byproduct

...and it’s difficult to find the hand that will guide you through that maiden voyage; time and its colleagues have blurred the few and quaint lines that held it close. There’s a promise somewhere, and you know it, it’s hanging by the finest thread, but it was spoken so long ago, maybe even too long ago. There wasn’t a plan, back then, you tell yourself while Captain Herbie Hancock plays his. There was only an idea, foreign and opaque. A dream for your youths. A hand, unscathed. A maiden voyage still to be unraveled.