Embedded Files
Part-1
The Division
The storm had not yet broken, but the sky above Salem Harbor carried the weight of thunder. Clouds pressed low, dark as iron, rolling across the Atlantic horizon. The docks groaned under the restless pull of the tide, and the smell of salt, tar, and pinewood filled the air like a warning. Lanterns swung wildly in the wind, casting fractured light over the gathering crowd.
Amid the commotion, a young woman stood still, her auburn hair whipping across her face, her green eyes locked on a single figure boarding the merchant ship Horizon’s Call. She was Selene Carter, twenty-three years old, a slender guardian of the Carter family’s crumbling home, her face both fierce and delicate, as though carved by longing itself.
The figure on the gangplank turned once, his tall frame outlined against the sails. Arion Carter, twenty-seven, her elder brother, carried the unmistakable look of a man who belonged to the sea — broad-shouldered, sun-bronzed skin, storm-gray eyes that seemed already lost in far horizons. In his right hand, gripped like an anchor of memory, gleamed their late mother’s inheritance: a Brass Ship Sextant, crafted in Germany, its arcs and mirrors polished to a golden brilliance.
“Arion!” Selene’s voice tore across the docks, urgent, desperate, louder than the gulls and crashing tide. “Don’t leave me with only that storm between us!”
The sailors laughed at her passion, their boots thudding against wet planks, but Arion froze. For a heartbeat, the world stilled. He lifted the sextant high so she could see it glimmer against the lantern light.
“This will bring me home, Selene.” His voice was rough, deep, carried on the Atlantic wind. “By the stars, by this instrument, I will never lose my way back to you.”
Her heart lurched. That sextant had been their mother’s — a woman of fragile health but fierce wisdom, who would whisper to them on starlit nights: “The sea may divide, but the stars unite. Trust them, children. Trust them always.”
Selene stepped forward, her boots splashing in the rising tide. Her fingers clutched the wooden railing as if it were his arm. “It won’t be the stars I lose faith in, Arion. It will be you. If you chase wealth, if you chase glory, you’ll forget us here.”
But he only smiled, and that smile hurt worse than any blade. It was the smile of a dreamer convinced the world was waiting.
The Sextant’s Weight
As the crew prepared to cast off, Arion slipped the German brass sextant into its polished mahogany case — a box carved with their mother’s initials. Its weight pressed against him like both a burden and a promise. Every sailor envied him for owning it, for it was said instruments of such craft could not only measure the stars but read the heart of the sea. Collectors whispered that such a sextant was worth a fortune, a treasure more valuable than gold.
Captain Elias Monroe, a barrel-chested man with a beard thick as rope, barked at Arion from the deck. “Quit clinging to ghosts, lad! The sea doesn’t care for promises. It only respects skill.”
Arion glanced back at Selene one last time. He wanted to say more, to promise her the world, but sailors dragged him aboard. The sails unfurled like the wings of a predator, snapping in the wind. The Horizon’s Call lurched forward, leaving froth and sorrow in its wake.
Selene’s chest tightened as if the tide itself had taken hold of her lungs. She stumbled back, Margaret Hayes — her closest friend, a girl of nineteen with golden hair tied in a ribbon — rushing to steady her.
“He’ll return,” Margaret whispered, though her own eyes shimmered with doubt. “Men who love the stars always find their way.”
But Selene could not believe it. Not yet. Not while the sea seemed so hungry.
Salem Nights
Salem Nights
That evening, the storm finally broke. Lightning cracked across the sky like the heavens splitting, thunder rolled through the wooden homes, and rain lashed against the Carter household windows. Selene sat by the hearth, her hand wrapped around the sextant’s empty case.
She traced the brass fittings inside, still warm from Arion’s grasp. Her thoughts drifted to childhood — two children on the dunes outside Salem, their mother’s frail hand guiding theirs as she taught them the constellations. The Hunter’s Star, she had called it, a cluster that always rose in late summer.
“Follow this, and you will never be lost,” their mother would say, coughing between words.
Selene whispered now into the storm, “Then guide him back to me, Mother. Guide him back.”
Outside, Margaret entered, dripping wet from her dash across the muddy lane. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight,” she said firmly, shaking rain from her shawl. She noticed the empty sextant case and frowned. “You should’ve kept it. That thing is worth more than his ship.”
“It isn’t gold,” Selene murmured, clutching it tighter. “It’s blood. It’s memory. It’s all we have left of her.”
Margaret sighed, sitting beside her. “Then pray the sea respects it as much as you do.”
The Bond Severed
Days turned to weeks. Ships came and went from Salem Harbor, but none bore Arion. Selene walked the piers nightly, her green eyes searching every mast, every stranger’s face, the Atlantic wind clawing at her hair.
Some whispered she was cursed, a woman bound more to shadows than suitors. Nathaniel Reed, a wealthy merchant in town, often tried to charm her, offering compliments, even promises to purchase rare instruments from Europe. His obsession with antique compasses, telescopes, and sextants made him infamous among collectors.
One evening at the inn, he leaned close and said, “Your brother’s sextant — was it truly German? If so, its maker’s mark alone is priceless. Should it ever find its way back, sell it to me. Instruments are treasures, Miss Carter, not memories.”
Her spine stiffened. “Then you’ve never lost anything worth remembering.” She turned away, leaving Reed to his wine.
On the final night of August, Selene climbed the bluff overlooking Salem Harbor. The storm had passed, leaving the sky blistered with stars. She lifted her eyes and found it — The Hunter’s Star, burning like fire against the velvet dark.
Her lips trembled as she whispered, “Arion, can you see it too?”
Far across the ocean, on a heaving deck where waves crashed like mountains, Arion Carter held the Brass Ship Sextant against the starlight. His storm-gray eyes narrowed, searching the heavens. He found the same constellation.
And though sea and storm divided them, the stars burned as proof: their bond was unbroken.
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