A/N:This being the second chapter of the gradual revamping of the Sparrow's Folly fic, intended to be easier to digest in the readerly manner.

Chapter II: Blasted Monkey…

Jack the monkey bolted for the safety of the harbour. At the last moment, his desperation for further revenge or companionship had failed him in the view of a pirate's pistol. The monkey may have been cursed, undead and immortal - the only UPIM (Undead Pirate Immortal Mary-Sue) permitted in the story - but it still felt pain and wasn't particularly confident in the rules of the curse at any rate. Should a monkey think this way? He didn't know. This curse seemed to give him a human conscience, however twisted it may be.

The mortal fear still within him was driven by the look on the man with the red bandanna's face. At first impression, when his master had marooned that first captain of the Black Pearl, he was not in the least afraid of the man. But there was Sparrow's ceaseless ability to return from the 'dead' and the eerily unhinged tantrums he could have in the wake of a small monkey...

Little Jack thought it best to lay low for a while. He bounded up the mooring lines that had now been attached to the damaged Black Pearl, leapt into the hole in her side and set off in search of the abandoned, waterlogged galley.

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Well, eleven-year-old Ellie thought to herself ruefully, looking down at her small, puny knees as she sat hunched and hidden in the cupboard of the small, flooded galley. I've certainly picked myself a worthwhile ship...

The ship, as she knew now, was damaged, and from what she had been able to tell it was docked somewhere, though even she knew not of its whereabouts. She knew of the incident in which it had been damaged--she was there, after all--but now she was left to wonder where and when it would take her away from the port in which it was settled. Sneaking onto the Black Pearl at its last docking had not been difficult; she had simply stowed away in a supply crate, and then had found herself in the damp, dark cargo hold. It had been staying hidden that was the real issue; after the explosion she had been terrified but stayed hidden all the same, hunched over in the very cupboard she was now in.
She was too afraid to move, despite the water level that had taken hold of the galley; she knew that if she left her hiding place, those that were hustling and bustling about the ship might see her. She wondered if it mattered, if she could run off of it and escape any that might chase her...

There was no reason in particular that she had chosen this ship for illegal passage. She was a stowaway of a most peculiar breed, being not only a child but also a person who cared not where she was taken. She searched for happiness, and the only way she thought she could find that would be to sail to a place that would bring her such sentiments. She was too young to barter passage anywhere; stowing away had to do. It wasn't as though she had anyone that would have missed her.

This is horrible, she decided after a moment, shuddering and closing her eerily light blue-grey eyes. Movement on the ship seemed to have quieted; presumably the repairs would wait for another day. A moment later her mind had been made up; she frowned and kicked her small legs out, forcing the door to the cupboard open and scrambling out on her hands and knees. Instantly, the front of her ratty old brown dress was soaked with the water swishing and swashing its way around the floor. She scowled, standing up and frowning at her dingy dress. Oh well...it wasn't as though it hadn't been ruined to begin with...

She cut a strange sight, and she knew it. An oddly gaunt girl with raggedy black hair, eyes that had the tendency to make people double-take when they saw them, and only a dirty old dress and no shoes to adorn her. Fancy indeed. It seemed, however, that no sooner had she forced herself out of that small cupboard then she was standing stock-still, her light eyes wide as her head jerked this way and that. She thought...no, she could have sworn that she heard something making its way to the galley...like a pitter-patter of small feet coming from somewhere close by...but what was it?

Having heard a disturbance in his current place of rest, Jack the monkey had crept out of his hidey-hole amongst the bottle-racks and pattered into the shallows of the galley. Outside the sun was setting. Little shafts of orange light leaked into the room, which would soon be moonlight. The monkey kept out of the light but was not invisible to the intruder of his privacy. He saw a young girl in a ragged, damp dress. He was soggy and irritable and lonely...and annoyed.

Jack screeched loudly and bared his fangs.

Now, Ellie had never considered herself to be the sort of person--little girl or not--that would become frightened very easily. In order to stow away on ships as she did, fear was something that, after a time, she had learned to fight away. However...

