FOREWORD.

This is a fictional story set in the sea. With strange characters, reactionary, funny and at the same time temperamental. They embark on an open sea odyssey in search of a mythical and timeless place where the extraction of sea pearls was an ambition that many could not resist. An amateur explorer, a ship captain and a fishing corporal set sail aboard a sailboat in the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean Sea, but suddenly, they will find themselves involved in an irregular situation where the coveted pearls are dyed with blood, evoking the story of the ancestors...

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Red pearls

_{Author: @nachomolina2}

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That morning the sea was calm with a dazzling dawn. A sky decorated by lee angoletas, which remained in suspended flight, at medium height between the clouds.

Some flying fish crisscrossed the boat, fleeting, twitching the waves. Meanwhile, the bow straightened to the northeast, leaving the coast behind, ditched in a foamy basin caused by the bulb of the keel.

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We went to sea in a sailboat with fishing gear. Commonly used for shallow waters, with central mast and mizzen sail, hold-dressing room and elm wood deck.

With the wind in favor, a tiny swell caressed the bow, making it jump lightly and quickly. It was like sailing on a celestial saucer to the edge of the horizon.

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We set sail, in search of "The Pearl".

"An islet located in the Caribbean, on the edge of the continental shelf. A sedimentary geological formation, in the open sea, known for its historical review that tells the task of extracting pearls."

In command of the sailboat was the captain, who had a fishing foreman as an assistant. Both were in charge of the boat, being, in turn, expert sailors, connoisseurs of the tropics and their untimely behavior capable of changing from one moment to another, without warning or contemplation.

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Apart from the crew, I was the only passenger, an explorer with a desire for discovery and also, why not, with the desire to get some pearls on the high seas.

The captain, apart from being in command, liked being a teller of tales and stories of the sea. He noted that the story of The pearl was not just another legend, but rather a real event that occurred in the island that was annihilated by nature itself. Condemned to disappear, as the only way to stop the barbarism committed on its shores.

"A dark past, denoted that event of the fourteenth century, where the subjugated, slaves and prisoners, they were used in the practice of a ritual with which the tyrants managed to amass a great fortune. Left on the perimeter of the islet, the captives, were forced to extract seashells from the depths, plunging into the waters, lunging, in exchange for being forgiven."

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While out at sea, the captain spotted something in the water and ordered the "fishing foreman" to pick up the sails, while he turned the boat three hundred and sixty degrees, thus stopping us in the middle of nowhere.

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We ran aground on a huge circular sandbank that was produced in the sea. We try to maintain the orientation of the sailboat according to the coordinates of a compass, trusting in the magnetic north, for the purpose of our return.

Well, there were no reference points of the mainland, no prominences, no signal buoys, no lighthouses, not even, we had the flight of the anchors which accompanied us only up to a few meters from the coast, sheltered in the current of warm air.

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We get off the boat. The water level was barely above our ankles. Deciding to take a little reconnaissance tour, I walked along the sandbank and got away from the two crew members, to be alone and observe in detail.

Meanwhile, the captain lay on his back on the flat surface of the water, while the corporal cleaned the salt spray from the elm tree on the deck and loosened the moorings on the sails. The sky in the distance turned leaden gray and an almost deathly silence settled over the atmosphere.

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The island gave off an unusual shine, like a pearl, it seemed that the sun shone only for it. It denoted a tense calm, unlike the rest of the environment that had blackened in a distant and sudden turbulence.

The captain changed his calm attitude, letting out a sudden exasperation, like someone who feels threatened. He got up from the beach and climbed onto the roof of the warehouse, staring at the approaching storm.

In a state of supervening anger, he ended up climbing the mast of the sailboat holding on with a fishing hook and completely out of his mind, shouting, he continued telling the rest of the story, grandiloquent, with an excessive drama;

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"The promise to return freedom to the subjugated was never fulfilled! They were brutally deceived, massacred, by the tyrant! "The pearl", was surrounded by deep waters infested with sharks, which gave no respite to prisoners, capriciously condemning them to certain death. Some slaves did not know how to swim! Poor people! Poor oppressed people chained around their necks! They were struck down by exhaustion, hypothermia or sunstroke. In other cases, given the task repetitive, which exceeded human resistance, their lungs would burst, while immersed in the water, finally, they would get stuck in the grave of the seabed..."

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I heard the chilling story told by the captain and saw his change of temper. I had moved away from the sailboat in my exploration of the bench, where the sand was champagne color, completely sifted naturally, without lumps or heterogeneous elements.

The crystalline beach with little more than four inches deep, would soon reveal to me its ancient, horrible and disturbing secret, which I was one step away from discovering.

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At the edge of the pearl, the sea sank to incalculable depths, which came together in a jumble of fragments precipitated to the bottom, until ending in a black and indescribable hellish morass.

The sea like a mirror let me see a few meters below the surface a sickle-shaped cluster of what seemed to be dismembered bodies, others in agony, tied together with straps.

I ran in the opposite direction, towards the other end of the islet, thinking that my eyes were deceiving me and that it was nothing more than a transit of the insolated mind, suggested by the horrendous story of the pearl.

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However, it was my unpleasant surprise, to see afloat, the chained hands of a man crying for help, and his pale face gesticulated in the greatest horror as he sank into the endless abyss gloomy and decadent.

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Removed in the depths of my humanity, I wanted to throw myself into the water in an attempt to save him. But, the gloomy desert sea swallowed him up in an instant, letting me know what my fate would be if I tried.

And my hands trembled helplessly and my disordered thinking wondered: What's wrong? What is the reason for being, of this, my hallucination?...

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While the wind stirred, in a complex symphony of voices, complaints, screams of people suffering. The sea suddenly became rough, overflowing the ends of the bench.

And I heard the sound of the oppressor's whip and the submissive penitents crying out for a chance at life.

Thus, the islet was surrounded by the wings of moving sharks, black sharks, like the color of oil, hungry, they dyed the water with blood and their red color dressed the sandstone.

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And the island was covered with pearls, red pearls, which then sank into the vortex. Returning calm to the island and once again hiding its harrowing history in the waters.

While the captain resumed command of the sailboat and the fishing caporal hoisted the sails, beckoning and calling me from the deck.

Finally, we raised anchors and leeward undertook our return to the coast, guided in the distance by the flight of the angolets and the iridescent nimbus of the star king.

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_END

_{[Original Content]
@nachomolina2}

_{venezuela
2022}