The Sea of Hope

He hasn’t seen land for more than a month. He was all alone, out in the sea on his fragile little boat. He felt lonely but he didn’t lose hope.

It all started as a normal day of work, when a huge storm caught his fishing boat and flew him away from the coast. He had only got food for a few days. Now, he had already eaten all his resources and had drunk all his water. He knew that without water, he would die, so to make drinking water from the salty seawater he used a known technique to separate the salt from the water.

Any other person would have given up, but he felt like there was hope. He caught fish for his meals, and as he didn’t want to eat them raw, he used up spare parts of his boat. “I wouldn’t use these anyway”, he thought. Every day he made calculations and he kept one direction he was heading west all the time.

            “If only I could see the stars”, he wished every night, “I could easily tell where I am”, but the sky stayed cloudy, and after around two weeks, when he first saw the thousands of stars, he couldn’t recognise any image, nothing felt familiar about the arrangement.

            At this point he was weak, always hungry and thirsty, as it took a long time to clear the water. The sun wasn’t helping either, as, even through the clouds it shone bright and warm. But he was mentally strong. Every day he went to sleep thinking:

”Tomorrow might be my lucky day.”

He knew he was a long way from home, as he started catching fish that he’d never seen before, ones that felt unnatural, with the bright colours and fascinating patterns.

            There were many times he saw a ship or an island, but as he got closer, he realized that there was nothing there. “I will find something eventually”. His boat was slow and light, the waves were throwing him from left to right.

            And finally, when he arrived on an island, he felt:

“I was right. I will always be right,” and he sat down to look back into the endless sea.

Then he got up, found people who could tell him where he was, and then he went back to the sea, going home.

Miklós Hunor   IX. R