Her wings are as a pregnant stomach, her canvas skin and feather pulled taught by the westward wind she straddles. Her body is heavy and cumbersome, overburdened with the hopeful eyes and puritanical disposition of the 100 odd souls who cling parasitically to her back.
Governor John White stands on the prow. He is stark and erect, broad shoulders splitting the blue expanse in twain as if the sky were afraid to mar his aristocratic bearing. Unseen by the expedition he leads the man smiles, a predatory ear to ear type thing as if daring the world to stand before him.
He throws a glinting, offhanded gaze over his shoulder at the heaving sweating throng of colonial sailors. A man snaps to salute, iron discipline stiffened under the dark, regal eyes. White chuckles to himself, the sound muffled into a dull warbling by the oceanic roar below. In that moment, the light of providence catching the grasping wave points in a dazzling array he feels as if all will be well.
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All is not well in the Roanoke Colony. Thomas Montgomery presses his ear to the roughhewn shell-like palisade which rings his small, huddled and squalid community. It grows like a cancerous leech off the side of this new world, the taint of the old seeping into the very earth and souring once joyous expressions. The man frowns.
On the other side is the woods, those damned titanic and towering giant limbs of pine which obscure all vision and scuttle plans of agriculture. Governor White had left for England a year ago, in search of supplies with which to feed this unnatural wart of British civilisation.
Another savage keen cuts through the moonlit din with the barking rebuke of musket fire lashing out close behind. No effect, the woods shelter these demons. The land doesn’t wish to be brought to heel, her sandy earth and endless woods birth from their hellish pits beings of grim visage and dark hearts. These howling wolves wheel about just beyond the reach of the settlement, the monotonous beating of their war drums and the high-pitched whines of heretical flutes washing over the fearful folk of the Roanoke. Thomas leaves for home, to be lulled to sleep by the baying calls for his blood.