Ice on the Hull

((Early 2010 - Was more topical to issues Art was dealing with - but I was really happy with the imagry))

They never make the noise you think it does.  Little floats of ice, looking as soft as snow.  The ship runs up against it, and you hear the wood grind and growl to keep itself intact against the hard cold.  It shakes you a bit.  The hull has this new ironwood they call it at the stem.  It looks to me that they just nailed a few blades to the wood.  Aye, it seems to work, and they say this is the fourth winter they sailed in ice and without a single leak yet.  Still, ice on metal, ice on wood – tis not what one wants to hear at sea.  Ice always wins, and you wonder if it will be this time it will, or next.

By mid-day the ice will be behind us.  By evening tide, I should see the lands of Ambrea again.  Put this bloody trip behind me.  We reached the northern islands, but that is all.  You could see the ice shelf from there, nay going to find a ship heading to my homeland from there.  As long as boats could make it to that place, it was always known that rarely a boat would get in – or for that matter, get out.  Still do not know how the note got out of the bloody place just days ago.  Still do not know if what is says is even true.  Still do not what the bloody elders would send me this note, or why they bloody held it from me for these seasons, or bloody well why they think they can get from me now with it.

Still do not know why I got on that bloody boat to find out.

Seems I make strange decisions these days.  Winter has that effect, I guess.  Especially now that with no crops, with the farmhands, with the snow – with the demons and rift beasts and … – tis easier to hide in the farmhouse, sit in the warm tub, let the ground freeze and thaw.

Tis’ easy to think of things that makes one happy.

That is it most likely, the answer to those bloody questions.  Or maybe just the one.  If I can find that one bit of information.  Nay … if I find her.  I think that will make one happy.

Standing up here, against the railing of the ship, looking down at the sea, and I watch the ice move along.  What is it that makes one think that this little bit of ice, that is so harmless.  Watching it strike the hull, barely move at the weight of the ship, then groan against this what keeps us afloat.  You wonder if the next time will be the time when the hull no longer holds.