You steer with the rudder like this!

Two friends walked along the rocky coast. One had eyes that mirrored the white sun shining overhead, and was known by the name The Moth, despite being a human boy. The other had eyes as dark as the depths of the sea, and was known by no name.

"It's so wide open," The Moth said, "nothing is telling me how far I'm allowed to see."

"Do you enjoy that?" His friend asked.

"I do. Don't you?"

"I haven't thought about it."

"It feels like freedom."

"Freedom isn't something you feel, or something you're in. it's something you do."

"It can also be something that just is."

"Explain."

"You're free. As long as we've been traveling you've just been free. It's something innate about you."

"Very little is innate about me, Moth. I am what I choose to be. You chose to be free alongside me, that you must know by now."

"I suppose I've never thought about it that way. I still like the view."

"It just makes me feel exposed. I feel vulnerable."

"And you dislike that?"

"I'd say I do."

"Because you fear it?"

"I guess so."

"You know what?”

"What?"

"Fear isn't something that just is, it's something you do."

The gravel crunched beneath their feet as they walked. The Moth’s jeans, too long and already shredded at the hem, tore a little further with each step. He became so enraptured with the view of the waves lapping at the horizon, he jumped when his friend spoke.

“That place has seen better days.”

“Huh?” Moth mouthed before he looked over, and absorbed what he was seeing. On top of a hill overlooking the sea was a house. It was wooden, and in tatters. A small sailboat sat in its shadow on the rocks in-front of them, “oh wow. Do you think anyone still lives there?”

“It feels unlikely,” the dark eyed friend replied, “but there’s only one way to find out.”

They didn’t need to wait long, however, as a third voice soon came hollering from above, “Hey! Stop there.”

The two boys slowed but didn’t stop. They looked up to see a man standing in the doorway of the house. He looked to be in his early fifties, with a light jacket on, and thin wire framed glasses to match his equally wiry physique.

“Hi,” the black eyed friend called out, “we’re travelers. This is my companion Moth.”

“Do you have any weapons?” The man asked.

“Yes,” the friend answered, pulling his long coat aside to reveal a large knife fastened to his belt.

“Will you remove it?”

“No, I’m afraid I won’t.”

The man furrowed his brow at this, and adjusted his glasses, “come up then,” he called down, “I don’t want to yell anymore.”

The friends scrambled up the rocks to meet him at the front of the house. When they arrived, they found him to be shorter than he initially appeared, both of them loomed over him despite their own modest statures. He looked tired up close. His eyes drooped behind their lenses, and his mouth turned down at the edges, pulled by time into a permanent frown, “I’m sorry traveler. It was naive of me to ask you to remove your knife. It must be a dangerous world out there.”

“It was,” The dark eyed man replied, “it was also naive of you not to insist.”

The man laughed at this, “I suppose there was no winning, the damage is done now. Would you two like to come inside? I don’t have much to offer with respect to food unless you enjoy clams, but I can fix us some tea. It has been quite some time since I’ve talked to anyone but myself, I would love to hear your stories.”

“And us yours,” The Moth replied.

The man ushered them into the house. The inside looked somewhat more put together. The walls were still nearing the end of their life, but there was a lit wood stove, and a rug with some rocking chairs and other furniture scattered around. “Cozy,” Moth commented as the two friends sat down, not bothering to wait for their host.

“Rest your feet, I’ll heat up some water for the tea,” the man grabbed a pot that hung on the wall, and slipped outside briefly. They watched through the window as he filled the pot from a water pump out front before returning to place it atop the stove. He sat across from them on a stool as a cool breeze cut through the house.

“Do either of you smoke?” The man asked as he removed a pipe and tobacco from his pocket, packing the latter in the former. The Moth vigorously shook his head, while his friend hesitated for a moment before waving the idea away with his hand. “Suit yourselves,” the man shrugged as he struck a match and took a few puffs, the warm scent filling the air, “so what brings you all the way out here?”

“Moth here wanted to walk along the coast. He likes the sea, and the misty air.”

“What a wonderfully trivial reason to go somewhere. Or in our case, nowhere.”

