Saturday, September 13, 2008

September 13th Topics


Theory
What are you in theory?


Pirate
After reading about pirates in school that morning, she went out to the dock and boarded her little raft and ...

1 comment:

ItsNaughtKnotty Cannned said...

The Littlest Pirate
After reading about pirates in school that morning, she went out to the dock and boarded her little raft and hoped like heck she'd find some treasure or maybe another ship she could board with pirates to fight. Sylvia unfurled the sail and felt the wind pull her out into the water. She'd been sailing with her dad a million times and felt confident in her ability to pilot the pint-sized ship.

She'd been planning her adventure for hours. She ran home after school, raced upstairs to put on her best swim suit, and she found the hat her mom made her wear on the beach. It wasn't a pirate hat, but it would have to do the job. She even created a small wooden dagger of sorts out of some gardening stakes her mom used in the back yard. She was a little peeved her parents never told her about sunken treasure and she intended to find some today.

Several hours earlier, and fifty miles downwind, Rudy and four other men fired up a yacht they'd kept in storage for nearly a year. A Japanese businessman and celebrity once owned the boat. Then one night the boat vanished. The authorities investigated, insurance companies paid, the boat was replaced, and nobody wasted further thought on the matter. Rudy's men removed the identification markers for one last voyage.

Sylvia, the newly minted pirate girl of fifth grade, and Rudy, the felon with a desire to avoid a fifth strike, sailed directly toward a meeting of destinies neither expected.

The wind pulled Sylvia's little craft faster and further than she'd ever sailed before. Far outside of the little inlet her father allowed her to sail, she braved the open waters for the first time in her life. She felt some fear, but mostly exhilaration as she headed out to search for treasure. Rudy raced toward a cargo ship he knew would be headed to dock on the northern shore. If his plan succeeded, the cargo ship would be unloading the most precious part of its cargo prematurely.

But it was Rudy himself who slammed the yacht's engines into neutral when he saw a little girl on a little sailboat rocking wildly in the waves. He knew she would be pulled under as the afternoon winds and unsettled waters grew in strength. He guessed his own daughter, the one he'd never seen, would be about the same age. He decided he could save the girl and still nab the stockpile of ammunition parts on the freighter, so he waited as the winds pulled the miniature sail boat toward him.

"Hey! Little girl! You're going to be killed out here! Throw me your rope before the waves pull you under!"

Sylvia tossed the rope to the man yelling at her over a bullhorn, waited for him to pull her close to the ladder, and then she quickly leaped from her boat to the yacht. She climbed onto the deck and raised her wooden sword.

"En garde!"