A sudden squall line of driving winds, lightning, and tossing seas foundered the bold ship. Risen on the foamy crest of an angry wave, Binta smiled broadly absorbed in playing with a piece of string.
Tripp asked wide eyed, "Are you seeing this?"
The progressive thinker rhapsodized, "Hyperion's curls! Our lives are chronicles on a dusty shelf bookended by ethereal nothingness -- if we weather the storm together an' discover the far off an' hard tah find treasure, even if those pages are torn an' its cover gone they will prove unputdownable worthy o' a storyteller!"
Binta turned a key and the shell of a giant clam upholstered with a capacious velvet armchair, lit by fireflies in a glass ball like a glowing pearl sprung through the clock face. The lifeboat snapped shut like a bear trap then whisked away the cat and mouse in a narrow escape as the ship slipped beneath the unresting waves into the cold inky abysses of the sea.
