Bronze
by : epiphanies
His eyes were masked in darkness, like he didn't want anybody to actually look into them. Like they would see what he sees when he gazes into the looking glass.
Would they see the life before the Pearl?
He didn't want them to. To let somebody know too much gives them advantage. Blackmail. Jack didn't want anybody to know where he had come from, no sir. No bloody way.
He closed his eyes and felt the sun bake his skin. The skin that London had once considered so pale and frail, and lovely and dainty and feminine. He was bronze now.
Take that as people will, Jack considered it a direct insult to his background, and he liked it. He really did.
Jack didn't often think about his origin. His grand estate in the south side of London. His horse named "Yee-haw, I mean, no, mother wouldn't like that, your name is Graymalkin."
His mother.
Her fair cheeks, and the cheekbones that structured her magnificent face. Her deep-set blue eyes and eyelashes as high as totem poles, even though Jack hadn't known about totem poles until he'd ventured into the sea. Her velvet black dresses and lace covering her face. Her voice like a songbird that Jack had likened to the sparrow. Funny, he'd always thought, that their last name was Sparrow and that she sang like one.
He left home when she died. As a young lad. He found work in London with his grand ebony suit and pressed hair and prissy accent.
Jack winced just thinking about it. How he'd cried into his pillow, missing Yee-haw, oh, Graymalkin. How he'd cried, thinking what his mother would think about his newly acquired dreadlocks and pirate-wear. The fact that he was a pirate.
He'd been ten when he'd first stepped foot onto a ship. He'd never left it since.
He did miss his mother, he missed her enough that he shed tears for her, only sometimes. He didn't miss his prissy accent, though. He was no longer fair. He was bronze.