a strange voyage

Mauve walls surround the boat on either side..

Orange dusk. The children ask about their wicked spears.

The children tinker with coral fragments and candles.

The older children teach the young ones to count using pins.

The water. An old woman tells a story about men who were cursed looking for a sea of crystals.

Distant islands with promises of medicinal herbs.

Midnight. Lights below. Spirits of the deep.

The moon peeks from cloud. The smell of a cooking fish brings back memories of old alliances with mysterious soldiers.

We review our lot; some crabs and edible weeds.

We plot our course.

The elders share tales about the folk who betrayed each other searching for a ship covered in stones.

Shoals of tiny little fish.

Little wisps of cloud. Foreboding structures.

Huddled together as the storm tosses the raft, and the cruel sea denies us its mollusks.

A stranger on a worn raft. We trade and set sail with sacks of nuts.

The heavens roar with thunder and we lose two crates overboard. Imposing rockfaces fade into view.

A small raft adorned with spearheads and round portholes briefly approaches. A peculiar vessel.

Obsidian cliffs, filled with silver.

Cold wind from the north. The raft groans. The children play a game using a clockwork compass and a stringed instrument.

Pale skies. The raft creaks. A dank, smelly altar.

Stars disappear into the morning.

Shoals of tiny little eels. An elder awakes from a vision, but refuses to speak of it.

Our makeshift vessel drifts into a maze of abandoned rafts. The sky fades to orange.

Awoken from dreams of a lost language.

We drift past an overcrowded fortress..

Storm clouds some way off. The craft is tossed about by the waves. Powdery spires tower over us.

We hope for fish eggs. Children count carved figures as the elders speak of women who were cursed somewhere nearby.

The rain beats down on the raft, and the boat is tossed about.

The sea here teems with shellfish. The smell of a cooking sea-cucumbers brings back memories of mother weaving.

A raft adorned with sickly lichen and green glass passes, manned by three amazons. A strange encounter.