Muchas thanks to my reviewers! You make me feel all specaillys and stuff! *sniff* Am so happy!

Aiyh-Sa: Thankies! I hope she likes it…and don't worry, I shall continue!

Quof: Thanks! Eek, no, no fem-slash going on here! (No other slash, for that matter…)

Monitor: Thank-yew! Hee hee….that clothes thing, (I hope) shall be somewhat amusing in this chapter!

Andi Horton: Thanks-you. Honestly, I'm not trying to steal your idea (OK, so I am…J) but it was more a matter of reading your story, then having my muse bite me in the ankle and say "Remember that it's Christine's b-day next week?" Yours is still massively amazing!

Iris42: Thanks! And here chapter two is!

Otherwise….same disclaimer holds true, and, for that matter, the fact that I still own nothing and still have no money holds true as well.

This chapter, unlike the previous one, is supposed to be funny. Guess we'll see how that works out, shall we?

            "Shh!" I hissed, peeking around the corner of the stone wall.

            Behind me, being just as quiet as I was, so really, the hushing had been unnecessary, Christine was pressed against the wall, eyebrows furrowed as she tried to look around me at the town. "You still haven't told me where Port Royal is, and why the heck you know what it is." She reprimanded, sounding mildly ticked off.

            After making sure that the street we were nearly on was empty, I turned away to face my best friend. Her long, blonde hair had fallen out of the clip she'd had it tied back in, and hung, knotted and windblown, around her face. She was sandy, still-half damp, and I realized that I too, must look about the same. This was definitely going to be difficult to explain. "Well…" I said slowly, trying to think of a simple, neat, and effective lie to tell her. "I saw it on a postcard. And it was of that particular rocks and ocean scene."

            One of her eyebrows arched. "Oh yeah?"

            "Er…yeah." Maybe this wasn't going to work as well as I had planned.

            Christine crossed her arms across her chest, and leaned back heavily against the wall. "Then can we please go find a payphone or something, so that I can call my parents and get this whole stupid thing worked out? Not that I don't want to explore a beach with you or anything….but I'd like to figure out what's going on."

            I glanced back around the stone wall at the town. "Um…well, we can try." My only thought was that this had better just be some big joke. Okay, so a really elaborate how-the-heck-did-you-manage-to-transport-us-to-the-Equatorial-regions kind of joke, but a joke nonetheless. After all, the medallion had to be a replica, then the city of Port Royal and the hanging skeletons had to be a replica too, right? Maybe – maybe this was the movie set! Yeah, that made sense! The set where they'd recorded the movie! After all, it couldn't possibly be the real Port Royal, as that town had been all but destroyed (okay, so not destroyed, but well smucked) by cannons, then hey! It couldn't be this town!

            Feeling much better about the whole thing, and quite convinced that yes, we would be able to find a payphone, I stepped around the stone wall, onto the hard dirt-packed road.

            Christine followed, her eyes wide as we walked into the town in the earliest traces of sunlight. "Wow, now this is a cool town," she proclaimed, still talking in low tones. "Some tourist trap, eh? Man, this is cool."

            My eyes were reserved less for the quaint, picturesque-ness of the town, and more on the rats crawling in the gutters, the very real dirt on the door steps, the realness of the town. My assured feeling that this was all a recreation, a set, was fading. Something was just…wrong.

            I was also trying to keep a very sharp lookout for other people. Half of me wanted desperately to see people really dressed in old-fashioned, pirate times clothing, but the more reasonable half, the half I should have been listening to all along, told me that I should really be hoping for some normal person in blue jeans. But some normal person in blue jeans, despite all my wishes, was not what I was destined to see that now brightly dawning morning.

            A scandalized gasp sent us both spinning where we stood, to see a young woman, dressed in a plain and simple dress and pinafore standing behind us. Her hair had been swept up under a proper cap, a basket full of freshly picked vegetables hung from her arm, and both her hands had flown up to cover her mouth. Above her hands, sensible brown eyes stared at us, wide and shocked. She made no move, whether to run away or approach us, just staring, so I cleared my throat, and hoping desperately that she was just acting, threw caution to the winds.

