Travelers 2: Svim the Singer

Svim played the same ballads for longer than he could remember. Day in and day out the same songs sung and the same stories regaled. The faces that admired his performances would always change, coming and going like an ever changing tide, and like a stone he remained through it all. At night Svim would stare off at the shoreline ever in his horizon and listen to the sea shanties carried by the salt breeze. Songs of far away places, exotic wonders, love found and love lost. Svim wished he could share in their tales, but he had no songs of his own to share, only the stories of others.

Years went by and the crowds Svim would play for grew thinner and thinner. The children and families were replaced with a handful of soldiers on rare occasions. The ships in the harbor were larger, they carried cannons and often came back full of holes. If they came back at all.

One day Svim would only play for an empty park and dusty benches, his own echoes keeping him company until he saw the first face in what felt like a lifetime. The stranger was an odd fellow, their name was Rumbagh. He simply stood silent and took notes instead of applauding, but Svim didn’t mind. He was happy for the company. And when the time came to leave his home behind, there was only a small part of him that wanted to stay, a small part outweighed by his wanderlust. It took the pair several attempts to turn the worn blueprints Rumbagh possessed into a working craft. The moment they reached the deep water without capsizing Svim felt a song stir in his heart, one the world had never heard. As he plucked the strings and sang out about what life might hold, the shoreline littered with wrecked vessels and soaked books soon faded into the distance. Finally, the wind carried his song.