The cabin of the great ship creaks and groans, a deck weathered with time and salt water and vomit heaving beneath your paws as a hurricane howls outside. The lanterns sway and flicker, twisting light and shifting shadows inducing a surreal and sinuous vertigo.

You wonder how you came to this place, entombed in a dark hull of old wood and wicked memory, part of you dreaming of summer isles and a world that was once still and stable and sweet in its surety. You remember fields of wheat and the sureness of a stone as you held it, even as you cursed that rock because it broke the plow you pulled through the mud as you panted.

Well…you wanted to be a pirate. You wanted to cast off your responsibility, shed it like a snake sheds its so-called skin, slither off into the trackless aquatic wastes of freedom.

It wasn’t what they told you at the dock though. You’re no Robin Hood. You’re a cutthroat, clad in rags and flea ridden, eating rotten mutton from the tip of a rusty dagger and drunk all the time. The flapping crack of a stolen trireme’s sail haunts your dreams, and your conscience is as dirty as canvas wrapped coal.

Sure, you’ve got that little hoard of gold, a pawful of doubloons a farmer couldn’t earn in a thousand lifetimes, but you’re always wondering if you can keep them. Maybe your ‘mate’ will steal them, or maybe this ship from hell you’ve found yourself on will sink and send your corpse and your fortune to the bottomless bottom.

There’s always the flip side though. You’ve got a sword, grand memories and the confidence of a titan, and in the old, empty wine bottle you use as a mirror your reflection is sleek and charismatic, if a bit sinister. As foxes go you’re good looking, aside from a crooked fang and a furless scar that resembles a long, ugly bolt of lightning (thank you Bosun Crislin of the HMS Proud, may the squids of Davy Jones feast forever on your soul).

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, too. Old Grayclaw is going to put into port in a few months and retire. You’ve saved enough. You don’t have to stay on after that.

Yes, you’ll get out. You’re sure of it. You’ll buy land inland, far from the coast because you’ve seen enough of the sea. Someone else will pull the plow, will dig worm-ridden rocks from damp ground and deal with the blow flies and the deluges and the weeds. You’ll have a tall house on a hill, be master of everything you can see, and spend half the time praying a gang of young blooded bastards a lot like the you you used to be don’t pile out of a boat off the coast and burn your world down while stealing everything not bolted down.

You put a pitted whetstone to the rusted crescent of your scimitar, half smiling and half snarling, the driving rain of the squall a siren call of sorts, all dreams and nightmares. The waves must be twenty feet high, even out here in the middle of the ocean, yet you’ve seen worse. Your rope hammock sways, casting a restless web of shadows, and you imagine you can hear the slither and clink of your hidden hoard of Doubloons beneath the floorboards.

“We’ll get through this one too,” you mutter, reaching for that skin of sour wine as you lick your lips and force your hackles to smooth after a cacophonous crash of thunder. “We always do.”