Sky Pirate
an excerpt

A pirate lives until the day he dies.

Ask someone their definition of a pirate and you might get a multitude of different answers. Ruthless, greedy, scavengers, and heartless just might be a few words you would hear mentioned; that's only the beginning of the list though. Countless descriptions and personality traits of what a pirate is can be heard anywhere you go. A black flag with a white skull might hang on the mast of a large ship that holds the multitudes of pirates that are so greatly feared. They stole precious gold, fine jewels, and the fair maidens aboard; sometimes leaving no survivors. You'd hear about the tales of pirates with a hook for a hand, or maybe a pirate missing a leg that was replaced by a peg instead. Pirates with parrots on their shoulders and eye patches to cover the missing eye that was gouged out in some type of battle. When you think of a pirate, you see scenes of unimaginable horror. Scenes that your mind can not even begin to grasp. The death, the mayhem, the absolute heartlessness of the men that steal without thought and than soak in the pleasure of their new found wealth. The blood that was spilled means nothing to them, only the gold.

Only the gold.

Or is it something else they were after? Maybe the gold meant nothing to them. What if they just enjoyed the site of death at their hands, the sound of the clanging metal as their swords crashed together. Maybe they were after something that the mind of a person, who can never completely understand pirates themselves, could understand. Maybe we're all just naïve in our thoughts on pirates, that what they are can't be understood by us.

Because we aren't pirates.

These pirates, these pirates we preoccupy ourselves with, are long gone. Aren't they? The seas no longer seem to face the terror they once did. Oh, but that is because the ships no longer are in the seas. Imagine a ship that flies the skies. A blimp perhaps. No, much greater than a blimp. Shaped exactly like the ships of the sea. It still carries the precious treasure it once did, the jewels, the gems, the gold; oh the gold. There will always be pirates as long as there is gold.

And there will always be gold.

But what if they aren't after the gold? What if they're after something they consider greater than the gold itself.

A pirate lives until the day he dies, and so it shall remain.