There is a figure on the threshold.
He is young, so young you could just as easily call him a boy or a man; his face is smooth but for faint whisps beneath his nose, and he has not yet reached his full height.
He closes the door to the crew's quarters behind him and steps resolutely onto the deck. He has a job to do. There are only a few men who share the deck with him. Nearby, a man sprawls across a pile of barrels nestled in the corner. An older man swabs the deck, while a third man unhurriedly but steadfastly busies himself with tying down a sail and a fourth flies about the rigging in a frenzied rush. A voice calls down from the crow's nest above:
"Land ho! There, to the east! A lighthouse!" The voice belongs to a man who towers above the crew. He holds a long spyglass that points out over the port side of the ship to one eye; the other is squeezed tightly shut.
"gimme that!" squawks another voice. A second sailor in the crow's nest snatches the spyglass and scans the eastern horizon. "I see it!" he exclaims, "but it's East by Southeast."
"You think I don't know my headings?! That light was dead East, I'm sure of it!"
The boy below watches the dispute with curiosity, but the most any of the others offer the crow's nest is a quick glance. "Looks like we've got another set o' fellers that's gone mad, lads." remarks the knot tying sailor.
"lighthouse?! where?!" The man sprawled against the barrels springs upward and promptly careens back onto the pile, destabilizing it and sending a few rolling across the deck. He struggles once again to his feet. He has a crazed look in one eye and an eyepatch over the other, and he stumbles over to the boy on a pegleg. When he opens his mouth to speak, he does so through missing teeth and breath that smells of ale. He leans toward the boy. "Do you know what the lighthouse means?! It means shadows and reflections. Pray you never have to see a reflection, boy. There ain't much that's more frightening in these waters."
The boy thought he noticed a few of the others shivering at that, but if he had asked them, they would have denied it.
"Pay 'em no mind," says the grizzled sailor nearby, as much to the boy as to the drunken man. He finishes his knot and pulls out his pipe. "Oh, they mean well enough by it, but most everybody nowadays knows that the lights on the horizon are conjured up in the minds of sailors desperate for a destination. There is no lighthouse, cuz there is no land." He shrugs nonchalantly and puffs at his pipe.
The drunk man holds the boy's gaze for a long second, then relaxes and mutters, "'Course there's no lighthouse. Darn fools teachin' kids about lighthouses and land, whoever heard of such a thing..." he stumbles his way past the boy, muttering along the way. He flicks his eyes warily eastward only once before fixing them firmly on his bottle of ale.
"It's really a good thing there's no land," says the grizzled sailor between puffs. "Means we can sail wherever we like. Radical freedom. When I feel inclined to sail in a new direction, I do, when I want to swab the deck, I do, and when I want to smoke my pipe, I do."
In the crow's nest, the two men are shouting at each other.
"Ah, you see the truth," says the older man, standing up and nodding to the grizzled sailor. He exudes an aura of wisdom. He's bald and wears a robe, and seems out of place on the ship. Yet, he is also the most at ease. "At least in part. That is the first step toward unlightenment. The whole truth is that everything- from the ships that sail the sea, to the sailors on the ships- are merely manifestations of the sea itself. Complicated waves that ultimately have no more substance than a fleck of sea foam."
"What is unlightenment?" asks the boy.
"Unlightenment is when you finally come to fully recognize the truth of your nature. It is your desire for a light, for land or even wood beneath your feet, that is the source of all your suffering. Without desire, there is no frustration. Fully knowing this makes you less light, and allows you to sink into-- and become one with-- the sea. Only through detachment can one become unlightened."
