Sarah walked away from the port, relieved that she would be free from "duty" for a whole week--not that she had anything specific planned. Everything was rosy-tinted now that she could do whatever she wanted, and she made sure that the first thing on her agenda was serving herself.

As she surveyed the east section, her section, she brooded. After all, tomorrow, she probably wouldn't want to brood. Among her jumbled thoughts were various detailed descriptions of how mad she was at Talia and Jack and everything else. She didn't want to be on the sea with a homicidal maniac, she didn't want to be cooped up on that ship, she didn't want to see people she was familiar with, and she did not want to talk to Jack. Ever. Ever ever. Her anger was bringing to surface memories of her short time on the Black Pearl. Spotting a nearby tavern, she entered to sit down.

It was a bit warm inside, and there two or three unscrupulous people sitting at the tables, but no one ever said Sarah was a saint, so she sat down at an empty table. Resting an arm on the table, she propped up her head with one hand on her forehead and closed her eyes to think and remember her past. In a split second, it seemed, she was back in Tortuga, eleven years younger and eleven years more naïve.

She was only sixteen then, and had hitchhiked to Tortuga by boat (She was able to go to Tortuga in the first place because she had been abandoned as a very small child, taught by a nine year old boy for six years, then abandoned once more--then she decided to become a pirate, so she, as said before, hitched hiked to Tortuga by boat. In other words, she didn't have any restrictions on where she could or couldn't go.), hoping for an opportunity to work on a ship. She had been there for almost a half a year and still had not been hired. All she had was her cutlass, pistol, and friend and fellow pirate, Drew, and that certainly wasn't much.

That particular day had started like any other day--sitting on the street corner, talking absentmindedly to Drew, the weather, overcast and muggy, like the other 183 days. She had been there for so long, denied so many times of being on a ship, she was about ready to give up and become a whore pouring rum down some drunkard's throat.

However, this day, Drew had kindly pointed out an interesting thing--an interesting think in the interesting shape of an interesting ship.

Now this was only the sixth ship she had seen in all six months she had been in this "pirate town"--which wasn't' really a "pirate town" at all, really just a town full of drunks and people beating each other up on mere sight. Nevertheless, though she had been unable to join any ships yet, she was sure this was the one she'd get a job on, she was positive. She couldn't explain it, but she was sure, just the same.

An hour or so later, she spied a ragged, swaggering man with dark brown, almost black, hair heading into town in the opposite direction of the docks. Unless he had swam to shore (not that that was out of the question--he certainly looked the part), the only ship in the port was the one that had just come in, so that meant that he must have come from it. She stood, rushing over, and asked him about a job (mind you, this was not the part that Sarah could remember vividly) as fast as she could--his reply was slow and sort of distracted. And he didn't give her an answer, either. He told her he was waiting for a connection in the town and he would get back to her as soon as he could.

Annoyed, figuring he was lying and judging her by the superstition that women were bad luck, she stalked off, returning to her corner where she sat until nightfall; it was dark when she saw the man again, this time traveling with a much taller man. She sprung up to ask again, but again, she was detoured. He told her that he had to discuss it first--and while he was at it, he told her that his name was Captain Jack Sparrow, and the man he was walking with who was so much taller than him that he could verily look at the top of Jack's head was named Hector Barbossa--his first mate.

Sarah sat back down on the cold cobblestones, disgruntled and firmly determined. She had glimpsed her way off of this rock, and she would stop and nothing to escape.

The next morning was just as, if not more, uneventful as the previous one. She couldn't sleep, so she went to her corner early and watched Tortuga's port awaken (the rest of the town was terribly lively--just not the port, apparently). In eventuality, Drew came and they spoke of many things (fools and kings), the conversation ending with her only friend standing up and leaving her, making the excuse that he had a previous engagement. She didn't mind.

It wasn't long before she noticed Jack, alone once more, striding through the streets. She bounded again to ask, but she was foiled a third time. She was beginning to get impatient (as sixteen-year-olds often did), and made it obvious to him. He somewhat calmly explained that he would contact her when he had an answer. Protesting, she offered to meet him every day to find out--eventually he'd have an answer, right? He agreed, if not slightly reluctantly.

In accordance to their agreement, Sarah and Jack met every day and, seeing as Jack never seemed to have an answer and both were reluctant to part ways so soon, discussed what went on in their lives as of late. The more she met wit him, the more she had the feeling that she was falling in love with him, which was an odd feeling indeed. She'd never tell him, though. She'd heard the stories--many a heart broken by that curse called 'love.'

