This is a ship.
And the crew swears it’s haunted—but only by the future.
Every morning they find things they haven’t done yet:
- A tea cup, still warm, with no one awake to brew it.
- A name etched into the mast, one none of them know yet but all of them recognize.
- A single feather on the deck, black as ink, left by a bird that hasn’t landed.
The ship’s name shifts with the tide. Sometimes it’s The Omen. Sometimes The Otherwise. Once, in a storm, the figurehead whispered it was called Forgiveness. No one spoke for three days after that.
There’s a woman aboard who never speaks unless thunder rolls. A boy who counts down instead of up. A shadow in the galley that rings the dinner bell before meals are even imagined.
Maps onboard redraw themselves each dusk. They chart places the crew will one day regret, then fold themselves into paper cranes and fly out the porthole.
No compass works—not because the ship lacks direction, but because it already knows where it’s going to be. It’s not lost. It’s just early.
One sailor keeps a journal. He writes down what hasn’t happened yet, then tears out the page and drops it in the water. If it floats, it will come true. If it sinks, it already did.
There was a night, long and quiet, where the stars blinked in Morse code. The crew watched for hours. The message was simple:
“You’ve been here before.”
They didn’t ask what it meant. They just nodded.
Sometimes the ship creaks a word—only one.
Last week it said: wait.
Yesterday: listen.
Today, it said: run.
No one knows from what.
But they trimmed the sails and tightened the rigging anyway.
Because when the future haunts your vessel, you don’t argue.
You prepare.
And it still sails.
