His hands were coarse, his stubble rugged and manly, his lips hardened from enduring long nights of biting wind in the bitterly cold oceanic wilderness, his eyes were steely grey and sharp as a razor blade, swiftly darting from one scene to another with ferocious accuracy; one could sense the cogs of his iron mind steadily turning – with the consistency of a swiss army watch – churning out innumerable perceptions, noticing every minute detail his stark stoic gaze purveyed.
And above his steely grey eyes lay the weathered and wrinkled forehead of a true sailor, rough as sandpaper, his wrinkles like vast crevasses, the descending slope of which plummeting down into great deep valleys then suddenly jerking upwards and ascending once more, this cycle repeating over and over in extraordinarily focused detail; not the wrinkles of an old and weary man, but those of a strong and experienced man, toughened by the harshness of sea life, moulded into a figure of strength and resilience, like an ancient Greek marble statue of the mythic Zeus, king of the gods, or Hercules, their bodies, like his, so colossal and godlike that strange wandering pilgrims journey from the exotic far corners of the earth to behold them, the tense muscles straining, the sinews bulging and tightening like a leather whip, their ivory-coloured limbs magnificently frozen in time.
And still, the sailors jaw was equally awesome, a jaggedly jutting lump of bone as hard as iron, as utterly terrifying to behold as a camouflaged tank creeping over a bleak field in the wartime fog of dank fields far behind enemy lines; his legs solid as a rock – as towering Roman columns, as a soaring dystopian skyscraper, as a magical tree trunk wider than the moon, as the sturdy oak mast of an ancient Emperor’s finest warship – they stand utterly still, constantly ready to spring upwards or leap sideways or dart forwards at the slightest sight of danger, his reactions bent by the will of the harsh seas and the cataclysmic scenes of disarray he was thrust into as a child, when he took ship as a young member of a rough and rowdy crew on a voyage that formed his very being, that broke his bones into unbreakable pillars, that burned his soul into the scales of a monstrous dragon, that forged him, through pain and fear, into a man who feels no pain and knows nothing but bravery, a heroic bravery remembered only in the old tales of legends and heroes of the past, a lost past, a past to which this supreme man belonged, and yet here he stood, on the dull damp dock at twilight, the night sky overcast and dreary, his powerful hands possessive of a grip as strong as a brutal steel trap, his arms muscular and equally strong, bulging with dense toned muscles, containing a strength at once scary and saintlike, for his vastly powerful physique is matched only by his lightening fast mind, his senses sharpened by decades of alertness, his heart filled with manly passionate love for his brothers of the sea, his fellow sailors and crew members, and the sea itself, the crashing waves, the moody swells, the brooding cliffsides, the ominous dark clouds, the howling wind, the great ships he calls home, and the marine life he knows to be his siblings, fellow children of the earth, the deep sea squid prowling the cavernous depths of the mysterious ocean, the predatory sharks lurking in the dark cold waters, the angelic dolphins who swim underneath and beside the boat on brisk sunny mornings when the sunrise is fresh and pure and the wind is clean and awakening and the dolphins jump and dance and twirl and leap into the air beside the moving boat and the sailor holds his course steadily into the horizon by instinct; ever honing his skills as a sailor, ever evolving and expanding his vast wealth of experience of the sea and its moody ways, its sudden bursts of frightful stormy weather or its godly forces suddenly vanishing, leaving the water’s surface as still as a mill pond for many days and nights, not even the slightest breath of wind to billow the topsail or push the boat ever so slightly to the side making the mast creak and groan.
And still it remains, his heart is filled with great warmth for his loves, a manly love that is at once gruff and ragged on the surface, but tender and soft at its core, a love that was made safe and strong by the powerful steely bars of its casing, a body impossibly packed with dense, thick muscles that wind around his iron bones like great long coils of wire, meshing together to form an impenetrable armour, an equally strong armour for an equally precious love.
Short Story by Stamos Mardou