            "Er…hello?"

            She gasped, sounding almost like a little shriek, and I'm pretty sure had been hoping that we were ghosts or figments of her imagination, or hallucinations or something. Frankly, I had been hoping the exact same thing.

            "Um, miss?" Christine took a small, half-step forward, holding her hands out, trying to look non-threatening. "We're not going to hurt you." Christine looked very bewildered. Had she known what I was pretty sure I knew, I think she would have been beyond bewildered. Like me, she would have reached the point of my-brain-is-now-screwing-me-up-beyond-recognition.

            Lowering her hands just a little bit, the girl (actually, she was probably the same age as me, but somehow she seemed like a 'girl' to me) managed to squeak out, "Why are you wearing your … underthings on the street?!"

            I recall staring. Yes, I definently recall great amounts of staring at each other as Christine and I let her words soak into our slightly sea-water addled brains, then realize precisely what she was referring to. For pete's sake, Christine wore a t-shirt and capris, I tank-top and jeans! I am slightly proud to announce that I realized first, but I think that was only because I had some warning, and I had the slightest inkling of what was going on anyway. So before Christine could manage to splutter out the indignant response that I knew was waiting on the tip of her tongue, I took two desperate steps forward, hoping that I was right, and hoping within an inch of my life that I'd be able to pull this off.

            "We were shipwrecked," I whispered, and I watched the girl's eyes widen further and Christine give me an incredulous look. "A storm swept down on our ship, and we barely managed to escape into a lifeboat with….with…the first mate." Yes, the first mate sounded sensible and secure. "But the storm….a wave crashed down on us, and destroyed the boat and the mate was swept away from us, and…and we survived only by holding onto pieces of the boat. Our dresses were weighing us down – we had to take them off or…or drown." I tried to force the appropriate I-just-narrowly-escaped-death-and-now-I-may-faint expression onto my face. "We washed up onto the beach, and thought that maybe someone…here…could help us…" It took a little effort, but I was pretty sure I looked now like I was going to cry.

            As Christine stared at me like I'd just grown an extra head, the girl's eyes grew, for a moment, wider, then she nodded with firm efficiency. "You poor dears," she said, moving forward to take one of our elbows each. "You must come with me. My master is the Governor, and he must know of this."

            She began marching us down the street, and Christine asked, obviously not trusting my judgement of where we were, "And what place is it that we have…" she shot me a weird look over the girl's head, "washed up into?"

            "Port Royal, o' course," the girl responded, sounding surprised that we hadn't known that. "How far a-sea were you washed?"

            "Far." I said firmly, tossing a told-you-so look over her head at Christine.

            "Oh, definitely," Christine agreed, shooting me a we-have-got-to-talk look.

            We were silent for the next few minutes as our guide hastened us up the hill towards the large white mansion that overlooked the town. I had a feeling that she was walking so fast because she wanted to get us (scandalous ol' us) off the streets when all we were wearing was our 'underthings'.

            Reaching the house, she led us in through a back door, hustling us inside and closing the door quickly behind us. The cook, a wide-gerthed, motherly looking type, looked up, and gasped, jumping back and nearly spilling the pot she'd been stirring a moment before. "Sarah Parker!" she gasped, in an outraged, scandalized voice. "What ye be doing, bringing strange undressed girls into ma kitchen!"

            "They were shipwrecked, mama," the girl protested, sounding slightly defiant. "We need to let the Governor know, and besides, the poor dears would catch their death of cold out there."

            Mama Parker, as we assumed she was, growled, but stumped around to the cabinet in the corner, and pulled out a couple wool blankets. She marched over to us, and though I'm afraid to admit we shrunk back a bit, more than a little intimidated, she swung the blankets around our shoulders, and pushed us towards the bench beside the fire. "Sit yerselves down and get warm, now." She ordered, and swept back to the fire, returning moments later with two cups of…tea? "There, now drink up, warm yer insides. I'll go see 'bout the Gov'ner."

            She swept out of the room in a speed that belied her size, and left Christine and I staring after her, steaming cups of tea in our hands, blankets on our shoulders.

