Tevun-Krus #107 - A Very Merry PiratePunk Christmas, Matey!

Santa's Pirate - A Story by @jinnis

Santa's Pirate

by jinnis 

At five, Cindy knew what she wanted to become when she grew up. She pulled her dad's sleeve to tell him the news with shiny eyes.

"Santa?" Dad looked up from his screen and shook his head. "Girls can't become Santa. How would you impress the children without a beard?" His belly wobbled when he laughed and returned to his lecture. Cindy was devastated. Wouldn't it be marvellous to ride across the sky in a sleigh and distribute presents?

Two years later, she overcame her frustration and decided she would become a pirate instead. If she couldn't bring presents, she'd sail the seven seas and hunt for treasure. She told her buddy Marc about her plans, but he shook his head. "There are no girl pirates, silly."

"But there are." Cindy was close to crying. Marc just laughed and went on playing Minecraft.

Cindy readjusted her dreams and grew up to be a feminist. Unfortunately, this didn't pay the bills, so she followed her maths teacher's advice and became an accountant. It wasn't as good as distributing presents, but it came pretty close to accumulating treasure.

In her free time, she watched pirate movies and learned celestial navigation, just in case a swashbuckling pirate would drop by to pick her up and take her to the seven seas. Of course, her hopes were in vain.

At thirty, Cindy was disillusioned. Sure, she was a pro at making numbers dance and jump through hoops. But there was something lacking in her life, something like the thrill of riding a sleigh across the night sky or sailing a tall ship through a storm. Her inner emptiness left her with a sad feeling on beautiful nights when she watched the stars sparkle in the sky above her lonely home, standing by the window and sipping a glass of rum.

The rum was her guilty pleasure, an homage to her not-meant-to-be pirate life. And in the night that would change her life, at first, she blamed it for the strange behaviour of a tiny blue star. She stared at it with squinted eyes as the pinprick of light swayed back and forth like a drunken firefly. Were stars meant to sway? After all her astronomical studies, Cindy was pretty sure they weren't, and considered other options. Perhaps an airplane, she thought, or a satellite. But neither was supposed to sway, right?

Not that she'd flown in a satellite, but she'd travelled in enough planes to know they moved straight from A to B in a rather boring fashion, with the rare thrill of a turbulence or banking during approach. She emptied her rum and rubbed her eyes. But the blue star was still there, and instead of swaying, it zipped around in an erratic pattern now. And it seemed to get closer.

Tempted to refill her glass, Cindy withstood. It was the middle of the night and she had to work tomorrow. Besides, the star might disappear if she turned her back. And it definitely became brighter by the minute—it was closing in. At this rate, it would land somewhere to the right, perhaps in the fields south of town. This time of the year, they stood empty, the crops for the next season dormant under a heavy blanket of snow.

Cindy watched as the blue light disappeared behind the forest for a moment, appeared again, shot towards the north and settled in a flat arc in the fields close to the spot she'd guessed. She waited for the bang and the flash of an explosion, but nothing came. Not even the sirens of the police or the firefighters. Cindy checked her phone. It was well past midnight on a Monday. Perhaps she was the only one to have seen the landing.

It took only a moment to slip into her winter clothes, sturdy boots, and a warm coat. She closed the door and stomped through the snow along the path to the brook. Half an hour later, she saw it. A blue glow on the stretch of beach by the stream where the kids used to swim in summer. Cindy lengthened her strides, driven by curiosity.