Paper Boats

• Hannah Carthew, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2015

Safe wasn't a common word where Tori lives. Where bullets replace rain, and bombs create bodiless clouds of dust.

There was nothing safe in Gaza. As Israel wipe out hundreds of lives, Tori doesn't sleep safely.


His hands release the small paper boat, the newspaper Arabic articles of missing children and vacancies of hospitals leaving to. As a small wake of murky water gently pushes away, it seems like it begins a journey to a better place, one that Tori's hopes and his terrors leave to. He wants the words of death to just float away, as plainly as that.

The paper boat floats off.

Because wherever this small paper boat goes, so will Tori.


A small boat now dotted the dominating blue. A blur against the horizon, it rocks in tune with the soft breeze. Tendrils of morning salt mist curls around the paper. A golden hue tints the rippling waves, like scales of a lizard ruffling. Peaking over the licking water, beams of early sunlight create a mosaic of lilac purple and peachy golds.


Taking in the scenery of the sunbaked sand, cool waves lick at the golden grains, pulling them into its salty embrace. Hundreds of crabs scuttling at the merging waves, making the cold stone look alive. Glassy barrels of water coil across the beach. The little boat continues its journey.


Lush mangroves paint two lines of green against the turquoise water. Streams split off into the land of emerald like veins of sparkling diamonds. Moss and vines spill from the bank into the coursing river of glass. So peaceful and untouched, the paper boat takes in the loud scenery quietly.


White dipped mountains raise like spikes into the heavy blanket of mist. A depressed aura hangs low over the ignored mountainside.

Where one is known to lose his fingers to the frost's kiss. A deadly romance of coldness which numbs ones limbs, turning a mans eyes into orbs of unmoving ice. Thickets of scrawny pines, bathed in a confetti of icy flakes, hug the melting stream of pure water, that weaves in and out of the white powdered slopes.


Stars scar the endless black sky, reflecting down upon the placid, inky ocean. The bulbs seem to sink down into the deathly depths of the sea, shining into the unknown crevices brooding with unknown creatures. Islands of bubbling pumice stone crown a mountainous tower of hardened rock. A prison in which magma spits and churns inside, ready to explode like an angry beast.


***


Mandy has everything she ever wanted. Sydney was perfect- a combination of the coastland and the city. However the same city smog and 4am traffic bores her. In a city of dreams, how could it hide the certain lack in adventure it proposed?

Something prods her foot. Surprisingly she looked down to see a paper boat in the water.

And in the folded articles told of a boy named Tori.

And all of his adventures of the seven seas.