THE BOATSMAN (Draft)

The unfamiliar countryman

 I am a countryman of a shore separated by the vastness of many great oceans. With my will exhausted and body battered, my tall frame lies for a while, with my clothes consisting of a simplistic pair of trousers, two beaten shoes and a thick jacked, soaked by the sharply scented salt water. My limbs are splayed into strange poses, where my bald, scar tempered head lies embedded into the rough sand with the rhythmic tempo of the breaking waves, stinging the grazes and cuts on my face. While I wish to roll my prone body away from the lapping waters and onto dryer land from where the mellow sun might dry me, I remain pinned by a slick, tanned hide jacket coated with a concoction of blubber and oils; I recall that this garment belongs to me, with the length extending to the knees while worn, where a hastily cut strip of fabric threads through several loops to form a belt. Currently, my efforts to shift are prevented, as the soaked fabric has become an immense weight that droops to the sand.
With eyes that lazily gloss over the land through driven instinct to survey, I notice the mound like objects that rest on top of the sand, their shape taking on appearance similar to small upturned boats; they look as though forgotten by vast and savage time, leaving hulls cracked and frames reduced to misshapen outlines capped by rust.
In attempt to soothe myself through shallow escapism I close my eyes and try to recall the prosperous echoes of my homeland, which is to say, before that terrible affliction found its way to our lands, abruptly ending our simple way of life. The land I speak of is set apart by several seas both mighty and vast, with each sprawling stretch of ocean seemingly possessing a personality bestowed to that which is inanimate to the common eye; While many seafarers a combination of headstrong and young may prefer to seek an explanation for such occurrences with steely logic and understanding that relies on seeing to believe, a great many of my countrymen feel a great connection to the deeds and beasts etched in myth (where such passages account how the sprawling depths flow with the lifeblood of slain divine beings). For miles, the once pristine sand now discoloured with many brooding shades, circles the coastal borders of my country, where mighty ships during those years where our people knew health, flowed between our ports that rang with the sounds of clanging ship bells and activity on the board-walks. Those who did not sail by day and sometimes night, made a living through assorted craft carried out in and around workshops, where fingers work nimbly with exotic produce to create goods both for ourselves and trade oversea carried by merchants with larger than life attitudes in their grand gleaming cargo ships.
My focus is broken by the growing warmth that a lone beam of sunlight strikes upon my forehead, guided through the neutral clouds. As I blearily glance at the the sand formed from from a coarse variety of dense fragments, a sensation of guilt latches onto my heart. In my lying here, I cannot help but dwell on my failings to my people, prolonging the great suffering that the many feel. On arrival of that terrible affliction, Those once of sound mind became lost to themselves, remodelled into human like shells with gutted humanity. The faces that we once knew now display a vacant expression that lacks familiar identity, lips pursed lightly with the eyes lightly glazed and without depth. Neither medicine or methods of a non conventional means can retrieve what they have lost. To truly describe the strange loss of our people, perhaps it would be of benefit to put the circumstances of our crisis into word: