By Max Callaghan - Year 11, St Peter's College
Tom thought about his mother.
She'd be back in Hawthorn with her eyes closed, trying to pass the days in clouds brighter than the rat warrens that hosted her.
The glow from embers barely touched her, barely kindled the only memory of her husband, held close under her blanket.
His uniform was like a midnight lake, a dark navy blue that drained all the light from its surroundings with silver stones as a path through the abyssal calm.
It was the uniform of a decorated soldier.
Badges of rescue and bravery seated themselves in rows at the funeral of a pure marble cross.
A marble cross cannot be earned. It is given to the families of those lost in battle, whether shot down or lost at sea.
But Tom believed his father still lived and that is why he was here in the middle of the seven seas, searching for his father.
By chance, the ship he'd stowed away on had been attacked and he now found himself forced by pirates to forfeit his life by pistol or by water.
He knew if he chose the pistol, his journey would be over.
Bang. Bullet to the head. Finished, never to reach his goal.
But he'd come this far for his father. He wasn't about to give up until he had no chances left, and he was still gambling on the plank.
Maybe he would panic at the end of it, grabbing at the end as if making a last second decision to cancel his choice.
Maybe his momentum would swing him on to the side of the ship where he could latch on then hide in between the cannons.
As he stepped on to the plank, his heart went ahead of him, sinking to the bottom of his chest.
The wood was weathered and beaten, slick with seawater, and even if he somehow managed to hold on, the cannon hatches were closed.
Luck had abandoned him.
His only escape was gone and he had been given no more chances.
He was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it.
Tears fell from his cheeks, shattering like gemstones on the plank and disappearing into the endless void of the ocean.
Of course he was doomed from the start.
He was but a poor boy swallowed up by the world and crushed by the absence of a father.
Every tear he shed fell into the black waters.
Not a single one escaped its deathly grasp. Everyone dies. No-one can escape death, just as the tears were doomed to end in the waters.
But some didn't fall straight to their demise.
Some landed on wood, feeling the cracks and bends of something great and immovable.
They ran along the intricacies of their surroundings, experiencing every dip and rise the plank had to offer.
They had no effect on any piece of it but it controlled their every move.
Tom had never had chance on his side.
It had never been against him either.
It was chance. And so he stopped trying to resist the grain of the wood and world.
He started to see how infinitely wondrous it was.
It didn't matter that he would die, or that he would never find his father.
The world was beautiful and he'd be damned if he wouldn't notice it.
