Humanity is not a part of nature. It's a strange distinction to make but more important than most will ever know. To be a part of nature is to exist. To be human is to live. And to have a reason to do so. According to the records of the ancient, unreliable as they may be, Sidon, lord of the sea and storm, was the first to see this. He conquered the seven seas, putting his life above their existence, as surely as he sailed atop their waves. To him, the sea existed in a myriad of states, raging and calming. Swilling and stilling. But it did so passionlessly, purposely. It merely existed. Sidon lived. And so do I.
The ocean roared, and Sidon roared with it. Wild laughter spilled out of him as his small ship crested the wave and plunged down the other side. He quickly threw his weight to the other side, grabbing the mast as he plunged his hand into the water, forcing his boat to turn parallel to the wave.
And there, in the middle of the roaring thunder and torrential downpour, Sidon, son of Adam, surfed the primordial waves.
Another wave appeared, as if angered by Sidon’s joy in the face of their majesty. It was taller than any Sidon had ever seen, rising to the sky as if it sought to tear down the stars themselves. Sidon only laughed louder, as if delighted it had come to play with him. He looked like an ant before it, his olive skin slick with seawater and sweat, straight black hair pasted to his nape. His ship was nothing more than a few planks thrown together with reed rope and a woven reed sail, barely sea worthy. But his green eyes shone.
With a quick movement, he straightened his boat and turned off the wave he was surfing. With rapturous eyes he faced the oncoming giant. It came like an endless wall, rising several hundred feet in the air. When Sidon reached it it was nearly vertical, but he refused to let it deter him. With a pull of the crude rudder, he angled the boat slightly, using the surging wind to begin the upward climb. Drawing on the full weight of his experience, he tacked his way up the nearly vertical wave, with nothing but the wind to urge him on.
He soon passed an invisible threshold, entering the realm of clouds. Visibility vanished into a hazy fog, occasionally illuminated by brilliant bolts of lightning. Some struck perilously close, sending jolts through Sidon’s limbs. His eyes grew wilder with every strike, until at last they burst through the top of the clouds, revealing the enlightened world above.
The sun still shone up here, brilliant against the dark rumbling clouds below him. The scene was set, a sea of stormy sun-illuminated clouds hid the bottom of the gray wave that still threatened to swallow Sidon whole. A breeze caught his sail and with one last wrench, the sail tore.
But not before giving him a final burst of motion.
Sidon burst through the wave like an ascending angel, water spreading out behind him like a pair of wings. He reached for the distant sun like a starving man grasping at food. For a single moment, he hung, arm-outstretched, verdant eyes illuminated by the sun he refused to tear his gaze from. Then he fell to the other side, still stormy despite the massive wave having consumed the clouds itself.
He surfed back into the raging sea, sailless, facing the storm with what was essentially a piece of wood.
His smile only grew wider.
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Sidon finished pulling the last reed, and stepped back to admire his newly patched sail. He was getting better, though he supposed that was the only outcome of having to do this weekly. He was lucky that so many variations of the reeds he used for his sails existed.
He tilted his head back to the noon sun, sighing contentedly.
He had braved storms and calm seas both. Towering waves and subtle currents.
And. now, the first sea was almost conquered.
Sidon’s laughter rang across the open air.
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The waves rose to the heavens, sweeping away swaths of the stormy clouds to reveal beams of golden light. The world became a patchwork of light and shadow, punctuated by brilliant lighting and skyscraping waves.
Sidon’s small boat was an ant before them. But his motion betrayed nothing but calm experience as he prepared to face the sea’s fury once more.
As he sailed across the waves, the seeds of excitement shone, but they were dampened with the weight of experience.
These waves no longer posed any threat to him, and as he cut through them like a sword through flesh, watery blood flying in every direction, he couldn't help but feel the first hints of disappointment.
He missed the excitement, the challenge. When the sea had pushed him to his very limits. When time fell away in the face of the overbearing will to survive.
He missed it.
As he conquered the storm with practiced calm, a storm of his own raged within.
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Sidon lay on his back, staring at the stars above. Unlike his brother, Sidon loved the stars. They were pathfinders to him when he got lost, and friends when he was lonely. He talked to them sometimes, and I listened for them.
