Chase stepped back from his telescope on board his ship, shocked. He couldn’t believe what he had seen. He pressed his eye against the cold glass again and there it was-- the coastline of an enormous island, lush jungle trees just visible.

“Going about to starboard!” he shouted, gesturing to his right, the direction of the coast of the island. The water to that side of the ship didn’t look promising, but he needed to investigate this island.

A few of his crewmates look at him strangely. “Isn’t that a cloud?” one of them asked. “We should sail away from cloud banks, not toward them.”

“No, Tanner,” Chase said. “It’s land! A huge island!”

“Really?” Tanner asked.

“Yes, really,” Chase said. He was getting tired of arguing with his crewmate. “I’m the captain of the Poseidon here, right?”

Tanner hastily realized that arguing might not be a good idea. “Okay, it’s land!” he said. “But couldn’t it be Africa?”

Chase considered that. “Possibly,” he conceded. “But this seems bigger and not the right shape to be Africa.”

-three days later, en route to the island-

Poseidon crashed through an even larger wave. The crew bailed her out frantically, but as soon as it seemed they were done, the ship would break through the crest of another wave. There was no rest for the crew, but Chase was convinced that whatever was on this island was worth the bad weather. Now though, seeing the angry gray clouds race above the mast of his ship, he wasn’t entirely sure of himself. He saw another wave coming and braced himself. His ship rode it easily, his crew less so. Two were already seasick, but luckily he couldn’t hear them over the wind and pounding rain.

They had hit this storm a day prior. It had been smooth sailing most of the way, the stiff wind being not much of a problem. But then they hit this storm and the ship was struggling to stay in one piece, the wind was so strong. The good thing was that the wind was now in exactly the right direction, blowing Poseidon straight for the island Chase had seen.

Chase turned his attention back to the present as the ship lurched suddenly under his feet. He quickly saw why. They had entered a bay about a quarter mile away from the part of the coast Chase had seen and the ship had hit a rock under the water. The impact was a solid one. He thought his ship could hold itself together for long enough, but he was proven wrong. They were barely forty feet away from the shore when the ship hit another rock and split almost cleanly in two.

As he fell, Chase shouted to the others. “SWIM! Get to the shore!” He had to fight to make himself heard, but he saw several of them nodding acknowledgement.

He stopped thinking about it as he hit the water. It nearly knocked the breath out of him, but he found his rhythm quickly, swimming strongly to the shore.

He waded out of the bay dripping, but it was hard to notice since he had already been soaked from the rain. He noticed a huge tower of stones and wondered, Are there other humans here?

He was exhausted though, so he didn’t think more about it for the evening. He saw a cave lined with seaweed and feathers and crawled into it to sleep.

In the morning, Chase woke up early. He noticed a post of some sort next to him and was confused. It was white, shaggy, and somewhat lumpy. He looked on the other side and saw another one. Seeing no answers in those directions as to what the posts were, Chase looked up and nearly shouted. He was looking into the face of a pure white horse with a gray mane and tail and a scar on his forehead. Chase swung his gaze to the horse’s back and was further astonished. The white horse had large and powerful-looking wings with cadet blue feathers.

Therefore it was not a horse. It was a pegasus.