And when I don't come home
Don't let my people cry
Old men don't forge new legends
Old men just slowly die
So cheer my name, you sorry dogs
I'm gone and you're still there
I lived life free
And paid the bill
All my accounts are square
"We reeeeally shouldn't be doing this..."
The smooth, feminine voice curled up in his mind like a whisper -- the distant memory of a better day long gone. But it was enough to give him pause. The now-familiar uncertainty crept upon him, stirring old emotion in his bleeding chest. He closed his eyes, suffering silently in a moment of weakness.
"You go ahead. I think you could use it more than I."
The man's ever-steady tone snapped him out of his daydream -- pulled him back like a lifeline tied to the mast. He took the offered rope and set his gaze to the horizon. He searched, but found no more reason to linger in the moment. Without thinking further, he gave a great pull to fire the salt-worn mangonel's payload. A streak of fire tore off into the sky and his eyes lingered on the fiery light. Lazily it hung there, far longer in the air than it seemed it rightly could, and then it dropped into the depths of Buccaneer's Bay never to be seen again.
A brief, brilliant existence it had known. A rapid rise and fall. A shimmering moment of awe in which all could behold its radiance, and then nothing. Forevermore, nothing. Only the memory of what once filled him with life to witness.
And as the stone sunk into the cold depths below, his heart sunk with it. The man next to him, hardly more than a stranger. And yet -- he could not stop himself from confessing his sorrow. His tragedy and failure. His weakness and doubt. The man was only a stranger, and yet, there were none more suited to bear witness to his plight. For he had few in his life who would remain, if they knew just what he'd become.
He removed the necklace from around his neck -- immediately feeling almost naked without that familiar weight. As his eyes lowered to the coin upon it, he felt a great and terrible finality about it all. A truth settled over him that he was too stubborn, too hopeful, and too afraid to admit until now.
He'd never be able to return it.
He'd never be able to look the owner in the eyes and endure her hate.
For he was still just a man, holding on to a sliver of a long-dead dream.
A dream of better times.
The thing that once brought him joy was now reduced to yet another pilfered valuable from someone he may never speak to again. Just another thing he wasn't supposed to have. It felt wrong to keep it, as if he was only cursing himself more deeply. It was as if the very metal was imbued with the sorrow, regret, and pain that had brought him this low. He forced the words out with a bitterness in his very soul that was directed, as always, inward.
"You keep it. May it bring you more luck than it brought me."
And later that night he would sit upon the freeport docks, legs dangling toward the waters below. He'd flip pieces of bread to a fat, temperamental seagull. And they'd talk.
They'd talk about all the things that troubled them.
They'd talk about what they lost.
They'd talk about how their most sincere promises had become twisted and lost in the murky sea.
He'd say much that he could never say to a living person and the seagull would just listen -- eagerly devouring each offering in trade.
And when the bread ran out, the bird would flutter lazily away.
For it had no reason to stay if he had nothing left to offer it.
https://youtu.be/M9dmwPfwkJ4