After closing the butchery, going home to have lunch with his family, David spent the way looking at the empty streets and the closed doors while walking. He didn't know if it had something to do with the fog, but Limon never had been so deserted and silent.
Suddenly, our character saw an open window, but he didn't have the time to see the person's face before the it shut closed, as if the person was afraid of been seen or of someone knowing there were people inside the house.
An hour after, the family finished eating. David looked through the kitchen's window, from which you could usually see the town main square; however, this afternoon, the fog didn't let him spot the slightest thing.
David got ready to go back to work, hoping that his boss was thinking of going too, so that he could tell him about the weird man who had come to the shop that morning. When he was about to take his boots, his mother touched his back and took him by the arm. "David, don't go to work today", she said.
David looked at her mother, "Why do you say so? What happens? I have to go mom, if Juan finds out about this, he'll kill me."
His mother looked at him, sympathetic but persistent and said: "Perhaps, has anyone appeared this morning?"
David frowned and straightened his back "How do you know that?"
"Nobody else's coming today, please stay; we have to talk."
David's mother seemed very convinced, and he had a lot of questions, of which, some, he didn't even know how to ask, but he looked at her and thought the best would be to take things calmly and not to pess her. "Okay, but I don't know what I'm going to do if Jose goes to the shop and sees I'm not there."
Half an hour had passed since both of them were silent. His mother was sitting on an armchair in the living room, looking nowhere. David prepared tea and went to sit with her.
Willow was in her room, so they started talking.
"David, last night, old coworkers of your father arrived to the port."
"Sailors?"
"Yes", she said after thinking about it. "This morning, one of them came. They need more crew. Our family name is well known because of your father."
"What do you mean by that?" he frowned.
"They wanna meet you."
"Ok, but I'm not a sailor. Besides, I gotta work to sustain you...", but Willow's cat jumped on his lap and interrupted him. "Mom, take this thing off me, please."
The mother took the cat with affection and, while petting it, she said, "They can't come here anymore, if you want to know more about your father you'll have to go to their ship."
David didn't know what to say. For a moment, he thought all of this was just a joke.
Of course he wanted to know more about his father; he'd died when he was just a child, but he'd have to be crazy to leave his town just because old coworkers needed people for their crew.
David stood up, "Alright, I'll go and talk to them. I'll be back in an hour."
"No, you're not going alone. Give me my jacket." She put the cat on the floor. "Willow!"
"Why do you call her? Is she comin' too?"
"You don't expect me to leave her alone, do you?"
"Mom, she's 15."
"And you're 18. Now, shut up and put your shoes on."
While walking, David noticed that his mother wasn't going to the port. "Mom, it was to the right there, where are we going?"
"They're at the old port."
"What old port?"
"You were so young when they made the new one. The one we're going to is on the other side of the beach."
It seemed so strange to David that a Marine ship wasn't at the main port, but his mother looked so convinced that he just shut his mouth and followed her.
When they arrived to the port, our character didn't know what was happening; the old port was just a bunch of old and broken wooden planks. There only were one and a half boats and there wasn't any sign of a ship. His mother walked to the broken boat, took an oar and she put it on the boat that was unbroken, so that it had two of them. "Willow and I will be waiting here. You just have to row a bit and you'll see the ship. We can't see it because of the fog, but it's near."
David hesitated. He had to go on a boat he doubted it wasn't going to break and to row into the fog's abyss, with the hope he was going to find a ship and, if not, he knew hot to turn back and come to the shore again.
"Why don't you come with me? Have you come all the way to stay here?"
"They wouldn't let us go up there. They don't allow women aboard."
"That's stupid", he deprecated.
"I don't make the rules, they believe their ship would get some type of curse or something like that."
David hadn't ever rowed in his life; the few times he had been on a boat, he was just a passenger. He had to try a couple times until he moved his arms at the same time, but in a few more tries, he could spot, over his shoulder, the shadow of a big ship. His mother and sister started fading away, but in a last sight, David could notice a slight pity in the mother's look.
When he was close enough, he shouted to see if anyone could help him go up. After some everlasting seconds, someone trew a ladder. He arrived at the edge and he noticed the ship wasn't too big to be a Marine's. A skinny and short man collected the ladder without even looking at him. "Good afternoon" David said. He looked around, the ship wasn't that small, but it was, indeed, simple. He looked at the mainmast, went up though the sails and stopped at the top; hanging on there, was a flag that didn't need to wave to be recognised: black with some white drawings, of which he could perceive an eye in a skull.
He was on a pirate ship.
