Following in the footsteps of 15th century explorers nearly 100 years his elder, he’d sailed along the coasts south of the new world looking for that long besot treasure, the fountain of youth.
He was still young and full of vigor when he started, but having seen the ravages of time upon his father, he knew he couldn’t begin the quest too early but he certainly could finish it too late. A full decade passed, and he felt no closer to his goal, though he felt the scruff on his face thicken, the wrinkles in his sun-worn skin growing more pronounced, and the ache in his bones more clear after a day of toiling with rope and sail.
But then, finally, he’d caught a lead of true value. Trading tales with the locals had never gone too well, but in desperation for food and unsalted water he’d given in to the necessity of it and found himself in a small village, unnamed as yet in his tongue. It was there that he witnessed a matron among them die of old age and be resurrected, restored to the youth of a twenty year old, with naught but a few drops of liquid upon her eyes. He would scarcely have believed it if he hadn’t witnessed it himself, and having paid the entirety of his remaining fortune for knowledge of the liquid’s origin, set sail in search of it.