Title: The Skiff
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Sam Kirk, Jim Kirk
Disclaimer: I do not own the character, only the words.
Summary: Short introspection of longing and two brothers who share it.
A/N: No idea where this came from; I just wanted to write something moody, wistful, but harsh.

The skiff is empty when found, drifting drunkenly on the gray water of the tide. It is heard by a wayfarer as a series of hollow knocks alongside a pile of rocks, clustered together like oyster shells, where the skiff has been kept hostage by a fickle current. A man ensnares its water-softened wood with his fisher’s hook and tows it to the shore to lie with soggy pinfeathers and sea-clutter exposed on the sand. Upon cursory inspection, he discovers, dismayed, the splintered rim of the bow. Broken, oar-less, such a small craft is useless to him, for it will not sell at market to his satisfaction and he has no talent for wood-work, nor patience to stand in for talent. He abandons the skiff to the delicate froth lapping at its edges and vanishes into the ambiguous fog of morning to seek something fairer for trade.

A sandpiper circles the beach on a whistling breeze; the ash-colored fog melts into thin ribbons, diffusing light at odd angles until it sinks away into the ground.

Children come with the round noon sun—two boys, both tow-headed and spindly limbed, running heedless of the small shells crushed beneath their bare, browned feet.

“Look!” one of them cries with the excitement of youth, spying the overturned skiff. “Sammy, a ship! It’s a ship!”

The taller boy, Sam, follows the flight of his brother with eyes sharp and dark like a seagull’s. He slows his pace to a walk, enjoying the sensation of his heels being sucked into the sand, and occasionally swoops down to pluck a piece of driftwood from the surf. In the pocket of his patched trousers is a small switchblade, a treasure he unearthed from a sagging box of rusted tools and plastic junk at an indoor flea market over a year ago. He thinks about whittling driftwood into distinct animals: a wolf, a bear, an eagle. He thinks about being strong enough to live without the fetter of family, as they do.

There is a thwap of wood against the sand as the other child rolls the skiff onto its side. He immediately climbs in, fingers slipping over the algae growing in the cracks of its wet boards, and rocks it to its opposite side under the imbalance of his weight. He laughs after he tumbles out, delighted, and dismisses his brother’s warning not to get too dirty as he crouches inside the lip of the skiff .

“This is my ship,” he proudly tells Sam.

Sam approaches the weather-beaten vessel and kicks at the stern. “It’s broken,” he says, pointing out a jagged edge of wood.

“Can’t we fix it?” Small, bony fingers prod gently at the damaged area.

“What’s the point?” comes the shrug of a question.

“If we got a ship, we can go places—other places.”

“Where?” Sam asks, curious about the sudden stubborn tilt of his brother’s head.

The boy says nothing else and explores an uneven gap between two boards of the skiff’s prow. Sam reaches down, unthinking, and picks a reed from the boy’s hair and snaps it between his fingers. He doesn’t repeat the question, only reminds his brother, “You’re too young to go anywhere, Jimmy.”

Sam doesn’t wonder aloud, am I?

“We should go back,” he adds, shuddering when the breeze tears by him; the faint sound of his bitterness skips out to sea along with a white-washed stone he casts.

Sam is prepared for protest but Jimmy pretends to watch a small crab pick its way down the tideline, the stiff jut of his shoulders like bird bones beneath his thin t-shirt. Silent and slinking, the smaller boy begins to retrace their path toward the sand dunes.

Sam, caught by impulse, hesitates and takes a last look at the skiff, breathing in the heavy scent of new rot and salty sea. He, like his brother, sees the illusion of freedom and craves it, wants to run his hands over the prow and imagine another existence.

But he does not.

Making a dry sound at the back of his throat, Sam turns away to join the hunched figure waiting at the crest of a dune. In his hand is soft driftwood, where he will give shape to his own dream until he can seize it or set it free.

-Fini

The Skiff, II

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