She had never looked up only to see a small monkey shrieking at her, and so she had no experience with said event. The end result of making this discovery and staring at the monkey for what had to be actual seconds was that, only a moment later, an ear-splitting shriek escaped the confines of her lips and she stumbled back, only to slip and fall flat on her back, quickly immersing herself in the water that flowed steadily there.
A moment or so later, she broke through the shallow surface of the water once more and was on her feet, still shrieking and running for the door, shouting at the top of her lungs and uncaring of anyone that might hear, "Monkey! Insane monkey!"

Jack put his little paws over his ringing ears. Human children certainly could make a noise. He considered wandering back into the shadows of the ship as she darted for safety, but his overwhelming loneliness got the better of him. Without shrieking this time, he bounded after the fleeing child, ran between her feet and sat a fair distance ahead of her. He stood up on his hind legs and spread his paws out in a human-like gesture of greeting.

At first, Ellie had assumed that she could outrun the little beast, but when it darted right between her legs, causing her to shriek and stop in her tracks, she wasn't sure what to assume anymore.

"Er...oh dear..." she mumbled, taking a step back when the small animal--who was also dressed in tiny clothing, strangely enough--stopped in front of her, spreading his tiny paws wide as he stood high and proud on his hind feet. "Ah...er...I don't want no trouble, Mr. Monkey..." her voice was naturally meek, and rather hoarse, so she had to force herself to speak a little louder than usual. A moment later, she was scoffing at herself, wondering why she thought the animal could understand her. Monkeys couldn't understand human words...could they?

Slowly, tentatively, her hand went down and disappeared into the small pocket-patch that she had hastily sewed onto the side of her ratty old dress, and out came a treat--her last piece of food that she had managed to filch from the galley before it had begun to flood; a rather stale, but still good piece of bread. (At least, she had assumed it was bread; it was almost black around the edges, but to be fair she had eaten much worse before). Thinking that perhaps she could bait the monkey into taking the food, and therefore provide a distraction so she could run away from it as it ate, she edged forward in by inch, her hand held away from herself as she dangled the bread a mere foot or so over the floor.

Jack crept forward, sniffing at the food presented to him. He wondered if, like all the other sustenance he'd had since his curse, it would be utterly tasteless and unfulfilling. Deciding to take the chance, he snatched the bread from the little girl's hand but then sat staring at her with heart-melting eyes. He tilted his head adorably, made a few mild chatters and held out his free paw.

"Oh!" Ellie said in surprise, involuntarily taking a small step back when the monkey took the food right from her hand. Her chance to escape, it seemed, wasn't going to come anytime soon; instead of immersing himself in the food she had given to him, the monkey simply sat back and stared up at her, his once beady and dark eyes wide...

"Oh..." she said again, at a loss as to what else she was supposed to say or do when it held out one furry little paw to her. For a small moment, her eyes lingered on those tiny fingers. She wondered if the monkey had claws...? However, right now it didn't seem to be as...threatening, as it had been before. At any moment, she expected it to begin shrieking at her; maybe batting at her with his paw...but he didn't. Instead, the small tittering sounds coming from its mouth were--dare she think it?--rather adorable. Perhaps, she thought dubiously, this monkey wasn't as fearsome as she had first thought it to be? Well, there was no other way to find out...

"Hello..." she said carefully, her nervousness more than evident as she slowly reached down, the tips of her fingers just barely touching the padded palm of the small animal's friend. "Er...my name's Ellie..." She felt a little foolish, telling the monkey her name as though it could understand her, but the animal didn't seem as though it would do her any harm...it was rather cute, actually, in it's own way...

Gently, the little monkey planted a monkeyish kiss on her fingertips and rather clumsily deposited the piece of bread back into Ellie's palm. Before she could respond, Jack scurried up her arm and perched on her shoulder. He gripped rather tightly out of worry that she would shake him off. He brushed the one paw he dared to not hold with through her hair in an affectionate way. Perhaps treating the human child in more of a pleasant manner than he was used to would release him from his loneliness. After all, the only grudges he had left were against that no-good Sparrow and crew.

