She was untamed and wild.
Freedom in flesh with life within life of life, nonsense embodied in curves of the ocean salt water for blood and who says that blood is thicker than water for they are most assuredly…wrong the waves in her hair
She is untamed and wild. For there are no past tenses anymore he sees. And it seems to him that she will always be.
Her heart though, does not belong to the sea. It doesn't pulse with the tide. It doesn't ache with the moon.
Her heart belongs to the shipswavesrumthievescouragemiscreantslustpiratesand he doubts she'll ever get it back. It can break. It can shatter. It can be moved by goldandsilverandtreasure. But like he always says. Not all treasure is silver and gold. Nor is it paper or fabric or clothing or people. Her treasure is freedom. Herself.
And it is because of that, he wonders, why he ever thought that he could have her.
Truly, he thinks, that he'd have liked to say that he would have only needed a small part of her. Just a touch. But he knows that he's greedy and would have killed himself to get all of her. Everything. Freedom in flesh.
For that is what she really is. Freedom.
And like the greedy man he is, he thought he could have her. And hold her. And love her. But really, freedom cannot be held. For then it becomes imprisonment and he knows that that would have killed her.
For a brief moment, a lapse in time, a strange turntwist of events, he thought he might have held for. Felt her warm skin in his arms. Ran a hand along her golden locks. Stroked the downy feathers of the swan. But being birdsofafeather, he really should have known better.
Of course, he mused, that brief lapse and twisty turn of fate was in part due to another man. He thought he had already held her. He had been confident in her love and nigh egotistical of his place in her heart. But the heart of a pirate is shared lightly and she is the sea and therefore quickly snatched it back from his hands when the tide receded.
So when she had thrown herself into his arms, he had been smug, that he had won the sea from the land. But the sea cannot be won by anything, he reminds himself, it cannot be held, nor kept, nor sealed or put in a cage, no matter how gilded and that is why she left. And he comforts himself with that thought; she leaves everyone.
So he watches the sea run away with golden curls and downy feathers and smiles because in the end, he knows that the sea will always return to him for the even freedom in flesh cannot resist its own heart and because as he said, water is thicker than blood, and he too has salt water running through his veins and seaweed in his hair.