“We are almost always nowhere,” The friend with black eyes replied.

“If nothing is around, why are you living out here all alone?” The Moth asked.

The man scratched his chin, “at first it was a trivial matter as well, I was born here. Well, not in this house, but nearby. There used to be a village not far from here.”

“Used to be?” The Moth wondered aloud.

“Yes, it’s all gone now, except perhaps for some planks of wood. I haven’t walked that way in a long time. My village sustained itself by fishing from the bay here. I’m a fisherman myself. But some twenty years ago, the nets started coming back empty. A pack of whales had decided to make the bay their hunting ground, you see. Without the fish, the village couldn't survive, so they packed up and moved to somewhere with more abundant waters, or so one would presume.” he paused to puff on his pipe, “I have no idea if they ever actually made it.”

“But you stayed?” Moth asked.

The water began to boil then. The fisherman set his pipe down, stood, and walked over to a cabinet on the wall opposite the stove. He pulled out three mugs and a box of tea. “What kind of tea would you like? I have green, and black.”

“Do you mind?” the friend with dark eyes asked as he reached into his backpack, and pulled out a small tin, opening it to reveal a pile of teabags, “this tea is my favorite. It’s from my hometown.”

“And where is that?” The man asked, taking the bags from him, and pouring the water.

“It’s like here.”

The man chuckled, “nowhere, then. Ever cautious.” He handed the friends their mugs of tea, and resumed sitting. “Yes, I stayed. This is because of the second, less trivial reason for my being here, if you boys would humor my telling the story. There was a girl from my village named Anne who went to my school, if you could call it that. Together we comprised twenty percent of the class size. I’m not sure either of us ever learned much there, we were always too busy laughing, and drawing on our desks. From the first day we were inseparable. Later we grew into something other than friends. I don’t know if it was just a symptom of the small size of our village, or some wonderful stroke of luck that we found such love within one another. We would come down to the sea and fail to skip rocks across the choppy water. We truly felt like nobody else in the world could understand us. We felt like two people had never known each other like we knew each other. We married after finishing school, or perhaps we finished school to marry, I can’t quite remember now. I like to tell myself I chose to fish so I could be close to the sea, and those memories, but in reality there probably just wasn’t much else to do."

The travelers sipped their tea prematurely as he continued, most of the flavor in the leaves having been washed away by time anyway, “Anne took up many jobs around the village. She was always smarter than I was, and better with her hands too. She would fix up the houses after storms marched in from the sea. Eventually, she tried her hand at building one, and we moved in here. Sadly, no matter how much I watched her, I never got any better at such things myself.

When the whales came, we had been here for a few years. I walked into the village one day to sell what few fish I had been able to catch to find carts and people all throughout the main street. I found the village chief milling around their convoy and asked what was happening, and he told me to look around. He said the villagers were thin, and hungry, and that they were leaving. He said we should come if we wanted a future for our family.”

“That was probably the smart decision,” the friend with dark eyes offered.

“I thought so too, we were growing thin ourselves, rationing what little fish we could afford not to sell. I rushed home to tell Anne we should begin to pack. I was sure one of the villagers would let us hide away what few possessions we had on their wagon. Our parents had both been well dead by that time, but we had a good relationship with our neighbors. But when I tried to explain she became upset.”

“It’s hard to leave the place you grew up, and to have that decision made for you,” The Moth said.

“Yes, “ said the man, “but it wasn’t just that. She was angry with me for even suggesting the idea. She saw leaving here like leaving those memories we shared together behind. In her mind I had betrayed her for considering it. She insisted that the whales would leave, and that if they didn’t she would hunt them herself, that I should be willing to do the same. She wanted us to fight. I pleaded with her to consider sense, I told her we could form new memories somewhere better. Ultimately, that proved a mistake.”

“That seems irrational, one cannot fight against nature,” the friend with dark eyes said solemnly.

The man just shook his head, “I see how you would think that. You are still young. You still think a battle is about winning. It isn’t. Fighting is about conviction, it’s about declaring that something is more important than your own life. She was simply more courageous than I was, and upon hearing her words I understood this. At the time, all I could do was collapse to the floor, and cry, full of pity for my own weakness. She ultimately left me there, and stormed out of our home.

