Re-reading this, there are so many
things this story COULD be a metaphor for. It was mildly
self-revelatory and written when I was in a pretty stormy mood. You
can take whatever you want out of it.
The moment we caught the monster, sunlight
broke over pink-tinged waves and ignited the low-hanging clouds into
plumes of suspended fire.
Thick rigging rope quickly tore my
hands raw, turning red with each hand-over-hand pull and heave and
synchronized breath. Above us, Captain Wethers clung to the railing
that lined the deck, leaning over the edge and staring into the water
with wide, wild eyes. Every so often he’d shout back to us,
encouragement or a threat to fling us overboard, let us tangle with
the beast in its element, if we didn’t wrench it out of the water
faster. A spear dangled in one of his hands, scratching circles in
the railing’s filigree. Once we made it back to shore, someone –
most likely me, I thought irritably – would be hunched over it for
hours, carefully waxing and sealing the scrapes until they were
invisible.
If we made it back to shore, I
corrected myself.
The odds still dangled somewhere beyond
our favor.
