The mann muttered quietly to himself as he pushed the struggling worm onto the blueishly tinged hook. There were glints of the strange orange flecks within the metal which caught the sunlight. The feathered lure above the hook had small metal eyes which reflected the orange. Eyes of fire...strange.
He set his tackle bag on the upturned root of a small fallen tree that sat at this junction where the river pushed quietly into the sea and took a breath. He was exhausted...from the walking and from the disturbing dreams.
He walked up to the edge of the water with the fine rod his brother had made and thought about which way to cast - into the river or into this sea?
He had never fished the sea before. In fact he didn’t know of any of his kin or family who ever had. His home land was a place of wrenched and wretched desert rivers, usually barely running and mostly letting bony fish and eels hide in the shallow pools.
His journey away from home had taken him past such fast and constantly flowing rivers he could not believe. He kept honing his families art of hook and lure-making as he travelled, working and teaching in the small villages that had a forge. Or setting up a forge in those that didn’t.
The people kept changing as he moved on from the desert. The only thing that stayed the same was their ultimate distrust of him...a few days was all he could seem to settle in one place for before the accusations and threats started. Or the rock throwing.
This new outpost though, seemed different.