The remains of Lucidity

I opened my eyes today. the Chief was on the other side of the boat. He was sleeping, I hoped.

The sky was blue, no wind. I returned to sleep.

I dreamt about the night of the storm.

It started with the first wave, big as a building.

And then. It was black.

Black and breathless.

How do you find the surface inside the water at the middle of the night?

I Searched for the one thing I haven’t seen inside the water all my years as a fisherman. The stars.

I found them, then the surface, and then the next wave.

It was twice the size of the previous one.

I took the most air a man can hold in his lounges.

And again, like a piece of paper inside a hurricane, I turned upwards and backwards.

I stopped spinning when I bumped my head. All the air I held inside came out, and I see no stars.

Only darkness.

I thought it was over. This time I am under the ship or something that is deeper and without air, there is no chance to pass the obstacle.

Luckily, I was mistaken. It was the small fishing boat, the captain called it the emergency boat.

I lifted myself inside, caught my breath, and searched for any survivors or floating essentials around.

I drifted between the ruins in the dark. No man, no food, nothing.

I started to cry and fell asleep.

Something stomped the boat and woke me up.

It was the Chief.

I helped him get abroad. The first thing he did when he caught his breath was hugging me, tears and laughter burst out of him.

Never in my life gratefulness seemed so sad.

I am happy I am not alone. But it doesn’t change anything.

We are still here.  What are we going to do now?

"We just need to keep living.

The sea gives and the sea takes.

But you cannot surrender, you must imagine your redemption."

I believed him. He is the Chief.

After a couple of days talking to each other, trying to keep up something optimistic until we find something, the hunger took over.

We had no food or equipment on this boat, but we are fishermen.

If you have two hands and teethes in your mouth, you can catch anything.

So, we sat, and waited for the fish to appear.

Most of the light hours nothing passed by. around the afternoon, a huge pack of hand sized purple fishes arrived.

We agreed one of us will try to catch with both of his hands, as the other holds him.

I tried my luck, and caught one, but the Chief let his grip lose.

I fell to the ocean and lifted myself back to the boat, while he was laughing his ass off.

At first, I was angry we missed the only food my hands held for almost a week. But what can I do now?

I started laughing too, we stopped a couple of minutes later, when our stomach heard the joke.

It was the second and last time we ever laughed on this boat.

The first dinner accrued the next day.

I saw something floating from a far, as we got closer it looked like a body, but eventually we realized it was a log.

A FUCKING LOG IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEA.

I wanted to shred that piece of wood, but the Chief stopped me.

"We can shape a piece of it, make it sharp and use it to catch fishes."

The man who let our dinner go yesterday, was damn right.

I grabbed the log and that is what we did.

Each one of us waited with his wooden knife from each side of the boat, it took a while, but the pack of purple fishes from yesterday came back.

We stopped after sunset. I caught one, the Chief caught none.

We shared this hand size fish for hours like it was a white whale.

We haven’t seen the pack of purple fishes no more, nor any other fishes.

Sitting with our wooden knives' day by day, but the sea gives, and the sea takes.

Seems to me he took all his fishes to other fishermen.

The strength and will we had on our ship 'Lucidity' weeks before, started to give up. As a fisherman, without fishes you are nothing.

"We have to keep on trying.

Or we die."

My body wanted to yell, "If we don’t die, for what are we keep on living?"

He hugged me the second time on this boat, and we returned to fish.

Days went by, and the struggle to not fall asleep while fishing, was our greatest enemy.

Our mouths were so dry we stopped talking to each other.

We sat on the boat, back-to-back, until one of us fell asleep.

I woke the Chief every time because I couldn’t stay awake without his back. On the other hand, he didn’t wake me, after I woke up naturally, he just looked at me and smiled.

In my dreams I keep on living the night of the storm.

I wake up after the second wave, when I catch my breath on the fishing boat.

I never gets to the point I meet the Chief.

The last few days we barley sat to fish. Maybe an hour a day.

I woke up today with a bad feeling, the chief was laying on the other side of the boat, I wanted to reach for him, I wanted to know this bad feeling is just the way things are these days.

But I couldn’t. I fell asleep once again.

I am awake now.

This is nighttime in the ocean.

The chief is not on the other side of the boat.

The only thing I see is the stars in the sky.

Suddenly a star starts to move, and then another.

They shine different from the others. One is white and the other is red and flashing on and off.