Fishers always had the strangest hauls after a storm. They set out in their long, lithe boats into the bright, clear dawn. Throwing their nets wide, they hoped for the best.
As the nets settled, the fishers saw a form on the surface of the waves. Although it exhibited no motion of its own, the form—no, the man—glided closer to the canoes. Wensa—the youngest fisher with the sharpest eyes—called out that it was a dolphin bearing a man upon its back. When his aquatic savior brought him near enough, the fishers on the largest boat hauled the man from the waters. Wensa offered to the heroic dolphin the fish she had brought for her own meal. It snapped up the gift into its grinning jaws and slipped back into the unknowable depths.
The sea-borne man’s skin was dark. His clothes were strange. He still breathed, but barely. Wensa fed him water from her skin as the others paddled the big canoe back to the sheltered lagoon.
Children playing on the beach met the boat and ran to tell the story of the ocean man to their mothers. The physician came and examined this strange visitor from the deeps.
With a start, the ocean-man woke and barked out, “Sabit! Where is Sabit?”
—–
Wayfarings of Sabit: Isle of the Wicked is copyright (c) 2016 by Michael S. Miller. All rights reserved. New chapters post every weekday. You can support this and other stories on Patreon: https://patreon.com/michaelsmiller