Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to ‘the Unicorn Challenge‘
Hosted each week by jenne and ceayr, we who are about to write are tasked with creating a story, (a world, a glimpse off the continuum or, perhaps merely a daydream), inspired by the week’s photo image. The limit to this construction is that it require no more than two hundred and fifty words to convey.
Nighttime on the open ocean is irrefutable testament to limits of Man. His wooden, (or steel), constructions appear to defy the limits imposed by Nature. But humility is not the most celebrated quality of humankind. In fact, one might argue ambition was the reason for expulsion from a certain Garden. Leaving water for fish, air for birds an affront; surely good only for the weak of mind and timid of spirit.
The trawler had set out at dawn. Then, the sea was flat, the temperature unremarkable and the wind pushed-and-played with the crew’s hair, like barroom predators when the evening is young and appetites weak.
Now, however, emboldened by acquiescence of the sun, darkness reigned and the waves grew. As the boat wallowed in deceptively indolent troughs, the sea stepped over the gunnels like boys jumping hedges. The crew, standing on the main deck, continued to pick through the catch, halogen suns casting crumpled shadows.
Hearing the captain’s uncertainty, the deckhands employed the most human of strategies when confronted with forces beyond their control, they put it out of their minds. Increasingly the deck was awash with green water breaking against the rails. Rollers of bycatch, seaweed and froth brushed past their legs, racing from one side to the other. Upside down pendulums, the men worked, knowing there was no return without the boat, and only by filling the fish-holds would the captain allow that to happen. That the sea had other plans was permitted no space in their thoughts.
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