Lost at Sea

Jasper could still remember the first day he’d ever met Eleanor like it was yesterday.

They were very young when her father brought her with him to the blacksmith’s shop. Joseph Lane was a regal man, with his sharp gray eyes and tall stance. He towered over most men, but despite his frightening bearing, he was the kindest man that Jasper had ever met.

Their fathers had been rather close friends. It was no surprise when he showed up in person to pick up his new tools, but it was a surprise when Jasper realized he was not alone. With her arms wrapped tightly around her father’s leg and her face hidden from his view, it was the fiery auburn hair that caught his attention first. She was shy then, a trait that she eventually outgrew to become one of the most social people he’d ever met.

She hid the entire transaction, though Jasper overheard very clearly from the men’s conversation that she had begged her father to go with him. The men talked for what felt like hours, but she rarely moved. He sat on the floor with his back against a wooden beam and watched her. Her shoulders rose and fell with her breath, and every once in awhile a glittering strand of long red hair would catch in the wind. He decided then and there he would be her friend no matter how hard she made it.

Joseph ended up staying so late that it was only right that they be invited for dinner. When they sat down, Jasper made a point to sit right next to her. She avoided eye contact, but a few times he knew he heard her giggle at his jokes.

Hope blossomed in his chest. If he could make her laugh, he might have a shot at being her friend. After they finished their supper and their fathers went to discuss business, Jasper made the first move to introduce himself. She spoke softly, though her mouth curved gently into a smirk on one side, as though sharing a private joke with herself. She used her full name-- Eleanor Elizabeth Lane-- but she didn’t demand to be called by any titles. He’d expected her to correct him every time he said Eleanor, but she never once did.

She spoke highly of the land her father owned. She had an intense love for horses and watching the sun rise in the mornings. The way she described it gave him a very clear idea of what she saw every day through her eyes. There was not a detail that she considered to insignificant to mention.

Jasper couldn’t remember for the life of him how long they talked that night, laughing and sharing stories. All he knew was that night after they had gone and he was left to lay in his bed, it was her face that made his dreams seem colorful.

As he laid in the sand with the threat of starvation hanging over his head, he longed for that childish innocence. The certainty of their futures and who they were going to be had been so clear for them. When the revolution kicked into full gear, those carefully constructed paths were washed away. Her new face, the one he wasn’t so sure he’d hallucinated anymore, was the only one he could think of when her name came to mind. The hungry, predator-like eyes that glowed in the dark made him wish he had died in the shipwreck.

Who had she become? What had she become? There were no easy answers to the questions that reeled in his head. The full moon shone balefully down on Jasper as if it knew, but wasn’t going to share.

A flash of silver in the water caught his eye. The fish that had wandered in was still trapped in his hell hole with him. He grit his teeth. No, he wouldn’t let himself die.

His feet would not support his weight. Instead, he pulled himself onto his knees and sat there for a moment that way. The world around him was spinning and beginning to tinge a strange bluish-black around the edges, but stubborn refusal to lose consciousness kept him moving. He crawled pitifully over to the rocks, cutting up his palms and knees, to where he’d seen washed up pieces of driftwood. With a jagged piece of a broken stone, he began sharpen several of them into crude spears, though he wasn’t sure how much good they would do him.

He was well passed being merely hungry. The feeling he had now was more like his stomach was trying to digest itself. His hands shook violently and often times he scraped himself more than the stick. By the time he’d finished carving one, his condition had worsened and his body was every bit as carved as the wood.

He’d never attempted to catch fish this way before, but he couldn’t imagine it being that hard. He slipped into to cold pool up to his chest and readied his makeshift spear to thrust just above the water line. The fish-- a tuna, he believed-- was not very weary of him. It was obvious that something had drained its energy as well, as it moved rather sluggishly. He speared it almost too easily. He knew that had more to do with the fish’s ailments than his own actual skill, however.

There was no cooking that night. He skinned the fish with his sharp rock and ate the meat inside raw. If he had not been so ravenous, the action would have repulsed him into vomiting. Unfortunately, he had no other choice.

Only after his hunger was sated, he recognized his thirst. It was common knowledge to not drink the ocean water, but Jasper figured he’d rather take the madness over the cracked lips and dry throat. Without even hesitating, he shoved his face into the water and drank in deep gulps, rarely bothering to come up for air. It wasn’t until after his stomach was full and sloshing that he realized the water was not near as salty as he’d expected. In fact, it was almost sweet. It was then that he realized with relief that the water there was fresh.

He laid curled in a ball on his side in the sand with the sound of the waves slapping against the edges of his sanctuary. Reality floated seamlessly into his dreams, as though there never really was a transition. As though the girl laughing in his arms were truly there, and he no longer had to mourn the love of his life.

That night he remembered the pain when it was as sharp as a whip across his back. As intense as Jasper’s agony had been, the rest of the world didn’t even stutter. The birds continued to sing, the seasons continued to change, and stars continued to wink enticingly. Despite how slowly his life began to creep on, no one else even faltered. When he would have trouble falling asleep at night, it shocked him to remember that he was the only person mourning her. When his heart ached, no one else felt any pain at all.

And that was the way it had to be.