Disclaimer: I don't own it. Everything you recognise belongs to Disney. No infringement
is intended and I'm certainly not making any money from this story.
Summary: Looking at Jack reminds Elizabeth of a story she heard as a child.
Author's note: Written for Sea Creatures Drabble Challenge at The Black Pearl Sails Group
at Yahoo. I couldn't keep within the 100 word limit, but it's an even 200.
Sea Creatures
by Hereswith
Elizabeth had played on the shore, sometimes, in the days before her father had truly
begun to speak of manners and rules. She had scrambled over rocks slippery with
seaweed, searching for driftwood treasure, while the gulls shrieked high overhead.
And she had lain down in the sand, ignoring her poor maid's protests, and tried to
imagine the creatures that might live beneath the waves.
Their gardener had once, in his thick Scottish accent, told her about the seal folk, and
how he, as a young lad, had seen one of them dancing on a starry, empty beach. Selkies,
he had called them. Seals, which by some magic means could shed their skin, the way
Elizabeth shed her clothes, and walk upright in the world of men. And should you find
that skin, should you take it and hide it, you might make a part of them yours. But they
would always long for the sea, and their eyes would reveal it the most.
She had nearly forgotten those stories, but she remembered them now, as she sat
cross-legged in the shade of a palm tree, on a godforsaken spit of land, watching Jack
Sparrow wade out of the water.