The traveller

The sun was setting as she sailed away, her homeland slipped slowly behind, left in the ship's wake - colours strikingly vivid, greens and golds and rich browns of plowed fields contrasting against the deep blue ocean and azure sky which presided over everything; as the coast fell away into the distance she wondered if she might ever see it again and how she may have change should it happen.

As the sun dipped lower a shimmering trail of liquid-gold stained the water, a glistening link between the ship and the land it steamed away from - the life she knew. Golden rays caught gulls sparking their white feathers aflame as they flew overhead - and a spark had also caught in her own heart, it burned with hot intensity and a desire to see the world.

Into a heart of brilliant gold, vivid red and purple the ship carried her, due west, the setting sun almost too bright to look at but impossible to look away from - and as shadows claimed the land behind she looked ahead and into the future she'd so desired...no matter what it may hold.

Since that night she's travelled the world, walked many paths and seen a thousand thousand things for the first time but that first night was something very special; aboard that ship, the night she'd first left home, something changed within her, something ended...and so much more began.

She remembered it like it was yesterday. Above glittered a million stars in a deep indigo sky, pinpoints of light that seemed closer than they ever had been before - It was like she could reach the stars if she but tried, and she wanted to; a creators masterpiece spread above and her life's masterpiece waited just over the horizon.

Below was the thrum of the ship's engines, rhythmic sounds of the screws churning through deep dark water pushing her ever closer to the unknown - and in between, the whistle of the wind in the mastheads in counterpoint. She breathed in deeply, crisp sea air filling her lungs as if it was her first breath of life, chill air tingled her skin and in her breast he heart quickened. She realized her hands the rail tightly and consciously released the grip...As her hands loosened their clasp on the rail she thought, was time to let go of what was and embrace would would be.

Since that night she's travelled the world, walked many paths and seen a thousand thousand things for the first time but that night she saw her future for the first time and like the stars it was brilliant.