He sits in the shadows of the passenger hold and wonders how he has even gotten into this situation.
The Captain and his parrot had dealt him quite a jolt with their animosity, seeming over the top indeed for a mere slip of the tongue like that. But the fact that he'd been made so keenly aware of just how much he was under the Captain's powers - someone who not only held the power of life and death over him, but seemed to actually hold this as a right - this has jarred his consciousness into some serious self analysis.
Which was brings him up against a particular problem. His memory… For example, earlier on the shore, he'd told the tortoise that he was searching for his wife.
But he doesn't remember being married. Does he really have a wife? Is he even able to picture her in his memory? When he tries what comes to mind is the girl he'd met at Sauble beach, when all of this had started, or so it seemed. That and a dream (he thinks) of the two of them living in the old farmhouse together, the farmhouse from where he'd been chased away in the middle of the night.
Who is she? But then with this question comes another even more shocking question - the real elephant in the room, so to speak.
Who is he? What is his own name?
Nobody has even asked me my name, he thinks, and that realization causes him to curl up on the bench and shiver, drawing his arms around himself in the cold and unforgiving darkness of the ferry's passenger hold.
Eighteenth chapter in an ongoing serial based on @mariannewest's daily #freewrite writing prompts. Here are the previous chapters listed below:
Chapter One>Chapter Two
Chapter Three>Chapter Four
Chapter Five>Chapter Six
Chapter Seven>Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine>Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven>Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen>Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen>Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
And here is Chapter Nineteen.
Written in five minutes from the writing prompt, "Elephant" as part of the #freewrite exercise. Image is also by me. You can view the prompt here and check out the other entries; you'll never forget them. Thanks to @mariannewest for creating and running this herd of gently roaming creatures older than the plains themselves....