Item 7491: Ship Log | Voyage to Atlantis

[Dated 21-04-1894]

I’ve used my last bout of parchment and there aren’t many trees around here so I resort to detailing my account on this sea-tattered sail. Forgive the penmanship, my hope is that they have some sort of writing material in the city. If there is a they, or a city.. 

Day 347: Due North, hard squalls accompanied by thunder and lightning. The jib’s got a big tear through the middle, but with the rain, I can’t get up to rig the spare and Marty’s broken leg  renders him more feckless than he usually is. I do love him, inept as he may be - the kid’s got heart. It’s just the two of us now. I know twenty three to two doesn’t put the odds in our favour but I can feel us getting closer. I’ve searched every map, every log, it has to be here. I’m sure the golden spires will puncture our ship any second, it must be approaching beneath us not two moons north of where we are. I reckon Captain lost hope, we threw him overboard this morning. No exciting mutiny or murder No exciting mutiny or murder - Captain threw himself over first before we hauled him back up. Least Marty’s not deadweight in that sense, and bodies rot anyhow, so back overboard he went. Twenty odd crew deaths sobers the mind, or scrambles it, I suppose. 

His hands shook, blotting the ink across the sail, blurring the words into a cacophony of scarred tissue. The ink morphed into the shape of a flame. A house engulfed in orange, it seemed no dimmer than the sun and yet he ran to it. The smoke filled every crevice of his lungs as he climbed the ashing building, staggered by the stench of burning flesh. His hand unclenched, a carved wooden ship falling only moments before his consciousness slipped away. 

We’ve not many rations left for the journey, a day or two left really. Unless we resort to cannibalism of course. Thank the Gods we’re both leaf eaters, though there’s no telling what hunger can do to a man. Marty keeps mumbling in his sleep. I can’t catch much of what he says but he speaks the word home  almost every night. I miss home too, mostly because it's storming as if we’ve wronged Poseidon himself and a fire with warm socks sounds as close to Elysium as one could hope for. Days like this, I wish I’d never left. Most days, I wish I’d never left. Yielding now would be no better than packing the board at check. I’d rather die a nobody who did something great with his life than a somebody who did nothing at all. I hope I will not be forgotten. I hope I will be remembered. I sense the city’s walls beneath us - we will rediscover the sunken palace and will return heroes. 

Signed, 

R………Fr……….

Written by Julian Kumar 

Julian Kumar is a creative who paints a portrait of magic, and reality’s place lies in haunting the frame.