This is a large scale novel I'm planning and will not write until I have it all fleshed out...but it's my next big dream project (aside from my first finished screenplay,
The Adventure. Here's a little bit of it that I've written, just to earn feedback, curiosity, or whatever
Will Zoeker led an extraordinary life, though there were many like him.
This life had given him horror and hope; it had brought him pleasures and pain. It had led him to treasures and sights and sounds and smells, winters as cold as darkness and summers as bright as love. Its path had led him to heights where he could crush cities between his fingertips, and to lows where their walls blotted out the sunshine. He had felt the sting of death and had also stung others; he had been a king in a castle made of sand, and a prisoner in his own fortress of stone. Yes, life had taken him many places.
But right now, it had brought him to Dumblus.
It was not a foreign place to Will, but it wasn’t home, either. The creak of the wooden docks and the taste of the ocean floating on the breeze weren’t as much nostalgic or even comfortable as they were simply known. The starry sky, dotted with clouds, was exactly the same as every other starry sky anywhere else, and in many ways, Dumblus was the same as any other port town. It had the same wooden buildings, the same workers going home or out drinking at the end of their shift, the same stench of fish and salt and sweat and poverty, of effort and of laughter and love amongst the masses who found reverie in simplicity. And though it wasn’t home, it was a town full of travelers, foreigners, and wanderers…which is perhaps why its familiarity was a little more familiar to Will than its numerous copycat towns.
On the edge of one of these docks Will Zoeker sat, staring off into the great blue forever. The waves lapped up gently against the aging structure, their smell ingrained into its very fibers. If he were to stay here, perhaps the smell would find a home in him as well, but he would never find a home in Dumblus.
But the ocean was another mainstay in his travels, and something he had seen many times in his life. For others it inspired wonder, longing…for others it established who they were, where they were, and what they were doing there. Will had none of that, so instead its endlessness reminded him of the constantly flowing nature of his existence, and the idea that he was merely a drop, a molecule in a stream a million times bigger than he was where no one would know him or ever remember his name.
And honestly, that was fine by him.
But because that was how Will chose to live, it was amusing to take a look at the other side of things: people that had rooted themselves here, stagnating where he was flowing. People with “real jobs,†people with families and children, people whose goal was to simply work and come home, people who needed nothing more than money, beer, and a family to be happy. People who were honestly fine with staying here their entire lives, people who were content that the rest of the world could remain far-off mysteries on a map.
Will wasn’t sure what the merchant was. He wasn’t sure of anything about him, except that he was now dead. Will never asked questions, at least personal ones. He asked only what was required. Who was who, where was what, when would what occur.
Honestly, Will didn’t care much about where that short and skinny merchant came from. Because in that moment, when Will’s sword was at his throat, he was just like any other man about to die. He saw the same flashbacks, regretted the same things, begged for the same mercy, and died in the same way. Anything that set him apart was washed away by the rains of death. Nevertheless, he had ascertained certain things about him.
He couldn’t remember the merchant’s name, for certain…Devin, Steven, something like that. He was young. Very young. Twenty-something young. And of course, his youth had led to eagerness and ambition…which had gotten him mixed in with the wrong crowd. And unfortunately for him, most of Will’s clients for more serious jobs like this happened to be in that exact crowd too.
