Scott Knoll
Scott Knoll
Scott Knoll (artist name leviareverb/scottsavestheday) is a California-based Laotian-American artist and writer. He is an alumni of California State University, Fresno that specializes in fiction, lyrical poetry, and comic art. As an artist and writer, he utilizes vibrant imagery and unique characterization to create immersive worlds. He draws inspiration from his ancestral heritage, the energy of punk music (Brand New, Light This City, Set Your Goals), and the charm of 90's cartoons like Animaniacs. His work resonates with cultural depth and nostalgic charm as he attempts to retrace what has been left behind in dreams, delving into subconscious, unraveling the fragments of memory that linger within. His work has been featured in literary magazines and art collectives including: Airplane Reading, hais: a literary journal, and Legacy Tributes.
The Moon’s Divide
Shaant drifted in the abyss of the Aegean Sea, the weight crushing his chest as he sank further in the uncharted chasm, tightening its grip on his already weakened lungs. The oceanic void threatened to devour him. Through the darkness, he heard her.
His mother’s song. Soft, familiar-folkloric. Her words were distorted and slurred by the water, yet still clear to him, emanating from a short distance between them.
Ooooh-ooooh
Winds call your names through silver trees,
Footsteps vanish where the river breathes.
Soft as the echoes of the ships untold,
They pull the threads where our life unfolds.
Each word soothed his limbs as they progressively became heavier, yet the melody wove itself around his punctured ribs, willing him to listen. Even as her hymn faded, its fragments still floated.
So let the moonlight weave us whole,
Through shifting tides and burning cold.
May your soul and sails tear the sky in two,
I drift in this path, calling out for you.
His hand reached out, stretching towards her, but just as their fingers were about to brush against one another, something lashed out from the depths. An ancient mythological beast, a kraken, acting as a servant following orders, separated the distance between them. The remaining verses were swallowed by the ocean, as though the water had teeth itself. He could no longer hear her, the remaining chorus lyrics being erased from him.
Through the crushing silence, he swore he sensed an overwhelming presence far superior to the creature. The ocean, once a void, now stared at him with glowing, fluorescent eyes, binding her to a cold eternity.
Then light.
Shaant gasped for air, his chest heaving as water expelled from his lungs. His blurred vision cleared to see his crewmates hovering over him, their hands trembling with desperation as they worked to resuscitate him.
Ooohh-ooohh
His mother’s song, however, still lingered. Even months after that surreal encounter that shocked his crewmates, believing he’d nearly drowned. Despite his recovery, he looked unchanged, his mind daydreaming as they floated along the Rhine River, the boat anchored gently in the clear waters. Shaant leaned against the railing of a wooden mismanaged, primitive vessel, his amber eyes scanning the horizon, ignoring the mist clinging in the air crashing from the ship's keel, dampening his woolen coat—a dark teal overcoat worn and faded from their months of sea travel hiding his sabre and flintlock. His dark brown hair fell over the sides of his face, a small resemblance of his mothers.
Dean, his vice captain, stood a few paces to his left, his posture relaxed. Beside him was Anya, the newest addition to the crew. Dean had been a known duelist long before he joined Shaant’s ship, the Moons Divide, with a reputation of having a crew himself before an interrupted peaceful retirement. Anya, however, was a brilliant strategist forged from necessity. When her home country was ravaged by a tyrant, she orchestrated defenses that saved thousands of lives on each of the opposing sides.
A sudden splash is heard from the side of the creaking ship. His eyes flickered to the side, where a small wave broke against the ship's hull, its ripples spreading like gossip outwards.
“Last night, I had this dream about a fox,” Dean said. “Plenty of them went back home, ya know, but this one fled from a hunter’s sights. But when he got away, it made itself known about where it was going, and when the hunter’s gunshot rang off, it hit a friend. The fox didn’t turn back. It ran, knowing that it doomed another of its own kind in its place.”
Anya raised an eyebrow, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “Always gotta liven the mood with ghost stories, eh, Vice Captain?”
