http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/rowing-mathura-lake/

The man stood patiently on the unadorned quay. His mind wandered, only for a moment, but when he came out of his reverie, the row boat was paddling toward him. A lone, weathered man worked the oars. With a little thunk, the shallow boat bumped up against the dock.

“This isn’t a very big boat,” the man noted.

The captain screwed up his face. “What do you care?”

“I just pictured something a bit more grand is all.” Gingerly, the man stepped down onto the flat-bottomed vessel. He eased himself into an uncomfortable sitting position.

“Function over form, at this point.”

“Right.” The man shifted a little. That failed, so he shifted again.

“Don’t bother,” the boat captain said, pushing them off with one oar. He began to slowly move them down the river. “There’s no getting comfortable.”

“Ok.” The man dug into his pocket, extricated a small, dull coin. “This is for you.” He passed it over. The captain dropped the payment into the folds of his head wrapping.

“Thanks.”

“Is there something I should, I mean,” the man began, then audibled. “What should I call you?”

The captain rowed, unhurried, and raised an eyebrow. “Very few people ask me that.” He smiled, and it was unexpectedly warm. “You must be one of the good ones.”

“There are good and bad ones?”

The captain nodded. “You will find, I think, that the social and political climate where you’re headed doesn’t differ all that much from the one you’ve left behind.”

For a while, the man pondered that information. Water lapped against the faded paint on the wooden craft’s hull. The oars clunked occasionally in their loops. Above the lone boat in a vast and otherwise empty river, the sky held its weak color. It looked like a painter had only thought to fill in the sky at the very end, when he had just a few drops of blue and red paint left.

“It’s not how I pictured it,” the man finally said.

“I know it’s not a yacht, my friend, but I swear it-”

“No, no, I mean the river. The trip.” He waved to the expanse of slow-moving water and the distant banks, vague through a mist he hadn’t noticed until now.

“How so?” the captain asked.

The man chuckled and shook his head. “This is going to sound dumb.”

“My friend, I hear things a great deal worse than dumb on this trip,” the captain responded by way of encouragement.

“I always pictured the river indoors.”

Oars dipped into the water with a soft splash. They dragged the boat forward before emerging. Little dark droplets ran first up the oar, then back down, following the captain’s motion. They looked like convicts unsure of whether escape was in one direction or its opposite.

“Indoors?” the captain asked.

“Yeah.”

“A river?”

“Indoors… or more underground? Like through a cave,” the man attempted to clarify.

“A furnished cave?”

“Indoors might have not been the best description of the image I had in my mind,” the man admitted sheepishly.

The captain made a face and waved dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. The end is under a little natural awning.” He pulled the oars once more, than added, “Well, as natural as this place can manage.”

This brought the first look of real concern to the man’s face. He sat up straighter and peered forward, over the captain’s shoulder. But there was nothing visible that way. Not yet.

“You want a nickel’s worth of free advice?” the captain asked.

“Well you took my last coin so…”

The captain laughed. “Don’t worry about what you did back there.” He nodded back toward the dock, the quay. But not really. Really, he nodded to what lay beyond them both.

“Hard not to,” the man confessed.

“Yeah, but there’s a secret about what lays in front of you.”

“What’s that?”

The captain grinned conspiratorially. “It’s not particularly connected to what came before. It may not be the same thing as life on earth, but it IS a kind of life.”

“An afterlife.”

“But a life nonetheless. One with choices. And consequences. With good days and bad, with friends and enemies.” The captain rowed without pause throughout the conversation, and the man realized it must be an incredible burden. Rather, it would have been for a human. Maybe the captain was constructed differently.

“The best thing you can do,” the captain said, “Is try to be better today than you were yesterday.”

“I wasn’t dead yesterday.”

With a wink, the captain pulled them into a low outcrop of rock that the man hadn’t seen coming. The boat ran aground with a gentle shudder.

“Well, that’s a start,” the captain said. “Good luck.”