his right arm.
Suicide was not the Captain's intention as he soared on the wind's breath. That was never his intention! No, the Captain was simply doing as he always had done. He was reaching to the sky to pluck the sun, like an apple from the great blue orchid.