“Death just has a pretty funny way of closing the gap,” Dean muttered. “Old tales for the kids tell of men that do bad deeds in life, like, say, hunting another man. When they die, they simply transform into creatures still conscious.”
“Never cared too much for those fairy tales,” Anya shrugged.
“We’ve never really considered ourselves fond of being called pirates, either,” Shaant laughed, drinking a green-tinted drink he made aboard the ship. The mug tilted in his hands from the swaying of his ship. It was a recipe that he picked up before leaving the last port, half an ounce each of gin, rum, vodka, tequila, and juices freshly squeezed from a melon with a bite of citrus. A sharp thing, deceptive in its elegance. Much like himself.
“There’s got to be some truth to the sailors' tales,” Dean explained, “Not everything’s just some old man’s story spun out of boredom.”
“Suppose you’re not a spiritual man, then?” Anya asked, intrigued.
“Hades, Pluto, Orcus, Lucifer… No matter what name or whether they’re all sharing one body, there’s too many rumors out there to not have some overlap in the truth,” Dean explained.
“In any case, especially when dealing with debt collectors, there is always an exception of who gets spared from turning into a monster,” Dean mused.
Then, a second splash.
“Our absence must’ve given the wrong impression,” Anya stretched, “I think we’ll have to work harder.”
Dean crouched; his usual composed expression became unreadable as the deep blue sea surrounded them. The soft creaking from the wooden vessel underscored the vice captain's movements as he firmly gripped his sword.
“Two wrong answers, so we’ll have to ask again,” Dean stated, his tone more serious, carrying the weight of salt and steel. “We have a pretty reliable source on what you’re transporting—so where is it?”
Before anyone could speak from a group of captured bounty hunters, the vice captain leaned in slightly, his tone more casual, “And more importantly, what exactly do you fellas want from us?”
The tied-up group of ten hunters swallowed hard. The silence stretched after seeing two of their men being fed into the mouth of the sea.
“Please, we don’t know anything about this!” A man bearing the appearance of a bounty hunter pleaded, his hands bound by rope to his remaining weeping comrades. Their tears soaking into the wooden deck of the bounty hunters’ ketch.
“What a waste, then,” Anya sighed, flicking a strand of hair from her face.
“Wait-wait!” Another bounty hunter blurted out, his frantic sentences barely holding together, “Everything we have is stored in the ship's hold and captain’s quarters - check there and you’ll find everything! The hunters and the company log books, orders, and items of value are in there! Please! They recruit us in every port, promising goods! We only know what we’ve seen while aboard!”
“Attaboy,” Anya stated, readying the return planks back to their ship. By habit, she continued to disable the enemy ship’s cannons and cut the enemy's sails. While haunted by the sight of their already battered ship taking more damage, the hunters were grateful for the encounter to be nearing its end.
“Now, the real question I’ve been wondering about in my story—was that fox just reckless? Or did he know exactly what he was doing?” Dean asked. “We’ll find out some day, but today you might as well abandon ship.”
Shaant finished the last of his glass and moved without any urgency, collecting everything in a bindle, bringing the remaining ingredients aboard his ship accompanied by Dean and Anya. His calm demeanor disappeared, assuming the wheel of his ship, The Moons Divide.
“Anya,” he ordered calmly.
Shaant and his crew watched as their ship slowly drifted away as Anya fired cannons, demolishing the bounty hunter’s vessel. The sounds of the splashing seizing from the remaining crew jumping overboard to escape and helplessly watch their ship begin to sink. The flames danced wildly from the gunpowder still aboard the ship, choking the air as the smoke suffocated the open air.
Through the explosion’s haze, a phantom-like figure emerged—unrecognizable, except its eyes, the same as the ocean's depths, glinting with thirst and power.
Shaant grinned, the sharpness of the young man’s smile as he met the figure’s gaze. Almost there, he thought, as he watched it transform the stranded bounty hunters into creatures climbing aboard the sinking ship into the water.
And in the back of the captain’s mind, his mother’s song whispered softly, once again.
I drift in this path, calling out for you.