Sandcastle Kingdoms

I sit on the shore, aimlessly staring out into the abyss that we call the ocean. The water slightly brushes against my feet, slightly wetting my toes. They get colder as the salty air blows, creating wind that knows no limits here.

This has been my life for as long as I can remember. I can't count how many years I've been here. I don't know how I've survived this long.

Except I do. And it was my fault.

I doomed myself to this fate with my wanting. My wanting of something else, a disappointment with what I had. And I'm reminded of it every day.

Each morning I wake up to find myself looking at the reflections in the floor. And every time, I find myself staring into the cold, heartless eyes of a monster. Each time I see it I want to rid it from my sight. I've tried swiping at it, hoping it would go away, but I couldn't.

It was trying to swipe me.

I was the monster of my own story.

*****

I was once a respected and honorable leader, well, to the extent of I leader that I could've been at age 19. I had a great life. In line for the throne, my world was the epitome of a fantasy.

But I wasn't happy. Despite all that I had, I longed for more still. Not in a sense of greed, but in a sense of dissatisfaction. I never really knew what my life was missing, so I never went to go find it.

That was, until I saw the ocean.

I had known the ocean was there all my life, but I never took it into account that it could possibly be what my life had been missing. One day, I was sitting on the jagged, rocky shore that my people call a "beach" when my head suddenly perked up at the sound of... something.

It was an odd sound; distant, yet it seemed it was calling to me. It puzzled me how such a sound could exist. Complex, yet simple. Ever growing, yet ominously faint. Not knowing what it was, I took to the library that evening to do my research. I found that there was absolutely no record that a sound like that could be made.

I wondered for days on end how I could be hearing that sound, and for nights on end that sound silently haunted my dreams each night. That sound had taken over my life. I no longer spent my days happily reading books or going on horseback rides. I now spent them pacing my bedroom, the halls, or any place I happened to be in for hours at a time.

I had changed. I could hear on occasion the servants and pages of the castle whispering to themselves as I slowly walked past them, and every time they each said the same thing.

"What happened to William?"

I didn't know.

My instinctive yearning for more had transformed a mere sound into my entire world.

After a fortnight of this nonsense, I'd had enough. I needed to go and discover what the source of the sound was, and why I was drawn to it. One night, as I packed for my journey, the idea finally dawned on me. My life had held nothing but purpose since I'd heard that sound. This just might have been the one thing that my life was missing. And the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

The following morning, as I stood before my small, but sturdy, wooden fishing boat, I felt a sense of hope. Just a few feet away from me was the ocean, filled with dreams, a sea of possibilities. I gingerly stepped into the boat, careful not to rock it. And before I knew it, I was on my merry way towards something more than my simple land home. I was going into the ocean, something that held much more promise in my eyes.

*****

It had been days since I left the shore, and what little food supply I had started with was now nearly gone, and I couldn't see anything for miles except water. My conscience was nagging me from the back of my head, saying how ridiculous of an idea this was, and how I never should have left. I ignored it to the best of my ability. I knew that I couldn't possibly turn back now.