"Thank you..." Ellie mumbled in amazement when the small animal kissed her fingers, and then deposited the piece of stale bread back into her hand. Instinctively, her hand went right back into her pocket and put the food back where it had come from; she was young, but she was not stupid. She never knew when more food would be coming to her, and she was normally careful to ration it.

For a small moment, she had assumed that that would be it; the monkey had given her back her food, and then that was it; he would leave, and she would be free to continue as she was. However...she began to think otherwise of this when it suddenly clambered up her arm and stopped on her shoulder. Its grip was firm, and she just knew that she wouldn't be able to shake it off, even if she wanted to.
But did she want to?

She wasn't sure anymore. The animal that had seemed like a terrifying beast before now seemed like nothing but an adorable and fuzzy little creature that was now brushing one of its hands through her scraggly dark hair.

"You're not so bad, are you?" Her small voice rang out with a surprising amount of cheer. There it was, again; that child-like naivety that betrayed her true age, coming forth again at a time when she was faced with utter cuteness and adoration. An eleven-year-old could only resist a cute little monkey for so long, after all. "You're kinda cute, actually..." Hesitantly, she reached up and gave the creature a small pat on the head, her expression brightening with every moment that passed. "Do you live down here?" She continued as though talking to a human being. "It's really dark, and watery...I was gonna go up on top a' the deck and see where I was...you wanna come, Mr. Monkey?"

Jack paused in stroking Ellie's hair to bob his head repeatedly in answer to her proposal. He curled his tail around the top of her right arm and looked ahead, the buttons on his tiny shirt jingling as he moved. He had become so distracted that he'd forgotten that they were about to step out into a flood of moonlight...

Little Ellie almost giggled when the monkey bobbed his head up and down, indicating that he would indeed like to go with her above-deck. It was funny...despite her thinking from before, she was beginning to wonder if this small animal really could understand what she was saying. How odd...

"All right. Let's see where we are, eh?" she asked cheerily, smiling up at the monkey as they made their way up the slightly creaky stairs that would lead them to the darkened deck above. "Wow, it got dark outside really fast..."

She kept herself on the alert nevertheless, well aware that there could still be other people amongst the ship even though it was docked and damaged in such a way. Perhaps it was this fear that kept her attention elsewhere as she climbed the final steps and found herself on the moon-lit deck; she kept her eyes straight ahead as she crept along, not bothering to look at the small creature still perched upon her shoulder.
"You're ticklin' me," she said absentmindedly, brushing away the monkey's long tail, which had been brushing against her shoulder. She paused when she did, when she noticed the absence of fur that her hand had touched, and when she looked to the side...she saw something strange.
Where there had once been a long, fuzzy tail...there now seemed to be a string of well-placed white beads...but no, she realized soon enough, those weren't beads...they were like a long piece of spine, almost, made of bone and curling upward towards her new monkey friend...

An instant later, her eyes happened upon the skull of the monkey, and from there the bones that were so easily visible to her; patches of fur here and there, long bared teeth with no skin to cover them, decaying flesh...

Ellie did what any eleven-year-old would have, when put in a situation when they had a skeleton monkey perched on their shoulder.

She screamed.

The monkey screamed back, placing his skeletal paws over his ears. He lost balance and tumbled off her shoulder. No sooner had he hit the deck, he scrabbled halfway up the mast of the Pearl and peered through one of the torn sails at the terrified child. Jack didn't much like the sight of himself like this either. He'd seen his reflection enough times in puddles on ships. Sometimes it was a blessing, particularly if some foul sea-dog wanted to see what monkey tasted like. No bugger would touch a cursed creature. Even so, to be reminded of his hideousness whilst he was trying to make friends was not what he had planned.

From his position up high, he watched sorrowfully as the little figure below fled into the streets, not knowing if they would ever meet again.