I never spoke, of course. I didn’t want to influence his path. But sometimes, all somebody needs is someone to listen.
“I’m worried.” Sidon confided to the stars. “I am changing and growing. Finding my way just as Father told us to. I have conquered 3 of the seven seas, sailed for months on end. My boats are stronger, my skills more polished, and my body stronger. Yet the sea… the sea is the same.”
He sighed.
“It used to be so big. So endless. Something I could lose myself in. Now… I have conquered half of them. And the rest will put up no more resistance than the first.”
For a time he was silent, lost in his own thoughts. When he next spoke it was a whisper, the whisper of a child afraid he had seen the end.
“Why don’t they grow with me? Why don’t they change? What separates us?”
I had no answers for him.
He stayed with the stars till the sun rose.
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The sea was empty for as far as the eye could see.
Once, Sidon had considered the sea itself enough to qualify as something. But increasingly, the sea seemed to fade into the background, becoming nothing more than the canvas on which his story played out.
He began to question his goal.
What was the glory in conquering the seas? They were static. Empty.
Where was the challenge?
He no longer knew why he sailed, only that he had to finish what he started.
The winds picked up, casting ripples through the ocean as if it were a mere puddle. It caught Sidon’s sail and cast him forth with greater momentum, leaving a v-shaped trail in his wake.
Ahead of him, clouds gathered ominously, lit by the occasional flash of lighting.
Sidon sighed.
Just another day.
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Another clear night of stargazing.
Sidon’s eyes were clouded as drowned in the maelstrom of his thoughts.
“What separates us?”
He rolled over and dipped his hand into the sea.
“The sea exists. It moves. It contains life. So what separates us?”
He hesitated. “What separates me?”
The stars gave no answer.
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The faint line of the coast stretched out in front of Sidon. The last coast. Once he set foot on it, he would have finally conquered the seven seas.
He approached cautiously, waiting for the sea to strike out with some sort of final blow. Waiting for the final moment of resistance before the end. An ember in his heart stirred at the thought, but was quickly extinguished by the lack of such resistance.
The sand was wet under his feet. It felt like sand pure and simple. Sidon mechanically hauled his boat onto the shore and away from the sea. Then, he sprawled in the sand and stared out at the sea. He had imagined this day for ages. Felt the victorious joy surging through him, pictured crying out in triumph.
But it just felt like another day.
He gazed out at the sea, imagining his sibling somewhere across it. He hadn't seen them for years. He wondered what they were doing. He wondered if they felt the same way.
Tired.
At the moment, there was joy in Sidon, no anger, no impatience. He simply existed. Just like the sea.
He remembered the beginning, before he had grown into something the sea stood no chance again. The fear and joy both. The adrenaline of facing a wave no man had the right to face. The uncertainty of not knowing where the next slice of land was. He had lived in those moments, pushed to his limits in pursuit of a greater concept.
He chuckled, enlightenment finally reaching him. That was what separated him from the sea, or had.
The sea merely existed, and that existence defined it.
Man lived, pushed to his limits in the pursuit of a higher purpose.
Sidon sighed. It had been a long time since he had lived, his purpose stripped by the sea’s lack of resistance. Maybe that's why he felt so empty.
He was a purposeless man, a boat without a sail.
But he had rebuilt sails, ones worn out by use and destroyed by storms both. Why couldn't he build himself another?
Still, he wondered.
Was this all to life? Building sail after sail to what? He had tried that, and now he was alone in the middle of nowhere, sailess once more. He wondered what he would find if he made another sail and set out once more. The things he would find and the sights he would see.
Perhaps there was more to it after all.
He got up, a faint smile playing on his lips. The embers within him stirred, cajoling the flame of life from its long sleep. Warmth spread through his body once more, like a man seeing the sun after ages in the dark.
Nature exists. Man lives.
And under the flame of life, Sidon felt ethereal winds guiding his flame to something new, binding them to a new purpose.
He didn’t know what, only that he now had another sea to sail and another after that.
He knew not where he was going, but that was ok.
Nature exists. Man lives.
What else could they do?
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