Grey Light

1. He sleeps at the top of the mast

1. He sleeps at the top of the mast

        He sleeps at the top of the mast, mouth slightly open, chest rising and falling with every soft breath.  It's a precarious choice of a resting place, but though the ship moves up and down with each passing wave, and tilts him this way and that, it never lets him drop. The midday sun warms his cheeks and his pale hair, and he’s smiling in his sleep, whispering incoherent words to his dreams. One corner of his right cheek deepens into a dimple as his lips pull up further. With a loud noise, the white sails beneath him unfurl, growing and groaning as the winds crash into them; but still he doesn't wake up.

        They’ve been at sea for weeks and weeks. Land seems more like a vague memory in the back of his mind than something real and solid. It's been so long...

        He climbed up here hours ago, quick and soundless. He’s always been light on his feet, of that breed of suppleness and sureness that never fails to scale sheer heights for the sake of a better view. Of what? Everything—a fight, a race, girls, ships, the world that waits at his fingertips. The world waits for him. It always does, whenever he tilts his lips in the secret smile as though he knows something you don't; or even when he rubs his eyes in exhasution and for just a moment his face is open and empty; and especially when he pulls out his old violin and makes it laugh, and cry, and dance and sing for him, for him and no one else.