(As Sarah moved further into the story, the details became much more pronounced--this was where her memory became more clear, her emotions at this part of her past far more extreme.) Around a month or so after the Black Pearl (she now knew the name of Jack's ship, thank heavens) arrived in Tortuga and she inquired about a job, Drew came to her, as per usual, and asked if she had been hired to the crew yet. She begrudgingly admitted that, no, she hadn't yet, which was her answer every time he asked her. Instead of his normal reply, a reproving look that she was used to and was beginning to find sort of amusing, he stared at her with some sort of aura around him that she didn't recognize, and there was something a little unsettling about it.

"I should think that you'd have gotten an answer by now," He commented, a bizarre tone in his voice. Sarah feared that, no matter how long she knew this man, she would never understand him--this, however, was almost a completely different matter. His stable mood and rapidly fluctuated to a uncanny, distant quality. What strange things should come of this man, she was not to know, as of yet. He continued; "how strange. You do, truly, talk to him every day, yes?" She nodded, too bewildered at his change to say so much as a syllable. "Then it is truly curious that he has not answered yet."

"…Yes," She agreed, more concerned about him than Jack's answer, at the moment. He smiled a bit coldly and turned away from her.

"Well, Pandora, I have yet another previous engagement, I regret to inform you, so I must bid you adieu. Again." He bowed jokingly as he always did, which made her feel a little less uncomfortable, but he left her with a feeling of unmistakable unease. She wondered if something was wrong.

Before she could pursue the subject further in her mind, Jack ambled into her thoughts and took a seat next to her (she was, by the way, in a tavern near her 'spot').

"G'day, love," He said. She looked up for a moment and then caught herself before she would have needed a double-take. His face held something different, as well. "How has your day been so far?"

"Uhm…" What was going on today? Was it Friday the thirteenth or something and she didn't even know it? "I…guess it's been okay. Sort of weird, but better than other days."

"I see." He was gazing thoughtfully at his dirt-caked fingernails, shifting his jaw ruminatively. "Uh…I've got something to tell you." Well, it clearly isn't good news, She recalled thinking. He grasped one of her hands, which caused her to nearly jump with surprise. Now that was a startling development. "Sarah…uh…I have an answer to your question from…oh, a month ago." He caught her attention. Not as if he didn't have her attention from the get-go, but now her senses were heightened; he was going to tell her if she could work on the Black Pearl or not!!--but as she watched his expression, she felt her stomach sink to her feet. "Ye…can't. I'm sorry."

Silence.

"I, uh, talked it over with Barbossa and we thought about the rest o' the crew--" Jack had hired some crew members during the duration of Sarah's waiting period. "--and…well, uh, due to certain superstitions floating around--th-that I don't' believe in, by the way--we decided it'd be…sort of best if ye refrained from joining the crew."

Silence.

More silence.

"I really am sorry, honestly."

She pulled her hand away. "Oh." Was pretty much all she could say. She had to first recover from the shock before she could make any sudden emotional statements.

The longer she waited to recover, the more it seemed she wasn't going to. She observed as Jack resumed watching his hands with hardly any interest and she finally looked away, exhaling frigidly. Her companion visibly cringed and briefly tapped his knuckles against his palm. "Uh--"

"Jack; j-just…go," She said. She wanted to be alone to consider what he had told her. He apparently hadn't thought that it would go this way. He stood up sheepishly and exited the bar, making the straightest path the could.

So he said no. He said no. In her mind, a little movie played that showed her freedom leaping out a window and smashing into a thousand pieces on the ground. She audibly groaned and dropped her head onto the table. What luck. She had had such high hopes, broken (and a hard lesson learned, that was--no more high hopes for her). She couldn't move, either. She didn't' have the will to move--despite the fact that her room was upstairs and she would have much rather sulked in bed.

Several hours later, Sarah's head still adhered to the table (she would sometimes break her train of miserable thoughts to wonder if there were ridges pressed into her forehead from the wood table), Drew came looking for her, since she wasn't sitting on her corner.

"Pandora?" He asked. He looked around (she could see him out of the corner of her eye), then spotted her and sat down at the table with her. "What happened to you?"

"He said no," She replied, her voice maddeningly monotone.

"That Jack fellow?"

