Taster #3

Classic


What a stupid mess! Cally spun around in the tiny cot, tangling long legs in thin, yet still too warm sheets. The Undine’s Dream’s soporific creaking wasn’t causing her sleeplessness. She was used to the on-board noises after nearly a week becalmed in the horse latitudes, somewhere south-west of the Azores, bound more or less for Bermuda. Her days and nights distinguished only by the passage of light and heat, except in this constantly muggy twilight below deck. Cally looked blearily across the galley at the oven’s clock. Four a.m. She might as well go on deck and read the boring, bloody book. The gibbous moon shone bright so she wouldn’t waste battery power.
She nestled down on seat cushions in the well before the tiller, until she found her place. Lorcan’s abandoned hardback of The Odyssey was the sovereign cure for insomnia and maybe, in the slightly cooler air, it might help her unwind. She’d nearly finished with all this unwanted spare time. The irony of Odysseus’ infatuation with Calypso was not lost on her and she smiled bitterly as her eyes rose to the moon path on the silky, dark blue horizon.
Bloody nympho Bajans!

One mad yacht club party she’d wanted to pass on. Lying Lorcan jumped ship and she’d sailed away forlorn and heart-broken back into this broken dream of the gap year to end them all; crewing newly-built luxury yachts to their owners around the world thanks to the family’s boatyard contacts.
“Don’t be bloody daft, Caoilainn! You can’t go by yourself - you’ll be lost in no time!”
To hell with him! Kelly too. The empty-headed, pneumatic bint!
Well she hadn’t gotten lost. Unfortunately though, she’d run out of fuel as she’d left in such a fizz that she forgot they were low. Then the wind had dumped her too.
Stinging tears came unexpectedly. She’d not got over being mad yet.

“Aaaaaarghhhh!”
Cally’s frustrated scream rang hollow and insignificant into the still ocean night. Scrambling up, moaning incoherently, she flung the book high and hard and yelled again. There should have been a splash, but there wasn’t. Just a muffled thud several yards off the bow.
“Owww!”
The voice rasped in outraged shock. Then there was splashing as several somethings fell into the ocean...

“Name’s Dylan.”
Cally could still barely speak as she handed the beautiful silver-eyed, copper-haired youth a steaming mug of tea. The tendrils still dripped from his unexpected dunking. She’d guiltily let him come aboard when he’d splutteringly told her the book ‘bomb’ had also caused his entire supply of tea bags to fall overboard with him. He grinned at her as he warmed his hands on the beverage.
“Hey - these things happen in the Bermuda Triangle! But that’s where transatlantic row boats have the advantage over sail - I could tow you?”
“Won’t that spoil your single-handed status?”
“Nah! The publicity’ll be great. Lone oarsman rescues damsel in distress, etc... It’ll be epic!”

No comments:

Post a Comment