            "Aww, she's like that," Sarah said, smiling at us with a shy smile now that our 'underthings' were covered by blankets. "The Governor will get this whole thing sorted out, and I'm sure you can be on your way soon enough. You'll be wanted to head home, o' course?"

            "Right, of course." Christine perked back up, moving from staring into her cup to giving Sarah a very searching look. "Look, all we want to do is get home, and…"

            "Oh, your poor grandfather!" I interrupted, making both sets of eyes turn to stare at me. It had just occurred to me that this, despite everything that I had been hoping and deluding myself with, was not fake. And as such, then I needed to play this role of shipwrecked damsel in distress to the hilt, or we'd be stuck sitting in a back room somewhere – or worse, on a boat headed 'home' - and we'd miss all the action and adventure. And that wouldn't do, would it?

            "My grandfather?!" Christine repeated. She knew that I knew as well as she did that, not only was her grandfather dead, but he certainly had nothing to do with this situation.

            "Oh, the poor man! I only hope he escaped the storm too! Whatever shall they do without him if he didn't?!"

            Both Christine and Sarah were staring at me as if I had lost my mind, but really, I was fairly sure that I was in full control of my capacities. "Perhaps…perhaps you would be able to send a message, to…." I racked my brain to think of the name of a southern island city far away from Port Royal. "To…St. George, to let them know that their….their Governor may have been lost at sea?"

            "Your grandfather is the Governor of St. George?" Sarah asked, slightly incredulous.

            "Umm…" Christine glanced at me, eyebrows raised, and I tried to nod without moving my head. (Oddly enough, that doesn't work. Try it.) Seeing (I think she saw, anyway) that I trying to get her to agree, she forced a bright smile onto her face, and turned back to Sarah. "Yes, he…was."

            "Well, oh my." Sarah suddenly seemed flustered, like she was a guest at a party, only to discover that she was at the wrong one. "Um…I shall be back in a moment." Leaping to her feet, she dashed from the kitchen, leaving us rather bewildered and quite alone.

            Christine wasted no time in turning back to me, eyebrows high. "My grandfather is the Governor of St. George?"

            I swallowed. "Well…I had to create some kind of impression that we weren't just peasants, or something," I defended myself. "I mean, really, you want them to say we can apprentice with the maids, or something?"

            "No…" she said slowly, eyes narrowed as she looked at me. "Look, you know what's going on, don't you?"

            I swallowed. "Somewhat…"

            "Then you mind telling me?!"

            "Um…no. I can't."

            "You can't?!" Christine's eyes widened as she leaned back, a slightly betrayed expression on her face.

            "I'm sorry," I answered honestly. "But you have to believe me, I'm not sure, and…well, you just have to trust that I know what I'm doing, okay?"

            The look on her face hurt. It was like I'd slapped her in the face, and she slumped back against the stone fireplace, arms crossed. "Thanks," she said sarcastically. "Thanks for trusting me to make the right choice, Heather."

            I groaned, and leaned back against the stones too. "Look, Christine, it's not like that. It's just that…I don't know how long we're here for, I don't know if we can get home yet, or if we can make anyone understand. I just…I just don't know. And I don't want…I dunno. I don't want anyone to get hurt. Okay?"

            She sighed, and her scowl faded a little. "Will you tell me someday?"

            "Maybe really soon," I said trying to make her feel better. "Maybe tomorrow, maybe even later today, or something. I just…I'm not really sure myself, so I have to make sure I'm right, first, and then I can tell you everything."

            Christine frowned, but nodded. "Okay. I take your lead, let you figure out what's going on. Then you promise to tell me, right?"

            "Right. But look, I-"

            I never got to finish what I was saying, because the door swung back open, and in marched Mama Parker, followed by a white-wigged, paunchy man and a cowering Sarah.

            The man headed towards us, a genial, welcoming smile on his face, holding his hands out. "Ladies," he said, beaming. "Welcome to Port Royal. I am Governor Swann."

Mwa ha! I am in a movie!

Yeah. Oh well, again, you know the drill. Read. Review. Make me happy. J