"Running away from things you find unpleasant causes suffering. But facing and challenging such situations will enrich your life."
-Senora Roy
As but a child, my mother would often tell me the story of how she met my father.
It started out simple enough: she was living in a convent in Spain, about to take her vows, and he was...a pirate. A charming, devious, cunning pirate, who smelt of the free ocean and had a fierce and unabiding desire to sail the seas forever.
He had gotten swept there by the open waters, and they met and fell in love. After he decided to leave, she had been so taken with him, she had decided to join him on his journey.
But then, she realized that she could no longer stay with him, and left, striking out on her own.
They would not meet again but several years later, to search for a deadly treasure. Once again, they fell in love, but once again, my father left her to be alone, and she had moved to live in England, once she had discovered she was with child. Or, at least, that is what she claimed.
That is where I came in.
Being raised in England, I never knew of such places.
A Spanish Convent, a pirate ship, the seven seas...they were nothing but stories to me, a tale to send me to sleep.
My mother hated it.
She was always trying to convince me otherwise, repeating over and over again about how it was in my blood, how longing for the sea was my first nature.
Of course I longed to travel. To carry a sword at my side and a pistol at my hip. To greet every day with the salted breeze. To feel the rocking and swaying of a ship set for the high tides. To shout and command the crew to do my bidding. To search for legends and treasures all over the world.
But, I never thought I could actually have those things. That is why I forced myself to resist the temptation of something that could never be.
My mother was restless with this dull, mundane life in proper England, but she would never abandon me to the streets, nor take me away on a ship until I was old enough to sail with her.
So why did she leave me anyways?
The house was empty when I returned from the square one day.
No struggle, nothing. It was as though my mother had never existed in the first place.
I waited nearly two weeks, but to no triumph. She never came back.
Still nearly a child, with nothing but a name, I set out to find her.
My name is Edward. But sometimes, my mother would sigh, look wistfully off into the distance, and call me by my first name. My real name.
Jack.