Ruckus Onboard

  Varian looked across the crowded dining table at his fiancé. She was laughing as she talked to the man next to her. All around him was laughter and excitement, people a little taken with drink, with the ambience. They were on the world's finest ship, on her maiden voyage. All around them was luxury, and why shouldn't there be? Why? When they were born to the world of luxury, and never questioned why some had it, and some did not.

Faith saw him watching her from across the table, and he gave her a reassuring smile. There was no point in worrying her, she had every right to be happy, heading to New York, towards a new life with a husband who would treat her well, and he would, treat her well. She didn't deserve to know his growing sense of uneasiness. Though was it right to describe it as growing when it had always been there? Faith, his fiancés name should serve to guide him, have faith that everything would turn out well, but he couldn't help thinking that the promises he had made to his father on his death bed had been made in the haste of the moment.

His father, he had respected the man so much, and Varian knew that he had always wanted the best for him. So, when he had told Varian that the days on the landed gentry seemed to be coming to an end, told him to sell their considerable estates, take Faith abroad, marry her, and start a business more suited to Varian's particular skills, like a chain of pharmacies, Varian had clasped his father's hand and promised he would. Varian took his promises very seriously, but here, three months on, he did have to wonder if a promise made in a single moment would lock him into an entire life that wasn't what he would have chosen. New York maybe wasn't right for him, pharmacies maybe weren't right for him, Faith, poor Faith, kind and pretty, patient and steady, maybe Faith wasn't right for him either. He felt as if the world, this world that he was sailing across, the world that's horizon changed every day, the world that should seem so large to him now he was outside his small town – was instead growing smaller by the second. It was if his whole life was spread out in front of him, already decided and mapped. A life that many people would envy, one of financial comfort, clear career choices, and a steady marriage. Why was it so hard for him to accept that life? Why did he feel as if there was something out there he was meant to be doing?

He stood up, giving a slight bow to the two women on either side of him to apologise for leaving the table. Faith's eyes were following him, a sudden look of worry on her face, perhaps she was more in tune to his state of mind than he thought. He gave her a reassuring smile again.

"Just going to take some fresh air up on deck, crab always makes me restless."

Faith gave a smile.

"Perhaps it's the way they walk sideways." She said. The man next to her burst into a roar of laugher as if it were the funniest thing he had ever heard.

"It is scurrying across his stomach in the wrong way, no?" The man answered in a thick accent.

Varian kept his smile plastered on his face.

"Maybe one day I will remember it's best not eat them." Varian said with another short bow as he made his way down the long dining table, passing a hundred people. He pushed open the wide doors and found himself on deck, the chill of the Atlantic air hitting him straight away, tinged with the smell of cigarette smoke. He made his way through the group of passengers who were stood smoking and complaining about the cold, until he reached found a place where he was alone with just his thoughts and the saltiness of the sea air. He rested his back against the cold metal of the wall and took a deep breath.

"You can breathe." He said aloud to himself, trying to remind himself that he wasn't suffocating, it was just a trick of his brain. He wasn't stuck, he still had choices... but that promise, that promise weighed so heavily on him.