Fate is a fickle mistress. This is the essence of your life. You stand on the seashore looking out across the water, and you know you'll never be able to go out again.

If there's one thing every sailor wants, it's to die in the sea, if he's to die early. And although none ever speak of it--to do so is bad luck, you know--you all know there's a certain indignity and shame to losing the sea before your time.

And this is the shame you must bear. You watch the sails of the fishing trawler vanish, your old eyes barely able to see it. Leaning heavily on the crutch, you suddenly realize how old and sore you are. You forget the longing that possessed you a moment ago and painfully creak back to your cabin. Little more than a shanty or a shack, really.

Your leg looks angry and sore when you pull the pant leg up off of it. You should have gone to the physician. You feel the heat in your body and the chillblains setting in.

It won't be long now.

The fire burns in the hearth, the last of your table crackling gleefully as you sit staring at it. Maybe, you think, you'll get lucky and the building will burn down around you and take you with it.

But the fever takes you instead. You've been alone a long time, and you've always thought yourself relatively happy with that, but as you sense the fluttering of death waiting in the wings of your life, you regret it. You should have left something for the world, you think. Something meaningful, something beautiful. Maybe kids or the like.

The pain comes and goes in waves now, and you like it in a strange way. It reminds you of your true love; the sea. If you could do it over again, you might have children, but you'd nay give up the sea for them. Not that you could, but you wouldn't.

Death, once it arrives, is kindness and you sink gratefully into it. You'd feared it for so long, and it's so peaceful..