01.44

No one would have chosen our life, said the hero, those who heard our stories would have been terrified by what we saw. Nothing scared us, nothing attracted us, we woke up early each day and we did anything we could until sleep got the better of us. Each of us lived in his lifetime three full lives, or thirty. Our hair turned white sooner than the hair of those who remained at home, our faces were carved by wind and water while the faces of those who stayed home rested between soft blankets, yet every time we met them our faces resembled the faces of their children, our eyes the eyes of their grandchildren.

Every day we invented something. On land, we invented tools, explanations for what we were seeing, words to share with those we met, gifts for them, yet we gave their gifts away, not to be prisoners. At sea, we invented our ships, we changed sails and tied them differently, we painted, we repaired our ships and they repaired us when we were broken. Every day we invented a new life for ourselves, in the land we were about to visit and the sea we would cross, we went where our life brought us and acted as our life made us act.

We followed mysterious signs, others called us crazy, but those signs always led us to something more precious than anything we could imagine. We were considered imaginary characters, or gods, while we were the weakest among men, we were those that had been discarded, not those who were chosen. We were not fearless, we were fearful but we were able to ridicule our fear. We did not know how to sail as others did, we did not know how to build a boat, others had wonderful boats, but we sailed to destinations no one had ever reached and we told of these places to those who had shown us how to navigate and how to build a boat. We shipwrecked once, twice, a third time, one last time. Each shipwreck was different from the others. We never repeated the same shipwreck.

More, said someone in the crowd, but the hero smiled quietly and spoke no more that night.