when / after landfall where / the lobby of the highwayman’s rest with / open to everyone!
when he was young, when the only frame of reference he possessed was an overactive imagination, his mama’s bedtime stories, and roi’s tall tales of the sea, cyrus used to close his eyes and create imaginary cities--they almost always rose up on some forgotten coast, with long stretches of soft sand to directly contrast england’s rocky shores that required boots, that froze over when the winter came, always buildings made of old stone rose up into sky, playfully taunting him with their vague notion of history, of containing something for him to uncover for himself. the streets teemed with people, eager to share their tales with him, eager to show him the treasures they kept close to their chests--always, he could feel the breeze of the far off desert he could never see but knew sat beyond his line of sight, of the constant sea like a heartbeat.
he woke up with an ache in his chest every time, the longing for the imagined that plagues every child--but it never stopped him from sprinting down the stairs, where he would collide with his mama’s legs, where she would ask him without fail where he went last night.
he tries to think of what he would tell her now, but he just keeps producing thoughts that are only half formed, severed of any connective tissue that might give them sense, might make them something he could hope to articulate. almost, but not quite. old, maybe not in a strictly chronological way. eden, but the snake keeps turning into fruit and speaking in a language that can’t be understood. off-axis.
so this, he thinks as he jots each one in a neatly ordered list in the corner of the parchment he’d managed to charm out of the hotel manager, as though they are important pieces of information to be referred to later on in his research instead of nonsense, is the the undiscovered country. hotels with attendants but without guests that can be seen, streets without people, stores and bars with solitary keepers and without patrons--and the sea, constant as the heart in his chest.
he huffs out a breath and shakes his head, before he sets the pen down and starts pulling at the roll of bread he’d been offered when he entered, inexplicably warm even though it has been sitting untouched on a plate for at least an hour now. it’s the first time he’s looked up from his work in just as long, and he can feel color rush to his cheeks when he notices that he is no longer the hotel lobby’s solitary occupant--that there’s a strong chance someone may have been watching him sigh and scribble like a madman.
“as far as i can tell,” he says, as he clears his throat and sets the roll back on the plate. “there isn’t a single map to be found anywhere on this entire island. you can find silk and beads and enough grog to put you to sleep, but cartography is apparently where the line gets drawn.” he worries his bottom lip between his teeth, shrugs his shoulders. “you haven’t seen one, have you? or talked to anyone who has any sense of where we are in fuckin’ space? i can’t make sense of any of it.”
