The roiling sky was rent by a wicked, forked lance of white-hot lightning as the full fury of the storm slammed into the merchant vessel, Abundant Horizons. Across its rain-slicked deck scurried harried, valiant men, near exhaustion as they battled to keep their frigate above the clutching, malevolent waves.
A castle-high wall of frothing water battered the beleaguered vessel as cries of "Man overboard!" rose again and again above the panicked wails of the shaken crew. Louder than all was the deep, booming, commanding cry of the captain as he rallied his men to succeed in the grandest of battles against a most unrelenting foe; a turbulent ocean.
It was a battle that looked lost as the gargantuan tidals tormented them from all sides. The captain's knuckles were white as he vainly steered the stricken vessel to nowhere safe.
Crack! Crash!
BOOM!
The doom-laden sounds transcended even the voluminous noise of the storm. All about, sailors were tossed to the deck. Suddenly, the boat lurched, it seemed to have struck some obstruction in the churning waters below, a reef or a giant wall of rocks and dozens of seamen lost their footing and found themselves flung with terrible force against the starboard railing. And they struck hard: men cried out in the agony of shattered limbs and many tumbled, end over end, to the hungry, violent sea below.
As wicked lightning lashed the deck, the captain, valiant to the last, whispered a haunted prayer as the Abundant Horizon surrendered to its doomed fate...
--
The end came upon them and a watery battering ram thundered into the stricken boat. Somehow alone, separated from his crewmates amidst the hell-sent chaos, a solitary sailor lost his usually sure footing and slammed, face first, into the deck. He shook his ringing head, his sight obscured by pained stars, and he struggled to focus his eyes on the terrifying scene before him: two of the Horizons' masts had snapped, their splintered remnants showered across the cluttered deck. His terrified eyes lingered upon the slumped body of a comrade whose chest was ruptured through with the thick, rent wood.
Above the din, the sailor heard the last desperate, haunted cries of his captain as that noble man sought to steady his men when they stared into the cold, unforgiving eyes of the Reaper. But the usually stout sound wavered and was lost to the many thunderous crashes of the unending water.
Now, in its final death throes, the Abundant Horizon heaved and churned in the roiling waters. The sailor lost his footing, slipping, tumbling, cartwheeling end over end into the hungry maw of the waiting, terrible ocean...
--
With his limbs flailing and his body twisting, the sailor fell to his doom, his battered body slamming into the black waves hard. In an instant he was beneath the tormented sea's surface, its chill enveloping him as he dropped rapidly into the midnight-coloured depths.
Panicked, his actions ruled by instinct only, he sucked in lungfuls of icy water, spewing it back out only to breathe it back in again. His nose and throat stung and his eyes seemed to be boiling and freezing in the same moment. The weight of his sodden boots tugged him further and further below the waves and the sailor felt the darkness begin to take him.
As he dropped to his watery grave, deep, deep down to some shadowy Hell, he sighted figures straight from myth. No, not angels come to escort him to the afterlife, something far more...
Though they were some distance away, and the man's eyes burned and his sight was poor in the churning depths, the sailor, if he lived, would swear upon the Throne and the Good Book to the validity of what he had spied. His eyes widened at their forms: they looked to be voluptuous women but, where their taut torsos should have extended to shapely legs, there hung instead long, scaly tails.
--
The deafening roar of the waves crashed onto the sandy shore, soaking the battered body of the lone sailor washed up on the beach. He coughed and sputtered as the water deluged his lungs. His body was slammed by the endless rhythm of the water. His clothing was torn and shredded. His pallid skin marked with harsh, red abrasions.
Tossed again as the waves reached their crescendo, his breath was poorly timed and his lungs stung again as he swallowed deep gulps of warm sea water. Violent coughs racked his shaken torso and his hazel eyes rolled back in his head. He caught a fleeting glimpse of an azure sky and melted away to darkness.
--
Some intermittent period of time passed and he was woken by the warmth of a burning noonday sun. The heat blistered his burning skin. He blinked salt-crusted, stinging eyes and rolled onto his battered back. The sky was a stunning cobalt, nearly matched by the water that licked at his heels. His clothes, leather breeks and a cotton shirt, were torn and his boots gone.
Each and every part of his body ached, but his head throbbed more than anything else. His long, curled dark hair hung messily across his brow providing only minimal relief from the damned sun in his eyes; it's blistering rays keeping him from seeing more clearly where he was. He lay on his back, lifted a weary, shaky hand to his brow and flinched as he touched a stinging bump, bringing his fingers away to spy flecks of crimson.
With a herculean effort he heaved himself onto his right side and then to shaky knees, now slightly submerged thanks to the rising tide, and looked about himself. He was on some empty, pristine beach, its sand white and pure. Some ways up from the shore the beach gave way to tall, rushy grasses and beyond that to a verdant rainforest.
He blinked, the sun strong in his eyes and then, his heavy eyelids fluttered again... No! It couldn't be! Ahead of him, some way away, he saw them emerging from the line of trees: a group of people strolling down toward the beach, come to rescue him. He would be saved! He drew a deep, exalted breath, mouthed a prayer and passed out, his head striking the sand hard as he drifted into a newly minted darkness.
--
The lost sailor awoke to a truly unimaginable scene: all about him were a tribe of... women. However, they looked unlike any ladies the sailor had spied at home, nor aboard any vessel on any sea he had sailed.
All were nude, wearing not even a single thread of clothing. While wearing no garments, their lithe bodies were decorated with twined grasses, feathers, flowers, stones and seashells; arranged in bracelets, anklets, necklaces and twisted about their tight waists. Some of the women, who looked to be warriors, carried long spears and wooden, carved shields.
The man blushed, but could not keep his dazzled eyes from their stunning forms. The women appeared as whispered goddesses of mythology: their frames tall, slender, muscular and heavily bosomed. They each wore their hair long, the flowing manes were blonde, reddish, brunette and raven-dark, and in their nakedness he spied aligning colours upon their labia.
They appeared as erotic angels, ladies of such legendary beauty as to steal away his haggard, heavy breath. The sailor's cheeks flushed as his full eyes hung upon their bareness and he reached shaking hands out towards the mysterious women and called with a croaky, weak voice.
"Help... me! Please..." At the distraught, strained sounds of his cries the mysterious women hesitated, some of them looking to a large breasted blonde at the lead of the pack, her hair entwined with seashells and sparkling prisms of colour. "
Wa-wa-ter...," He begged again and then fainted into exhausted unconsciousness.
--
A torrent of cool, fresh water was splashed into his face and the sailor woke, rising unsteadily to a seated position. He leaned forward and looked up from the sandy ground, instantly mesmerised by the heavy orbs of dozens of undulating breasts and luscious, puffy nipples that dangled before him.