Blood-red sails: Fantasy or Historical

[penthius]

The ship that sailed tonight had blood-red sails, Riva thought. Blood-red sails on the horizon. She shuddered. It was a bad omen. They'd followed the seers and the rotations of the wheel, but they'd still ended up with blood-red as the safest color for the ship. The seer herself had been upset by that, Riva had noticed. She looked out to sea

Comments

[prof_vencire]

One of the better stories I read had as a main character the man whose job it was to dye the sails for the ships. He falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy man, etc. etc., wealthy man tells him that if he could fill the bay with gold, he could marry the daughter. So he pulls in favors, spends his savings, uses his contacts, and gets every ship's sail dyed gold and one morning they all go out into the bay and he gets to marry the daughter. I liked it. There was a little more, in the way of details that made it work, but I can't recall them all.

[penthius]

Wow. That's a really pretty fairytale story.

[prof_vencire]

And it was well-written, too. I was genuinely impressed. Impressed enough to remember it, anyhow. Good stuff.

[prof_vencire]

Red sky at morn, sailors take warn!
Red sky at night, sailor's delight!

[penthius]

Yeah, I was kinda thinking of that.