This is a ship.

Built in a fever dream by a man who swore he’d never touch water again. It began as a sketch on the inside of a matchbox, smudged by sweat and salt, then carved from driftwood and iron—no two planks the same species of tree. They said it shouldn’t float. They said it couldn’t sail. But the man named it The Sorrowful, kissed its crooked prow, and set it loose on the tide.

The crew was stranger still. A woman with one eye that saw the future and one ear that heard lies. A boy who whistled in dead languages. A cat that never blinked. They came aboard under a harvest moon and never once asked where they were going. Only what they were leaving behind.

The sea loved the ship. Or maybe it pitied it. It held the vessel like a secret and pushed it through mists no map could name. Islands rose and vanished. Stars blinked in unfamiliar constellations. Time stuttered. One night lasted three weeks. One morning looped twice.

Storms came, of course. Not rain, but memory. Lightning shaped like regrets. Thunder that shouted old names. The crew tied themselves to the mast and screamed back—We already paid. You can’t have it again.

They found messages in bottles that they themselves hadn’t written yet. They threw back fish that told them prophecies in riddles. They buried an anchor made of bone.

One by one, the crew changed.

The woman whispered less. The boy grew quiet. The cat began to hum.

One morning, the man woke and found a second ship beside them—identical, but with no one on board. Its sails billowed without wind. Its ropes creaked with absence. And in the cabin mirror, the man saw himself… older, or maybe younger, or maybe unmade.

He stepped back. Closed the door. Never opened it again.

Eventually, land did appear. Jagged and gold-lit, shaped like a question mark. The ship didn’t dock. It only circled once. The man raised a lantern and nodded. The land nodded back.

They kept sailing.

They passed the moon. It blinked.

They passed the end of the map. It whispered, go on, then.

One plank was replaced. Then another. Nails rusted and fell. Wood turned to resin, to glass, to song.

And still they sailed.

The boy grew into a captain. The woman became the stars. The cat dissolved into fog.

The man became the figurehead.

The ship forgot its name.

But not the voyage.

And it still sails.