| shadowboxer. |
[Jan. 20th, 2004|09:00 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  restless | ] |
He always knew when they entered the tropics.
It wasn't the swinging compass needle or the turning of the sextant at noon, the creeping temperatures or the steadily shifting winds. It wasn't the tilting pattern of stars overhead or the climbing angle of the sun in its zenith. It wasn't the color of the sea, thawing from antarctic blue to caribbean green as the waters warmed and churned with foam; and it wasn't the color of the sky, flaring into brilliant azure and streaked with blood red as the sun grew larger with each birth. It wasn't the trade of terns for gulls, or the spicy tang of palm and humidity replacing the bitterly sharp smell of ice and rope. It was none of these things, and it was all of them together.
His blood sang in this place, as open and loud as the the lads' shanties of the coming days of warm wine and warmer women. The song in his blood was wilder, wordless, chanting faster with the rising mercury and rushing louder with each removed piece of smothering coat and hat and glove. Something awoke within him at the 23rd Parallel -- something that lay dormant in the cold and came alive only here, coiling in his lungs and spreading out into his skin until his fingers curled and uncurled on the spokes, caressing, stroking out its pulse. It grew with every breath of hot wind, fueled by the sticky sweet air in his nostrils and stoking the warm glow of his soft green eyes into a barely-contained fire.
They knew land was in sight when he began to pace the gun deck, cracking his knuckles.
He did all of his fighting in the tropics. |
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barrett_bonden's journal
contemplative