Max Brutesworth

Chapter 1

Max grunted as he took yet another swing at the tree before him. They all fall at some point, his dad had once said, It's just a matter of if your will is stronger than the trees.

Max was a lumberjack of the brutesworth line, a proud family of lumberjacks who were known for their humble nature despite their solitude. Hence were known. At least to Max's memory, it had been three years since the supposed destruction of the world. It was a very strange event that Max remembered perhaps too vividly. The day where the black hole that had already destroyed most of the solar system was dragging earth in, and the great brains of the world couldn't do anything to stop it. When he and his father sat and waited for the end, they saw the world before them get torn apart, all except for his dad's forest. They closed their eyes, expecting destruction, and yet, the forest the brutesworth generation lived in survived, now stranded within what might have been heaven or hell, but it was very hard to tell. All one could see at the end of the forest was a vast, glassy sea...

Max always wondered what lay beyond the endless ocean that made up the surrounding area of their home. Sometimes, he imagined a fantasy land just out of reach, other times he thought of a strange technological land, where Albert Einstein would be thought of as dumb compared to the modern education. However, Max knew his job. He was a lumberjack, and cutting, planting, and caring for the trees of his home, or should he say island in this case, was his job. Deep inside, however, he still yearned to venture out into the unknown at some point...

Just then, the tree had now fallen with a loud THUD. Now came the chopping. He knew the drill. Every swing he made was part of a test in his eyes. A test of the perseverance that made a lumberjack get through his day. This perseverance was something that he hoped he could put to use on something else at some point, but for now, he'd sick to his trees.

***

Max opened the door. He could smell savory meats cooking in just the other room, where his father was most likely making his fried pork for dinner. As Max put the wood into the fireplace, he thought to himself, and thought again. He always argued in his head on whether to bring up leaving the island he was on. On the one hand, the thought of adventure caught his eye to a wonderful degree. On the other, could he really leave his father?

Max sat down, fork and knife at the ready as his dad, Bob, placed some rich and tender pork before him.

"Hey dad?" Max asked, as Bob sat down at the other side of the table. "I want to talk to you about something. You know the sea? I want to traverse it."

"Knew you'd get to that at some point." Bob answered, taking a large bite out of the pork before him. Max never knew how his dad was able to predict what he was able to say, though perhaps that was because he was so much like his father.

"Ah, and that would mean?" Max questioned. "Is that a yes?"

"Well..."