Freedom is a strange thing. To define it is not only incredibly difficult, but also impossible. What does it mean to be free? No matter where you are, or what you do, you're always restrained by something. Even after breaking out from a prison, whether it is a household or death row, we are still held captive by our emotion, our dependencies and instinct. We are prisoners of ourselves.
Caroline considered this as she sat on the window seat of her room. It was dark out, and millions of stars littered the blackened sky. Stars fascinated Caroline. Having been brought up in London, it was nigh on impossible to spot a single star against the back drop of polluted air. Harsh street lamps and gas lights distracted the eye from the beautiful freckles of starlight that remained stubbornly invisible. But after being shipped to Port Royal in the for her father's work, Caroline relished nights where she could sit with her window open, feeling the warm sea breeze and admiring the stars to her hears content.
She could hear her two younger sisters, Louisa and Catharine, giggling in the room next door. She felt a pang of jealously for their childish naivety. Being 17, Caroline was now considered a perfectly ripe age for marriage. A few gentlemen had show interest- even the Commodore had inquired to her Father once or twice- and although all of these men where wealthy and most where handsome, Caroline felt no regard towards any. They were all painfully boring and dull. She also dreaded the thought of being passed from the possession of one man to the other, like a present. Always under someone's careful watch, constantly repressed and monitored, Caroline felt like she was drowning in a sea of dinner parties and perverted men hiding behind masks of reputations they did not deserve.
"What's the point of living a life, that's not my own?" Caroline thought bitterly to herself. Despite the Caribbean climate, she was beginning to shiver in her thin night gown. Pulling her window closed, she noticed something strange. She couldn't but her finger on it, but something did not feel right. Something hung in the still night air. She felt… watched. Shivering again, she slammed shut her window and padded across to her bed. Blowing out her candle, Caroline hoped sleep would come soon, for the giggling and loud 'shushing' coming from her sibling's room was becoming increasingly annoying.
Sleep came as soon as she's hoped.