"…Captain Jack." She may have been angry with him, but she felt it was a sort of duty to correct people. "And yes," She was sick of laying her head on the table now, so she lifted it and gingerly felt her forehead for marks and impressions (there weren't many).

Drew raised his eyebrows, his unusual mood coming about again, and he leaned back slightly. "Well. You're a smart girl, Pandora--you can figure out some way to get on that ship, permission or no permission." He stood and apologized for needing to leave again, mocking bow included.

A few minutes later, she looked out the window--it was dark, clearly nighttime. She sighed, groggily pulling to her feet, and made her way to here room upstairs, where she collapsed on the bed and fell asleep.

The next morning, the first think she vaguely remembered was her conversation with Jack. Several seconds later, she remembered what Drew had said, strange as it may have been;

"You can figured out some way to get on that ship, permission or no permission."

True, with enough time, she could think up some form of a daring and brilliant plan to get her aboard the Black Pearl, but she seemed to recall Jack telling her that they would be leaving soon, and soon, even unspecified as it was, didn't give her much time to devise a scheme.

She trudged down the stairs, out the door, and over to her corner, where she sat, staring longingly at the Black Pearl. As she tried to think of a method of sneaking on board, an almost completely irrelevant thought surfaced; was she still in love with Jack? Of course not, she never had been in the fist place. That was a lie. She wasn't that angry with him--he had, after all, explained why, and it had been a good reason…sort of. But she didn't want to talk to him, just the same.

She glanced over at the tavern where she usually met Jack (it was not the same tavern as the one she slept in) and decided that she'd look to see it…just maybe he was inside. She peered through the window.

He was.

She didn't go in.

Instead, she went and sat back down. Disgruntled, she cupped her chin in her palms and stared determinedly at the only ship in the port. Sixteen-year-olds shouldn't have to go through this kind of stress, really. She remembered thinking that.

She spent the rest of the day wracking her brain for some trace of an idea, then couldn't stand the noise of the crowds in drunken stupors any longer (and it was getting dark and difficult to see where she was going--she would rather have not run into some violent and/or hallucinating guy who would mistake her for a whore), so she traveled back to her room in the tavern. She stayed up all night--she had to get away from Tortuga, and the Pearl and Jack were her ticket out.

It was nearly midnight by the time she sat upright in realization. She knew what she could do. It seemed so obvious, so hilariously obvious, that she almost died of embarrassment that she hadn't thought of it earlier. Smiling, overly pleased, she pulled the covers up and fell asleep, eagerly waiting the next morning.

When the sun shone through her windows, she practically leapt out of bed and rushed downstairs, hoping Drew was already there.

Sure enough, there he was, sitting in the corner, twiddling his thumbs and watching something on the ceiling with interest equivalent to a soldier perusing the corset racks. She called to him and he looked at her, glad that he didn't have to focus on the ceiling anymore. She rushed down the remaining stairs and sat down across from him at the table.

"I've got it!"

"What…??"

"I know how to get on the Black Pearl!"

He stared at her as if he didn't understand, then he underwent a miraculous change and realized what she meant. "Oh! Well now, didn't I say you could think of something?" She smiled at him brightly, then he smiled back jovially. He wasn't strange today--he was the Drew she had met seven months ago. The Drew she liked. "So, what's the plan?"

"Well, he won't take women, see? 'Cuz of the crew thinking' on 'em being back luck, aye? Well, I can disguise myself as a boy an' get hired that way!" In her excitement, her speaking became far sloppier.

Drew's reaction was not positive…well, not really. When she said it, he, at first, looked astonished, then disinterested--and in the second phase, the weird mood came back. He watched her with an odd look for several seconds, then he seemed to revert back to old Drew. "Pandora…you can't do that…you'll get caught! 'Tis a fool's errand!"

"No, I won't!" She insisted, strands of blonde hair falling in her face as she got herself worked up. "And…even if I do, it won't matter to me--I'll do anything to get away from Tortuga!" Drew didn't seem to agree, but she was set on getting his approval--he was her only friend, after all (if you didn't count Jack, who was sort of a friend). He sighed.

"You will get caught."

"I won't." She stared him in the eye and both of them started to smirk in a need to laugh. They had a long history of laughing in staring contests.

He went through the change again. His smirk turned icy and he watched her with his iron eyes. What had happened to him? "We'll just have to see--won't we?"

