First posted in 2016. || Image Credit: Photo by Alice Hampson on Unsplash
The stars shone brightly in the middle of the ocean.
There was no light out here, not like in the burning cities which hugged the shoreline that Owett called home. When night time fell, there was a calming wholeness to the blackness that encased every horizon with its warmth.
Owett could feel the clouds quietly knocking on the side of the boat. Even though The Kayla Breeze was a large ship, the noise was still able to drift up from the edge of the hull a good few meters below Owett and gently soothe him into a meditative slumber.
This was the reason that Owett always took the night watch. It was this calmness which he sought out, the peacefulness that came with the stars. When he looked up at the stars, the troubles of the daytime left him, and he just simply hung like the limp sails on the masts above him, watching the turnings of the universe high above. The winds would be light at night, as they would fly higher into the sky, taking advantage of the calmer air that lay right at the edges of the earth’s atmosphere. Up here, Owett could see the curvature of the earth fall away beneath the ship, leaving nothing but the emptiness of space beyond the horizon.
It was that darkness which comforted Owett. It was the space that was so vast that no human mind could comprehend, and the space which moved on its own rhythm and pace. Humanity had managed to conquer the stars, those human colonies which were out in the far flung corners of the solar system, orbiting stars that Owett could only see as a glimmer of light in the sky. And yet, humanity still had not worked out every secret of the universe.
Those secrets deserved to stay unknown, Owett thought. A universe which had some element of mystery about was a universe which could explain the unexplainable. Things that happened which Owett couldn’t explain or were unfair might have a meaning to him in years to come, and Owett like to think that the universe knew that. It didn’t have to be ascribed to one of the Goddesses, not that Owett believed in them anyway. It just was, it was those things that governed the way people were in the same way that the forcefields kept The Kayla Breeze afloat.
If it was always meant to be, Owett thought, then there could be a meaning that I don’t know about yet. I’ll find it out later, I know that.
Owett felt his anxiety decrease a little. Tomorrow was the day that he had to fight the First Mate for the Captaincy of the ship, as was tradition. However, tonight was the night that he could leave his thoughts with the stars, and enjoy the beauty of the unfolding universe above.
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Alex.J.Cobalt 