Where the blue gray sky and pitch black sea collided sat a quaint sailboat. A small boy sat in the boat, soaked and shivering, but despite his predicament he was smiling. A woman stood aboard an ancient vessel, a rowboat of some sort. She watched the boy in disgust. She could not stand to look at his tattered sails and rickety boat anymore. He disgraced the waters she had once loved. She wanted him out. She watched him run his fingertips along the very top of the water, amused by the way the water parted and moved up his hand, creating an aquatic sort of glove. It pained the woman, for when she was a girl she did the same thing.

She wanted to shake the boy. She wanted to scream. Didn’t he understand? The boy smiled up at the sky. Doesn’t he get it? It’s cold and rainy. He’s stuck out at sea and it’s nearly supper time. The world is a cold and unforgiving place. How can you smile at a sky that doesn’t smile back? A sky that watched her only brother and best friend fall off her raft so many years ago? The sky that gazed down at her, helpless and alone trying to save her only true friend in life? the same stars that permitted a young lively honest and true boy die before he even reached double digits? The boy lay back in the boat and looked up at the stars that mottled the sky above him. He looked so peaceful. She couldn’t look up. Couldn’t face those same stars she’d howled at all those years ago. When she was just a little girl, lying with her best friend, her brother, watching the stars come into view. Trying to count them as they came. She remembered getting up to grab the sandwiches they packed. She remembered the little raft wobbling under her unsteady legs. She lost her balance for a moment, falling on her rear and splashing water around them. The crisp ocean air stung her eyes but she didn’t care. The little boys boat floated through the calm waters, free of any human steering, with only nature pointing it in the direction. It floated leisurely, as if to say “It’s not like we have anywhere to go.”. She remembered that feeling. The feeling of having nothing she needed to do, no time she needed to be back, no place she needed to be. The complete freedom that is childhood. She remembered after the accident, how her mother kept her in the house. Always busy, she had no time to do much. Caring for her family and working she forgot how the salty ocean breeze felt. She had missed the lapping waves and the misty smiles of moonlight reflecting off of the sea. She missed the wind blowing through her hair and the damp musty smell of the old wooden boat. She began to row away from the boy, running her fingers through the water she looked up at the stars and smiled.