An Ode to Time

It’s cold.

No colder than normal; just enough to place a layer of ice on every surface and every door and every hand. Just enough that anyone outside during the night would come in with blue lips and frost-bitten limbs. Just enough that you don’t feel it after a minute or so, just enough that you begin to wonder if the air is warming around you. Just cold enough that you feel as though you are on fire.

The sails are frozen, the crew scattered across the ship, each slowly going about their duties. You can never tell what exactly they are doing – a mop told you nothing when the ship still remained soaked in blood after a millennium of time. Perhaps the red soaked boards should not be so visible, after all, the scattered light of the moon shone anywhere but the boat. Perhaps the sailors should find it to be unnatural - if they could look at each other, at the black ocean, at anything but the stained deck and the frozen sails.

The port was busy – there was no other state of being at a port. There was the rushing of those with a purpose to fulfil, there was the squabbling of the merchants and the singing of the sailors as they hoisted the sails, ready to take off at the call of the captain.

Of course, beyond the urgency and the lying and the thievery, there was the chatter. The looks shared between those as the fog rolled in, as the sky remained dark and the rain continued to pour as the days moved on, sluggishly and without permanence. The whispers as the captain walked.

There was little she could do anymore. It was always too late, there was always irreversible damage that could never be fixed. There was always a terrible price to fix even the smallest part of it, there was always a part of your soul that the fog demanded.

Beyond the stretch of time was the responsibilities of the people. If the people did nothing for the fog it would stay, darkness raging like the sun, blinding in its own right, suffocating in every other. Despite the sense of purpose that the people hid behind, there was a dread that came along with the mistakes of the past.

And a sense of purposelessness that came with fixing them.

The fog just rolls on, following the ship. Trailing after, miles before. It has been like that for a long time. Occasionally they will see land, but they never approach. The land was not for them anymore, and if anyone said otherwise then they were just lying. Or perhaps a mirage formed from something almost similar to hope.

Not that there was much for them to hope for. The rain and the dark are theirs now. The cold was comforting, the heavy feeling in your lungs a friend. The other souls on the ship just memories of when things were different. Maybe better, maybe worse, who could say anymore. There’s very little left to say. There’s very little left to do but to continue.

Up at the wheel there’s the captain, hands on the wheel as they had been for the last few lifetimes, her eyes watching in front of her, never quite settling on the sailors below on the deck, never quite looking at anything but the fog in front of the ship, as though it was something that would change, as though there’s something that may appear.

As though there is anything or anyone at all.

The captain stood on in the port, waiting for the sailors to be ready. She took in a breath, her lungs stinging with what she would have never thought fog to be. Now it was just air. She had lost the memory of clear, warm air weeks ago.

When they leave, it’s quiet. The port just as busy as it would be, but the people are silent. The slight swaying of shop signs, their screams echoing. The scurrying of the rats through the streets if you listened hard enough.

They just watched as the ship left, sailing into the fog and towards its death.