Your fate is written from birth to death, even you were born in full accordance with the rules, almost as old as your entire family. The service is so closely intertwined with life that you yourself sometimes do not understand where one ends and another begins. You also chose your wife for yourself, finally and irrevocably, and all that remains is just to love her with all your heart. Not a step to the left, not a step to the right: there are boundaries for everything. There is only one freedom - freedom of choice. You are free to run away, leaving everything, or stay, but then you will also have to accept everything. More is not given. But more is not required!
Prologue
The storm was leaving the raid.
Returned home - to the sea, which was born. She left like a ship, under the sails of purple clouds. She left, leaving that special freshness spilled in the air, which poetically inclined personalities refer to as “the first breath of the newborn world”, and everyone else scolds for its piercing dampness.
The waves, which hit the sides with frightening force not so long ago, are now just gently stroking the tarred boards. Moonlight spills across the wet deck.
- Raise kolms [1] !
The end of the command merges with the clatter of feet, dying down somewhere on the forecastle. Two triangular sails begin to slowly creep up.
- Navigator: leaving the raid, half-knot drift!
A handful of casually dropped words are followed by a short pause, after which the ship, obeying the confident hands of the sailors, smoothly turns to the wind.
— Sailing masters: sea readiness!
A short fraction of the trampling, and the silence of the morning twilight is again broken only by the kisses of the waves on the right cheekbone of the fessa [2] .
The fading wind lazily plays with wet sails, but the clapping sounds only emphasize the intensity of the conversation between the two shadows on the deckhouse roof of the graceful stern.
Don't worry, everything is moving towards the intended goal. - The voice of one of the night owls is deliberately calm, which in itself is not the best way to instill calm in others.
- I agree. But at the right speed? - yells the second.
- Lamma [3] will arrive on time, dan [4] .
- And everything else? Are you sure of success?
As much as you can ever be sure of anything. Deadlines are carefully calculated. Coincidence? They won't.
- Indeed? - Dry laugh. “Let it be known to you, captain, there is not a single thing in the world that can escape the influence of the basic law of life.
— What does it consist of, dear dan? - In the voice of the first, a slight condescension is heard: something like this they talk with an unintelligent, but very touchy teenager.
— If something can go awry, it will certainly go, captain! Therefore I and...
- Sail! - A sailor rolls down from the "crow's nest", and there is so much sincere joy in his voice that one can assume that the lookout was promised a couple of coins for additional zeal.
“See, it's all right. We just have to hand over the cargo and return home.
- Home ... - thoughtfully, but still as anxious as before, drawled the second. - I would not like to return under the distribution.
“You don’t believe in success at all, my dear dan?”
— I believe. But faith, captain, is nothing before the will.
- Yours or? .. - the captain tries to clarify.
“By the will of providence,” comes the gloomy reply.
The sky is brightening in the east. The day is coming. But first... Morning always comes first, doesn't it?
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