A Murky Memory
The lone sailor let his head settle on his chest, stubble scraping the bare skin as his head bobbed asleep. Ninety-seven days on the sea had exhausted him thoroughly, and yet set him into a calm which he had never before experienced. Solitude was not his choice, but his fate. His wife of seventeen years, Meredith, had died at the hands of pirates the day before he left for sea. A beautiful, joyful woman with long, auburn red hair. A collector of treasures on the beach, in her daily spoils for seashells and pearls, one day she had accidentally brought home a pirate's medallion. The pirates had come and killed her violently two days later When he found her.... well, now he was going to avenge her.