The Princess's Sailor

It Began on a Boat

Johnny didn't know very many people. He knew his father, the crew, and the cook. It was rather somewhat sad, as he had also never seen the light of day.

His mother gave birth to him in the engine room on a stereotypical stormy night, and she then died shortly after. His father, being afraid of most things, was afraid his son would someday go overboard (as lots of sailors do), so he kept him locked away, teaching him all the tidbits of knowledge he would need to know to keep the engine running smoothly.

And run smoothly that engine did, and before he knew it, nineteen years had passed, and Johnny was still in that room. He had no idea that an outside world even existed. All he knew was the engine.

On the day of Johnny's nineteenth birthday, his dad decided that maybe it was time that he got to see what exactly was going on outside of that room. Johnny squinted at the sun once they reached the deck, and listened to his father quietly explain why he did what he had done.

Johnny stared at his father for a moment and a half before speaking. "Is there some way I could leave?"

"Leave?" asked his father. "What would you wanna go and do a dumb thing like that for?"

"Well you kinda left me down there with no choice, so I wanna go out and see what else there is that you've kept me from." Johnny tapped his foot impatiently against the the floor of the deck. His father sighed and gestured to the dinghy swinging perilously off the starboard side.

Johnny spent the next hour exploring the ship and rummaging around for things he could bring with him on his adventures. Once he had gathered an acceptably sized bundle of clothing and other trinkets, he ran to the dinghy, tossed his belongings in, waved goodbye to his father, and released the small boat into the tumultuous waters below. He found the oars under the tilted bench and started to row towards the small black dot on the horizon.