Thread:SirGawain8/@comment-36472862-20181119001001/@comment-36472862-20181120015815

I also write my own novels. Try to sort through this one (I am too lazy today to organize it)

 First Fish

''Sareya Cougar was in the middle of the ocean, stranded on a weak driftwood raft. After her ship crew abandoned her on an uninhabited island with minimum resources, she built a driftwood raft, gathered an abundant supply of water, and sailed away from her island without food, in hopes of finding a better home before long. ''

"Tuesday, December 18, 1977.

I only have one gallon of water left, enough to last me two or three more days. I didn't eat a single thing since those pickled pirates stranded me. I need to figure out how to fish, and hopefully, some water weeds will float past this decaying raft."

With that, Sareya closed her journal with a sigh. ”Every proper pirate needs a journal", she thought, "but writing in one at this moment makes everything seem worse than it actually is."

She needed a plan to survive, and that plan was to catch fish and water weeds. Fish will provide her some food, and she will squeeze the water out of the weeds. The only problem was that both of these items needed to be fished out of the ocean, and she couldn't reach out with her hand and grab a squirmy fish or a slippery weed.

She already had a stick, one which she had earlier plucked from her driftwood raft, to let it glide faster. Unfortunately, the only string that she had with the proper length would be both of her shoelaces tied together. They were beautiful things, with real golden tips and woven from spider silk. And they were strong. One pirate with the same type of laces had been known to use them to hang his opponents from trees.

The only problem was that pirate school taught her that only real pirates will hold their dignity, which was, in Sareya's situation, keeping her footwear.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">Another part of her brain argued that pirates always try their best to save themselves.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">The pressure Sareya was feeling at that moment was unbearable. "Food, or footwear?" she thought. "Food, or footwear?   Food, or footwear?"

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">Just as she was about to explode out a series of mad shrieks, she realized that even if she used the stick and shoelaces for a fishing rod, she still didn't have a hook.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">Slumping down with a frustrated look on her face, she absent-mindedly fingered her anchor earrings. Her crew - ahem - previous crew had gifted them to her on her thirty-fourth birthday.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">Sareya made up her mind to build the rod. Why would her dignity be important, if there was nobody to recognize her as an unworthy pirate on a raft?

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">Wrapping the shoelaces around the branch using a butter knot every twelve inches, she stared admirably at her own work. After she had attached one of her anchor earrings to the end of the "fishing line", her fishing pole looked something like this:

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">Now came the easy part: doing the actual fishing. Sareya had the bones to do it since she was seven; something every proper pirate required to know. Casting the 'hook' six feet away from her, she readied her pole as she stared at a large sardine swimming toward the bait. As it bit the earring, Sareya felt a hard yank, and after a few seconds of struggling, a muffled ripping sound reached her ears, and the abandoned pirate watched in disbelief as the fortunate tuna swam away, with a blue, shiny earring in its mouth.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">Slumping down on the raft for the second time that day, Sareya wondered what went wrong with her fishing pole. She used a slip knot, but that may have been too loose. The problem was that she now had to decide whether or not to replace the lost earring with her other one. "Well, better to do than don't," she thought, and used the strong and sturdy devil's tongue knot to fasten the other piece of jewelry to the bait end of the fishing line. After she gave a strong, hard tug on the hook, she was sure that no fish would escape her.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">Half an hour later, Sareya Cougar was munching away on a raw, but delicious milk fish. It was difficult to haul the fish in, as its flat shaped allowed it to slip through the cracks of the raft back into the ocean. But once she had speared the fish with the cutlass on her belt, she was ready to enjoy her first meal for several days.

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Microsoft PhagsPa","sans-serif";color:#002060">As she bit into the juicy fish, Sareya glanced over at the ocean. If she had to survive for three to four more months, she was ready for the challenge.