Sea Dog Soul: Fantasy

The sea leather that bound the book felt warm in my hands, as if it were still attached to the seal it had come from...and that seal's heart beat, its blood flowed. An old sea dog like me had heard tales, and I wondered if they were true. Was a skinned seal weeping tears of blood beneath the ocean floor, tended to by its mourning brethren? It was a dirty business, this wizardry, and I didn't think of it further. Not right for a man of my sort. There was something off about it, like the smell of three-day-rotten fish. Not exactly inconspicuous. But there was no place on seaboard for a man cursed to be ill when he so much as looked over the bridge onto a small stream, never mind that he'd stood husband to the sea for most of his life. And such was my situation, so I had no choice but to seek other employment.