500+
OH LOOK IT'S YOUR TABLE.
There had to be more to distract the man from his problems, from his own mind. So he flung himself into his work with wood, with hammer, with nail. In a couple of weeks he had managed to repair his entire house, from the leaking roof to the cracked kitchen table. Most of the wood had been salvaged from nearby houses but he did not know how long any of it would last; he had no tar to coat the roof in, to seal it in fully and he did not know how to make glass windows. There was a big crack in one in his father's former bedroom. He had not really spent much time in either Rurik's or Liliya's rooms, only to clean up and work on the walls. It had been a full spring cleaning but now it was done and the man really wanted more to distract him. And he sought it; a boat.
Rurik had had a boat in Lunenburg, but the man had taken it to go off back to Russia with his woman. So the moor and the dock that had been used was now empty and the younger sailor wanted a boat of his own to fish from in the sea. The sea was his blood and fish were his staple. He had to get a boat if he wanted to feel fully at home. Especially now that land did not feel like anything other than his tomb. The salt was running thin in his veins the longer he spent without a net in his hands and a sail above him. No way would he have a huge boat like the one he had come here on, but he wanted a sail boat to take out not too far off shore. So he went looking.
He spent a couple of days, scouring from the border of Crimson dreams, up the coast through Halifax, and pushing into the Quartz Shoreline to try to find himself a salvageable boat. A few were in good repair but would never stay afloat long enough to reach the beach past Halifax, let alone the dry dock at Lunenburg. Plenty more were death traps and only good for scrap lumber. All the metal ones were rusting on their sides, holes in their hulls. Fewer still were made of metal and even sea-worthy in a dead-calm pond.
It was hard work. Every night, he curled up in a thicket, against some trees, listening to the calm of the ocean. It soothed him to sleep. And every night, he failed to dream of Anann. But his daily thoughts were plagued by her, for there was so much downtime between searching boats and finding a daily meal. And now, he stood over a boat that was probably another dead end. It was on its side on the beach, already a telltale sign that it would be no good. But he never knew. Truly he wanted a boat still locked in storage, but that was hard to fine. He would settle. Anatoliy pressed his hands on the side of the boat, listening intently for any irregular creaks and breaking groans.
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by Noelle
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