memories on moonlit waters

Rain was spilling from the sky, rocking the small vessel like a bobbing apple in a water bucket. Half-sinking into the stormy sea, the wooden boat struggled forward, it's tanned hide [what kind of hide?] keeping the wet out from the birch-wood frame inside. The sun had begun sinking as well, dipping beyond the horizon back where land now lay, glossmer light grimly illuminating the inky waves. Crested at the top with plumes of grey-white, they feed on one another, eating each other up in a greedy display of black and blue darkness, tearing apart. And so the buckling waves sought to tear apart the small vessel. Wind stung against the passenger's exposed skin, chilled and wind-raw.
This is not how it was supposed to be...
Hardly far off in his mind, he could still recall the heated arguments following his decision to travel out to sea...
"Are you maddened? There are dangers out there, untold calamity yet you wish to seek it out? Brother, if I did not know you better I would say your wisdom has began to fail you."
"Kanay'ian, it is more than that." Despite his elder sister's accusations and panic, Eii'taske found his voice calm. "There is so much out there, so much to explore. Things we have never seen nor dreamed of."
"That makes it all right then." Biting her lip, Kaniany'ian turned away, her face shrouded by dark strands of her hair. She had yet to tie it up for the daily work, so it hung longer and unbraided like a stream of black water. 
Thinking she was finished, Eii'taske opened his mouth but her words continued, muffled behind the blanket of hair shading half her face. "It makes it all right to leave us like this, leave father like this."
Though her voice was soft, the tone was as rigid as stone. Cringing, he found no words to deny her truth. Their father's health was deteriorating, diminishing swifter than the season could past. And with all the wars eastward...her meaning was not lost.
"I have to risk it all the same, Kaniany'ian. There is too much riding on this to ignore it. I hope someday you understand that duty is not always the best path if it you leaves bleeding in remorse. I truly hope you can understand my feelings."
Eii'taske had left that morning

"What are you thinking of?" The question lolled out into the cooling air. With the coming of night, the breeze off the sea had increased; it blended with the dried blue sky. Clear of any clouds, the sky hung itself in its sapphire raiment, a dry dusty color before it would don its twilight shades. Only a half-moon was visible, a half-saucer of milk.
Eii'taske answered, still gazing at the sea, "An old argument before I went to sea."
'Ayi" Here in the swiftly deepening dusk his captain, the demon Aramaris spread his teeth in that humorous and dangerous way he often did. "Did it end well?"
"Did what?"
"The argument."
"Oh. I wasn't listening." Eii'taske let his breath take in the growing darkness, and the increasing moonlight cloaking the black waters with luminous highlights. "No. It never ended. It was never resolved."
"All the better for you [yo're]." The demon nodded with conviction.
Saying nothing, Eii'taske kept his eyes on the sea. Though he had expected no less from his captain, the indifferent tone brought back quite hotly the jumbled feelings that had been his parting gift from his family. Staring up into the sky, the deepening darkness seemed to echo the sudden sentiment in his heart; a dreary, dark shade but not black. Things weren't hopeless - there was still hope; hope that things had turned out better, hope that his father had grown stronger, hope for his sister's future. But hope and misguided, unspoken words were vastly different things. Having left with words unsaid in his spirit, in the wake of his passage lingered a trail of insubstantial smoke. It was unseen by other eyes and could not harm Eii'taske in anyway; rather it was like the sensation felt by a river that had long dried up, broken into dusty patches by the glaring sun and drought. The passage of the water remained, but nothing remained there - it had been forsaken, a ghost of a memory that could never be reborn. It was regret but even with it, Eii'taske still had hope for even when the sea sunk into shadows, the moonlight always illuminated the dark at least for a little while.