prompt from
andHere are your prompts for today (plus a NEW CATEGORY for the mix!):
Write about a dream
eyes like doldrums
“You knew what you signed up for…”
The kind of character whom people would ask to find things they lost
MAKE IT SO, FICTIONEERS!
The sea was boiling cold, the sun was freezing hot, and the ship refused to turn toward the safety of the shore. The sailors held tightly to the masts while the captain clung to the wheel, his muscles bulging at the strain of holding steady. I tried to walk across the deck, but the churning water below turned my walk into a wobble; I refused to fall.
"Aye, mate!" a voice called out. "Get thee below deck and find the lubber who makes the sea roil when the sun sets."
I barreled down the stairs, hoping to find whoever or whatever might be responsible for our ship's struggle to remain afloat. On a cot lashed to the forward bow lay a figure, sleeping under rough blankets, seemingly impervious to the tossing and turning of the ship. I half walked, half crawled to the cot and reached out for the sleeper. The blanket fell to reveal a child, not sleeping, but staring calmly ahead, not so much at me as through me. "Eyes like the doldrums," I thought. No storm raged, no tempest tossed, and no hint that the seas outside were anything but calm.
The child's eyes were green, then blue, then a hazel brown, changing with the light of my torch as it turned its stare on me. I felt its piercing gaze as it read my thoughts and frowned.
"I am not the cause of the sea's turmoil. You are." It raised its hand toward my face and its eyes began to glow. "I am the finder of lost things," it said. "You are the lost thing and it is time for you to be found." Its hand stretched toward me and even as it grew closer, the child faded farther away.
I screamed myself awake.
Nice ending, and your tip-jar comment made me smile!