#i refuse to edit this because ill just end up shoving it in drafts forever

[anony-mouse-writer]

grian as the strange man who appears suddenly on gem’s dock with no explanation. no one knows who he is.

no one saw him arrive and he has no car.

he’s never bought anything from the store, and a few locals said they saw him simply cooking and eating the fish he catches on the spot.

the only belongings he seems to own are his fishing gear.

when asked where he lives, he points to the cliff. there is a tiny blue house there, balancing precariously on wooden stilts. the house has never been there and no one’s seen it before, but the local gas attendant pulled up a 40 year old photo of her grandma on the beach, and sure enough, the tiny house is there, a wee speck of color hanging like a barnacle on the cold, wet bluff.

the age of his mysterious little home aside, no one’s sure when he visits it. he’s at his little dock before the earliest ships cast out, and the sickly glow of his lantern can be seen long into the coldest of nights.

the man has pulled the strangest things from the ocean. fish, to be sure, but other, stranger things. lily pads, far from their native biomes. fishing poles, tattered and worn, of various makes and styles- some look positively ancient. boots. giant shells with twisted patterns to match no living thing. a genuine horse saddle once. bowls. a bone that looked just a bit like a human femur.

and books. perfect, unblemished books, nearly glowing with some kind of energy and filled with a script both unfamiliar and unsettling to see.

he opens them each with a breathless anticipation that tastes like brine or maybe tears.

but whatever he sees in them is not what he wants, and each book is tossed aside with resigned disgust and something like despair, before the weathered pole is taken up to cast a line to sea once more.

#short story #im so out of practice writing help #i refuse to edit this because ill just end up shoving it in drafts forever #grian #hcx #hermitcraft #mcyt #op #mouse’s writings