The Village's Reaction: Laughter and Pity

The sun, which had seemed so determined to bake Santiago’s determination into a crisp, had begun its descent, painting the sky in hues of bruised purple and indignant orange. This was the backdrop against which Santiago, or what was left of him and his boat, glided back into the harbor. The skeleton of the marlin, a ghostly monument to his epic struggle, was lashed to the side of the skiff, its magnificent tail fin now a tattered flag of what-ifs. The villagers, who had been loitering with the kind of anticipatory glee usually reserved for a particularly juicy scandal, perked up.

“Is that… is that *it*?” a young fisherman, barely old enough to shave, squinted, his voice laced with a potent cocktail of disbelief and amusement. He nudged his companion, a man whose perpetually worried brow seemed to be permanently etched by Santiago’s fishing misfortunes.

“By the saints, it is,” the older man replied, a slow grin spreading across his weathered face. “He actually caught something. Though it looks like it’s been through a rather spirited argument with a school of very hungry piranhas.”