Remember
A/N: Just so's you guys know, I made this up. It's just my thoughts on what might have been. There is no "for sure" in this instance. R&R!
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She was never anything but different. She was always doing and saying things that made people wary of her. Even as a child, she was different. She had always been different. When she was small, she would use blocks that had colored letters on them, and she would spell words. At first, her parents thought she was a genius. Then, when their house burned down after she spelled the word, fire, they no longer thought that.
They took her to a doctor, the only one they could afford. He said that she was possessed, and they needed to see a priest right away. But when they left, her mother looked down at the little twelve-month old baby, and she knew that her daughter was not possessed.
When she got older, she started to have visions. She would look out at the sky, and say to her mother, "The sun is beautiful. We won't have any sun tomorrow." And she would be right.
When she got into her teen years, she learned to control when she could and couldn't predict what would happen. She did this to protect herself. The other kids would call her a witch, and they would throw stones at her. So, one day, she went to the church, and when she returned home, she claimed at having been "cured". She lied.
She got so good at controlling her gift that no one was the wiser, and even her parents believed that she could no longer predict the future. Then, one night, she had a dream. She dreamt that pirates would come raiding the village where she lived, and everyone would be killed.
When she woke, she knew that she had to warn the people of her village. She knew that if she didn't, they would all die, and it would be her fault. She rushed out of bed and woke her parents. They didn't believe her. She told her friends and anyone who would listen. But none of them believed her. Some even believed that she had been wicked, and God was punishing her by allowing her to become possessed again.
The whole town now believed her to either be a witch, or insane. She was frantic. She had to save the people she loved. But how? She had no idea. So, she spent several days meditating, and seeking the answer. She searched her subconscious for every little detail as to how it was going to happen.
Finally, she had a plan. She knew what she had to do to save her village. She spent several days gathering as much wood as she possibly could. Some people, when they saw her arms filled with wood, they thought she intended to burn herself because she believed herself to be a witch, but that was not the case. She had been given a gift, and she knew that she had to pay attention to what she had seen. She knew that if she didn't, it could mean the deaths of everyone she cared about.
So, she worked hard, day and night for three full days. She gathered enough wood to encircle the whole village in a ring. She bought enough lamp oil to burn three hundred lamps for several hours. She drowned the wood in the oil, letting it soak it in. Then, she lit a lamp, and holding an unlit torch, she waited nearby.
For a whole other day and a night, she waited without rest. Finally, what she had been dreading happened. Pirates came in the middle of the night. They chuckled greedily, knowing that it would be easy to take and terrorize that night.
But they didn't count on her.
She appeared as if out of nowhere, with a torch in hand, and a drum at her feet. She was standing behind a wall of something. In the dark, it was hard to tell what it was.
"You have come here to pillage and plunder our village," she said. "But you will not succeed." The men laughed, and their captain came forward. He was a tall man with dark hair and a strange accent.
"Don't be so sure of that, lassie," he said. "I know how to convince anyone."
"Not me," she replied. "You have one chance to save yourselves. Leave, and your lives will be spared. Come any closer, and you will die." She stood her ground in her yellow dress, her brown shoulders bare. Her fiery eyes glared at the pirates without feeling. All she wanted was for them to leave. She didn't care if they lived or died.
"I don't think so," the Pirate Captain replied. "Davy Jones answers to no one." And with that, he charged forward, his men following close behind.
But because the sky was on her side, he failed. His men did not see the groupings of leaves. They did not see the holes until they had already fallen on the spikes buried within them.
When the pirates were close enough so that they couldn't stop soon enough, she lit the wood. The fire flared up immediately, and the ones who were farther ahead were instantly burned so much so that they were screaming in agony. The noises woke the people in the village, and they came out with pitchforks to see what was the matter.
The fire snaked around the whole village, encompassing it in a fiery wall of flame. The pirates went to their deaths as they tried to jump over the high flames. They would take running starts, and end up falling into a pit of spikes.
When it was all over, only the Captain was left. Davy Jones, his name was. He looked at her with new eyes. She was a fighter. She was strong. She was willing to do whatever it took to get what she wanted, whatever that may be. He fell in love with her.
"Davy Jones," she said. "You are to never return here again." Davy pretended to relent, but really he had a plan of his own. The village cheered, and she became the person that they all went to for advice. They gave her the name Tia Dalma, meaning, Our Future.
She left the village to live in solitude so as to better be able to continue discovering what her limitations were. And for several years, there was peace.
Then, Davy Jones returned. He didn't return to the village, so he kept his promise, but he did return to her. Tia Dalma. When he heard her introduce herself, he fell to his knees in front of her. He told her of how he had not been able to have a goodnight's sleep in years. How he had searched for her all these years, and how he had not been able to put her out of his mind. He pledged his love for her, and gave her a heart-shaped locket, telling her that she could carry his heart with her as a promise of his eternal love.
There was only one problem: She couldn't love him. She was flattered that he felt so strongly towards her, and so for a time she let him stay with her. She never told him that she couldn't return his love. She flirted with him unashamedly, and did so with all of the good-looking men who came to her for help. Every time something like this happened, Davy would become angry, saying how she was being unfaithful to him. Whenever he said this, she would have to remind him that they were not a couple.
One day, a certain someone came to her for help. His name was Jack Sparrow. He flirted with her, and she with him. Neither had any shame at all, or any remorse. He bartered from her a compass, and then left in a good mood. Davy was especially angry this time, showing her the matching locket he had given her. He said that he loved her, and that should be enough for her.
But it wasn't. She hadn't allowed herself to love him from the beginning. She knew that he wore a matching locket around his neck that was also a music box, and she knew that he was utterly devoted to her. But she also knew that she couldn't love him, and that she never would be able to. On that day, he left. At first, she mourned him. He had been an entertaining companion, and she missed his company. But, after a while, she forgot about him, and continued searching for her limitations.
Throughout the following three years, he wrote her love letters, but he never sent them to her. Then, Davy Jones returned one day, declaring how he could not live without her, and he asked her to marry him.
"I am Tia Dalma," she said to him. "I cannot marry anyone. I cannot have ties to anyone. I cannot allow myself to be manipulated through anyone whom I may care for." She crouched down so as to be at eye level with him, for he had kneeled before her in humility. She kissed his forehead gently as a mother might do to her child. "I love you," she said. "But I am Tia Dalma, and I cannot love you," she said as gently as she could. The despair in his eyes was immense, and she turned away so as not to see it.
In his hurt, anger, and misunderstanding, he left. She stood up and closed her eyes, seeing what he would do next with his life. She saw him alone on an island, his eyes imploring the sky for help. Then, he took a knife and carved out his heart. He locked it up in a chest and buried the chest on the island. Then, he lay down on the beach and let the salty ocean burn inside his wound.
She opened her eyes, and then closed them again. She saw him rise up from the depths as a creature of the sea. He was no longer a man, and she cried for the loss. She had loved him, but she had to forget him. Still though, she had loved him.
But, as she had found out before, life goes on, and we no longer remember who it was that held us up when we were learning to walk. She forgot him, but he never forgot her.
Later, Tia Dalma was told his story by a traveler who had seen it for himself. She did not remember Davy Jones. All she remembered was a man that had loved her enough to pledge his heart to her; a man who had loved her enough to give her his heart in the form of a locket, as a symbol of his love.
She still does not remember him. But she remembers his love and, for now, that is enough.