When I did find enough courage to chase after her, I ran outside to find her a few dozen meters off the coast, rowing our small fishing dinghy into the open ocean with a spear laid across her lap. I yelled after her to come back, but it was just met with a smile. ‘I’ll show you, my love.’ was all she called out as I jumped into the sailboat you see down on the beach now, and set off after her.

By the time I caught up, her boat was shaking violently. The weather was bad, and the wind whipped violently, making it difficult for me to maneuver with a sail. A pod of the whales had appeared and were thrashing their bodies against the bottom of her dinghy. I was still too far to get a clear picture, but I saw her standing there, hair blowing in the wind, with one of her legs up on the dingy’s bench, and the spear in her hand. She was jabbing at the water ferociously. I had given up using the sail at this point, and as I rowed up beside her she looked at me with a soft smile that I’ll never forget. It was then that a whale smashed into the hull, and her boat rocked violently to the side. She slipped, her spear flew high as she fell between the boats. I reached out a hand to grab her, and just as her fingers skimmed my palm, a shadow grew from underneath the water. She screamed, and I reached for my knife just in time to plunge it into the whale’s right eye, but it was too late. It grabbed her between its teeth and dove, transforming my beautiful wife from a person to a fading ripple of bubbles. Her body never washed ashore, and that was the last I saw of her.”

The fisherman removed his glasses, and wiped the wet from his eyes, “I’m sorry, travelers. I wish I had a more light hearted story to tell, but that has been my life. I live here, and try my best to keep her home from collapsing, eating the clams, and fighting against nature in her spirit. That’s why I stay.”

The Moth looked down at the floor, “I’m sorry.”

“I still think it’s a waste,” said the friend with eyes the color of ash.

The old man laughed again, “maybe you’re right,” he said, his smile steady, “but I'm content here, watching her memory. I don’t want anything else. Now, enough about me. You two tell me about your journey. Let this lonely fisherman learn what’s out there in the world.”

And so they did. The boys and the fisherman sat together for a few hours as The Moth and his friend spoke about the places they had seen, and the experiences they’d had. Hearing their tales, the man laughed and cried and slapped his knees excitedly, “who knew,” he would say intermittently, or “is that really true? I can hardly believe it.”

Eventually they all grew tired as the sun set, and began communicating as much in yawns as in speech. “You can stay here for the night if you wish, it must be too late to set up camp,” the old man offered, to which the traveling friends quickly accepted. Soon they were wrapped in blankets, having laid their sleeping bags out on the floor, fighting off the chill of the night. The fisherman retired to a bedroom in the back of the house, and the friends whispered briefly to one another,

“Does the tragedy of it ever bother you,” The Moth asked.

“The tragedy of what?”

“I don’t know, living. The human condition, I guess.”

“Is it tragic?”

“Today it seems tragic.”

“Do you see tragedy in the life of that man?”

“Do you not?”

“I don’t, no.”

“What do you see?”

“Something else.”

“But what?”

“I don’t know, something that makes me glad we stopped here.”

The Moth was the last to wake. He found the old man sitting once again on the stool with his pipe in his hand, and his gaze out the window. His friend was hunched over on the floor sharpening his knife. The Moth stretched, and spoke through a yawn, “good morning.”

“Good morning,” they replied in unison.

“Now that you’re up, I suppose it is time we head out,” the friend with eyes of tar said.

The fisherman turned to them, as they began to pack their things, “I lament that you can’t stay and tell me more of your stories. But, I suppose if you did, I’d only delay you from making new ones. All I ask is that you share your tales with all those like me that wish to hear, and please travel safely.”

The boys both nodded earnestly, and made their way out of the house.

“I think it’s time we say goodbye to the sea for a while,” The Moth said, and so they wound up the hills that led away from the shore before settling down atop one to heat up some coffee. As they sipped it, they could see the house below them, now small in the distance, the waves appearing to lap right up against it in an illusion of perspective. They watched in silence for a while before an ant-sized figure emerged, heading down the path, and behind the cliff where the traveling friends knew a small sailboat hid. “I know you’re angry with the sea right now, Moth, but I wonder if perhaps she deserves a farewell,” the friend with black eyes spoke.

