I turned towards the voice.
A tattered decrepit brown skinned man, bald and grey beared with sunken holes for eyes and a paddle in his arms as he rowed his little canoe.
"Glory be to the prophet."
I sat upright, facing him.
His boat was small and broken, 2 seats and filled with cracks; It was a miracle how it was still floating.
"Did you rescue me?" I asked.
"No. You came in on your own." His voice deep and hoarse.
"..."
"This sea houses souls. Souls from the beyond. Souls of the dead." He rowed his boat as the nightfall began to rise.
"When you made your drop, your body was destroyed, but you did not die."
Wind blew through his tattered garments, revealing the hole in his torso, from the base of his rib cage to the top of his pelvis, and an empty hole remained. "The sea denied you. Its souls pitied you. Making you wander below, denying you passage to the afterlife.
"With nothing left to do, your soul wandered aimlessly till it found my crooked boat; and from the sea, your severed arm outstretched and came to rest at the gunwale, dripping blood and leaving behind a single broken nail between the boat cracks where your soul resided as it sunk back into the sea."
"...I resurrected from a broken nail?"
"And left an empty corpse in the bottom of the ocean." The old man kept on rowing, and we sat silently for a while, my hands shaking, and the runes on his nails began to glow in the dark.
"Make no mistake," the man said. "You did not seek my ship because you wished to live. You were merely rejected by death." His voice was like a whisper, age in his voice.
I touched my palms. "I see," they had stopped shaking.
The night had come in full, and the entirety of the moon was upon us. The man continued to row his boat.
The breeze blew, and the smell of the sea came in abundance.
"Tell me." I looked as he asked. "What colour is the sea?"
"The same as the sky." I told him, and he remained silent as he rowed his boat.
"Would you like to see it?"
He paused, and his bushy brows raised. "...how do you intend to..."
"I'll give you my eyes." The old man looked at me with disbelief. "I don't mind; you want to see the world, don't you?"
The old man moaned as he dropped his paddle, letting it fall into the sea.
His disbelief turned to hope, and his hope turned to joy. His hands trembled as he reached out to me, bowing to me.