A slow nod from Sarah, then he stood, same excuse, same familiar bow, foreign attitude. She puzzled for a moment over his behavior, then discarded the ambition in order to go make herself all boyish. She knew not how much longer the Black Pearl would be there, at the port, so she had to work fast.

As soon as she looked reasonably boyish (mind you, enough to be mistaken four times for a male), she hurried outside to look for Jack.

In her memory, it was all pretty much a blur where she talked to Jack, but she remembered that, after giving him her fake name (James Morlen), he hired her willingly and she joyfully boarded the Black Pearl.

(Again, many of the details were unclear from here on, for only several key parts stuck out in her mind.) She traveled with the Pearl for a mere two weeks at sea before she was struck by her misfortune--again.

She was sitting in her quarters (very small), tugging boredly at her bandana that hid most of her hair, when she heard a loud, harsh knock at her door. She scrambled to hide her hair in the bandana, then she shouted for them to come in, trying her best to sound masculine while shouting frantically.

Just her luck, Barbossa stepped in. There was something she never liked about Barbossa--something that always made her feel a bit nervous and cold, though she didn't know why. In any case, he had been especially frightening this afternoon. He stopped walking about a food away from her, a set expression on his stony face.

"B-Barbossa," She addressed him, attempting to hide her apprehension. She felt it very lucky that she was only playing a sixteen-year-old boy, for her faux voice was not very good, in all honesty. While she stood in the same room with him she felt as if he could smell her fear, which made her shiver. "D'you need something…?"

"Why yes, I do. I think that you and I need to have a conversation with the captain, Mr. Morlen--" He paused, watching her with eyes like frost. "--or…should I say Miss Warren?"

She froze. What did he say? 'Miss Warren?' How did he know? How did he find out? A million questions flooded her brain as she struggled to find a reply to his subtle accusation of her femininity. "Ah--what? What exactly do you mean?" He can tell--he can tell I'm lying…oh geez, he can tell…shootshootshootshootshoot, don't screw up Sarah! She could tell by his face that he could see through her feeble disguise and her even more feeble retort.

"Oh, ye know what I mean, miss. Don't try to fool me," He made no move toward her; Instead, he just stood stock still, a disdainful smile making creases in his already heavily-lined face. "I know who you really are."

She narrowed her eyes, still averse to dropping her masquerade. "You can't prove it," She challenged, her voice fairly harsh. She suddenly became aware of the agonizing silence closing in around them. Barbossa sighed, still smiling.

"I don't need to prove it--your 'friend'--" He accented this. "--back on short, that Drew fellow, so kindly informed me shortly before we set sail."

"…What??" She abruptly lost her veil of security and became Sarah again. Her voice was a terribly horrified whisper. Drew had sold her off?

Barbossa stepped forward and seized her by the arm before she could react. "Shall we?" It wasn't until he began to drag her out of the room and to the stairs to the uppermost deck that she began to resist and pull away from him with cries of dissent. She could hardly believe that a. she was about to lose her chance of being even relatively near Jack for even a small amount of time and b. that Drew had told Barbossa--it was about this point where she suddenly had the urge to find her 'friend' and rip his throat out with her bare hands. Possibly bare hand.

It caught everyone's attention when she was pulled by Barbossa to Jack, who was standing casually at the helm. He practically threw her on the ground in front of the captain, who looked extremely perplexed, and gestured to her. "Well Jack, we have ourselves a stowaway woman," He said.

"What?" Jack replied, eyes moving from Sarah on the ground then to Barbossa then back again. He didn't seem to understand.

Barbossa stepped forward and pulled her bandana off, letting her shoulder length, old-straw-colored hair fall. Jack's eyes widened considerably and half of the crew began to mutter incessantly. She cringed and closed her eyes, hoping she'd disappear. Okay, maybe getting caught was worse than she thought.

"…Sarah?"

"…Yeah…actually, it's Pandora…" She muttered in reply. She opened her eyes again. She couldn't see Barbossa, but she was sure he looked overly pleased. I knew he had it in for me, She thought acidly. I knew it all along. She had assumed it, yes.

"Well? What's yer decision, Jack?" Barbossa asked eagerly.

"…Captain, I ask you, captain." Jack looked at his first mate with a look of suspicion-tinted worry. "And…my decision…" He glanced at Sarah, who hadn't bothered to stand up, then he looked around at the crew, all of whom were staring at him expectantly. Sarah awaited his final ruling with dread. "…well, I see no problem having her on the Pearl, do you?"

