It was a chilly spring day. In the small haven a couple hundred meters away from the town, a boat was being readied for departure, nothing unusual in the village.
The unusual thing was the destination of the long, wooden ship, a tall grey sail fluttering in the wind.
They set sail to the edge of the known world, the end of every map ever drawn.
Why?
Because the land they lived on simply wasn't enough anymore.
She wandered to the dock and up the plank onto the ship. A handful of people were already sitting around on deck, eyes dull and empty.
They didn't want their end to be for nothing though, despite giving up, they couln't live with the emptiness of a meaningless death.
Others were eagerly working on getting the ship ready to leave.
A man hurried past. She recognized him from the fire last week.
He had lost his wife and kids to a dissease. She still remembered his defeated sobbing. There was nothing in his face anymore, no sadness, no grief, nothing at all.
Just the explorers glint.
A glint in his eyes that she had seen in the eyes of many on the ship.
They all wanted to know what was beyond the grey walls that encased their maps.
It didn't take long until the plank was pulled back and many wooden paddles pushed the ship away from the dock.
Slowly yet with increasing pace, the ship rolled through the waves into what layed beyond.
---
They hadn't eaten for days. All of them were hungry, thirsty, laying around the deck, empty.
Still, they didn't turn. There was no way back.
They hadn't seen land for almost two weeks, they would starve before reaching any land. Their only hope was ahead of them.
The group of those who had entered the boat with no hope or expectation to begin with had entrenched on the lower deck amongst the empty barrels, nets and crates to die.
She felt like the ferryman of a bunch of corpses, still standing on deck, eyes fixed on the horizon in hope tp see something, anything really but more water.
In that exact moment, something crashed into the deck next to her with a loud THUDD accompanied by an bloodcurdling CRACK.
It was the boy on the mast who was supposed to be on the watch for any signs of land.
He was wheezing, moaning in pain.
His eyes were torn open in pain and for some reason fixed on the front of the ship.
His mouth twitched, he wheezed again.
For a second, she simply stared at him.
What was she supposed to do?
They didn't have a doctor on board, they didn't even have water for the poor boy.
"Can you talk? Or sit?"
He slowly pushed his body backwards against the mast, his face twitching in pain every second he moved, eyes still wide open.
More people had gathered around the boy now.
He just sat there, he didn't talk.
Shallow breathing and more wheezing.
After another minute had passed, his arm slowly raised, he extended his hand and pointed forward.
They hurried to the front, the first to reach it falling and stumbling back, crawling away from what they had seen.
What could have possibly scared these people that much.
She couldnt see anything yet.
And then she noticed the boats speed.
The boat had started moving faster and yet, the wind was almost still. How were they going so fast?
She hurried to the railing and looked into the waves, except, there were no waves, just a roaring stream pulling them forward.
Terrified, her eyes darted to the side and she could clearly see it:
Where there had previously been a horizon, ther was now just the sky, the water abruptly fell into nothing, not even a hundred meters from their boat, the sea suddenly ended.
She stumbled back.
For a second, her heart started racing and then, it suddenly calmed down again.
Nothing. There was nothing they could do anymore.
It was to late.
She slowly walked to the front of the boat.
Before her, a beautiful deep blue sky, as blue as the oceam had never been, took the place of just that ocean.
She spread her arms wide, almost like a bird, like one of the falcons she had seen gliding over her house.
She loved the sky.
She had always loved looking up into endless blue for hours and yet, she had never seem the sky like she did now.
She almost felt...free.
Her chest was empty but in a good way, an easing way.
A laugh was pressed out of her chest, a chuckle, the noise of someone who had just been freed from a weight like a hundred ships that searched for the end and a thousand endless oceans.
The ocean had an end.
Their end but that didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter since many days.
She took a deep breath.
The boat tipped forward, slowly sinking over the edge.
Muffled screams, people groaning as they put all their back into rowing.
She chuckled again, at their effort this time.
And then, she fell.