Divided Lands

Chapter 2

Eric leaned against the frigid railing and watched the waves as they barely splashed the iron side of the ship. The moisture hanging in the air tickled his lungs as he breathed in and out and wondered, with his chin in the palm of his hand, just what he thought he was doing with his life. All the way to the horizon he could see nothing but cold, grey sea. Home was no longer a tiny black sliver of land between the water and the sky—-it just wasn’t there anymore. Everything, including his judgemental bastard of a father and that boy with the sparkling eyes who had gotten them both into trouble, was farther away than it had ever been. Eric kicked a loose chunk of the wooden deck overboard, but couldn’t see it plop into the water. The ship was moving too fast.

“Good riddance, I guess.” he sighed. Eric could have tried to convince himself that he didn’t see his father’s disappointed glare every time he closed his eyes, but he knew it would have just been wasted energy. This time tomorrow he would be with Haley, and they could both soak their sorrows in everything that was fermented within a five square mile radius.

A high pitched rattling assaulted his ears above the murmuring of the waves. Eric squinted to his right, reality pulling him out of his daydream like a slap in the face.

“Hey, do you think that stuff that falls in the sea floats all the way to the bottom? I guess some of it gets eaten by fish and sea monsters and such, but how much of it actually makes it to the very, very bottom? I mean, there’s gotta be a bottom to that thing. It can’t just go on and on and on and on forever in some places. Or can it? I wonder if—”

A blonde girl was chattering away as if she didn’t even see all of the people stopping to stare as they passed by. Seated next to her in a chair that she had pulled up to the railing was a very tall brunette, her hair pulled back out of her eyes and a pad of paper resting on her lap. She was pouring all of her intention into a sketch she was working on and paying absolutely no attention to the yammering girl beside her. Eric honestly had no clue how she was managing.

“-there are fish aaaaall the way down to the bottom. Could be, right? I mean, nothing’s impossible, right Alice? Right? Hey, Alice? Alice? Alice!” the blonde girl jabbed the brunette in the side. She glanced up from her sketch with a wide-eyed stare, as if she had been torn from a deep sleep

No matter how annoying they both looked, Eric had to admit that he was a bit annoying himself—and lonely. He pushed himself off of the railing and headed over to them.

“My name’s Eric. What’s yours?” he said, smiling with stupid enthusiasm.

“My name’s Alice.” the brunette said. She blinked a few times before going right back to her sketch, her pencil moving just as furiously across the page as it was before she was interrupted.

The blonde girl, however, jumped a bit when she saw him. She stretched her mouth out into a grin and replied, “I’m Evangelina! Or, well, Evie. I would really rather you call me Evie.”

“Ah. Well, hi Evie.” Eric said with an awkward wave. He leaned over Alice’s shoulder. “What are you drawing?”

“This.” Alice tilted back her sketch pad so that he could see. There was a slight edge to her voice that suggested she was irritated that he had asked.

On the paper she had shaded in the ocean with its rolling waves; the clouds were sketched beautifully, with each shadow hinting at the setting sun. The one truly unsettling thing about the piece of work, however, was the figure of a woman floating just a few inches above the water. She was thin, had scraggly hair made up of nothing but single pencil strokes, and coal-black eyes that dripped like wax.

Eric rubbed at the back of his neck. “Um…that’s really good. You know, for you to have drawn it just from your imagination.”

Alice tilted her head and squinted at him as if he had grown an extra arm. “Imagination?”