“You aren’t ready to leave yet, are you?”

“Not quite yet.”

—----

The fisherman pushed hard, urging the vessel into the water, his feet slipping in the sand, “would you like a hand with that,” a voice called out.

“Oh Moth, hello,” the man wiped the sweat from his brow, “I thought you two had left.”

“We figured we might want to actually meet the sea, rather than simply look at her from afar,” The Moth’s friend said.

“These waters are too dangerous, I’m afraid,” the fisherman replied, “did you not hear me last night as I told my story.”

At this the dark eyed boy laughed, “did you not hear us as we told ours?”

The fisherman opened his mouth for a moment before he shut it and gestured to the boat with a shrug. The travelers took position at either side of him then, the three of them easily pushing it into the water. They hopped in, and the fisherman unfurled the sail. A breeze caught it quickly, and soon they were gliding toward the open ocean.

“So what are we doing?” Inquired the traveler with a shadow trapped in his eyes.

“Fishing,” the fisherman aptly replied.

“I thought all the fish were gone?” Moth asked.

“I suppose it isn’t fish we are after,” the man said, “really, it is a whaling expedition.”

No further discussion necessary, the travelers left the man to tend the sail, and took to watching the waves pass by. An hour passed with the waves lapping steadily against the hull of the sailboat. The weather was clear, and the breeze light but steady,

“I could fall into a state of hypnosis,” The Moth said.

“What would the sea ask of you?” His friend replied.

“Hopefully, nothing. I’d like to be left here as I am forever.”

“That would get boring.”

“I feel as if I’ve heard that before. Everything bores you.”

“Everything stagnant.”

“The ocean isn’t stagnant, it moves. It lives”

“It moves, but it never stops. It can’t live, because it can’t die.”

“That sounds melodramatic. Must they exist relative to one another?”

“I think so.”

“I wish they didn’t.”

“I know.”

“Maybe they don’t.”

“Maybe.”

Then, the pendulum of the waves was interrupted. A break in the pattern appeared a few feet in front of the boat, and then another to its starboard side, “whales,” the old man said under his breath, as he reached down and picked up his spear from the deck. The three of them watched as the pod circled the ship, blowing water into the air as they went, their heads appearing briefly above the water line before disappearing once more. The fisherman learned from one side of the sailboat to another, his eyes narrow and jaw clenched. Then, without warning, as one of the whales reared its head from the waves, the man leaped from the side of the boat. The travelers spun their heads around just in time to spot the scar that marked the whale’s eye, and watch the old man descend upon it, spear in hand. The Moth’s nose scrunched, anticipating what was to come, but as the spear neared the whale’s exposed head it suddenly slipped, and twisted skyward. The fisherman hit the water with a slap, and the shaft of the spear bounced off of the whale’s skin uselessly. Within seconds, the fisherman’s flailing arms disappeared beneath the water, along with the whale, a dark disturbance in the waves the only indication they were ever there. A few moments passed, but nothing changed. After a few more, the whales seemed to lose interest and floated away, leaving the travelers alone.

After a timeless period of silence, Moth furled the sail and they let themselves drift aimlessly for a while. Neither of them were able to find the right words to break the silence. Eventually, The Moth gave it a stab with some that his friend had been wishing he wouldn’t hear, “the scar on the whale’s eye.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“It was –”

“The wrong one.”

“Do you think he realized?”

“The spear?”

“Yeah.”

“You think it was on purpose?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I think it really is time to say goodbye to the sea.”

“Yes, I'm ready to leave now.”

"Do you know how to sail?"

"A traveler has to know how to do everything if he wishes to survive."

"I take that as a no."

"I will very shortly."

"I can teach you."

"How do you know how to sail?"

"It's a story for another time,” The Moth said, his face blank, “do you still think his life wasn’t tragic?”

“My opinion hasn’t changed.”

“I think mine has.”