"Wh-what?" Another outbreak of rumor-spreading exploded on deck, mixing a background of hushed voices. Barbossa could obviously hardly believe his ears--Sarah could tell from him voice. "But Ja--er, captain, the--she's--" He stammered tensely. He hadn't planned it this way, oh no, not at all.

"Is it a problem?" Jack must have been more sober than usual, for he was certainly more decisive today--and bold to boot, though he was pretty bold when drunk, too.

"N-no…but…" Before he could finish objecting, Jack held up one hand and closed his eyes.

"I know, bad luck…but give this a thought--we've had her on the ship for around two weeks, aye? And nothing bad has happened since she came aboard, so it shouldn't make a difference if she's here disguised or not, judging by that fact, savvy?" It was a reasonable theory. And a true one, at that. More murmuring from the crew, and several began to nod unenthusiastically.

"It does ring true," A man said. Sarah recognized him as Bootstrap Bill (she had talked to him once or twice).

Barbossa flashed dirty looks to the observing crowd (she could see that he was doing that, at least, from her view from the floor), then turned back to Jack. "I suppose you're right, captain," He admitted disdainfully. She took this time to turn around and actually look at him; his expression was full of veiled hate--was he really that upset about Jack keeping her? Or was he always that way? Did Jack notice? How many questions could one such creepy and unbearably tall man be the source of?

After the crew finally stopped watching the scene at the helm, and Barbossa strode off, disgruntled, Jack stepped over to her and pulled her up to her feet. As soon as she was standing, she discarded thoughts of him being sober--she could smell the rum on his breath (as well as see his wonderful dental hygiene as he grinned at her)…so she didn't know why he was being so…whatever he was being when regarding this matter. Why was he allowing her to stay?

"…Thanks, Jack."

"Sure, love." An awkward silence, then he returned to doing what he was doing (staring intently at his compass) before his first mate's interruption. "Although, I must say it was pretty insane of you to dress up as a man to get on this 'ere ship." She laughed. It sure was.

Things sort of changed when everyone knew she was a woman--people avoided her, mostly, but some ignored her gender and treated her somewhat fairly (not many--but Bootstrap was one of them…I know what you're thinking, and, yes, that's partly where Will got that rational sort of trait). But a tribute to her horrendous bad luck, however, lightening struck again--and not too long after the first incident.

She went to bed one night, around a week or so after the whole Barbossa thing, after another day of casual glances mingled with glares and shunning and, while she slept, she had the strangest dream. You see, she had a dream that she was being carried somewhere. It was a bumpy ride, though she seemed to be blindfolded during the dream sequence, so she couldn't see where she was being taken, but she remember quite specifically that she was dropped some place that was soft and rather sandy--a beach, perhaps? The dream wasn't important to her--just a dream right? Of course. It dissipated quickly after she was at her destination (dream-wise) and she thought nothing more of it.

Until she woke up.

She opened her eyes not to the ceiling of her quarters (again, very small), but to an open sky. She frowned, sat up, and took a long look around.

She was on an island, and the Pearl was nowhere in sight. This, generally, took a bit of time to register in her sleep-drugged brain, but as soon as she realized that she was alone on said island, and there was pistol with one shot sitting next to her, she felt her anger surge once more.

Jack had betrayed her. "That…backstabbing--!!" She slammed one sand-crusted fist into the dunes. It seemed to her that she couldn't meet a single friend without them turning around and deceiving her. Again, her luck had let her down--not that she was surprised. She had the worst luck of anyone she had ever met, and that was saying something.

She couldn't recall how long she stayed on that little island, waiting for someone, anyone (though some sort of Navy ship would be unfortunate, as she was, truly, a pirate), to come take her back, as she preferred not to keep those painful thoughts in her memory, but she did remember that she somehow ended up in Tortuga--again (once more I'll state--the absolute worst luck)--sitting on her street corner and sleeping uncomfortably in her tavern room that always seemed to be open for her. She could remember finding a note waiting for her from Drew that said he had found a job on a ship and he would be gone when she got the note; indeed, he was gone. What a horribly clever man he was.

It wasn't so much that she wound up in Tortuga again, the exact place that she had been trying to escape, or that Drew and Jack had deceived her (though that was a good deal of the source of the turmoil, as well), but mostly that she was alone again. She had already been abandoned as a child (state of loneliness #1), then taught by a boy, whom she couldn't remember, until she was six, which was when he left (state of loneliness #2), and now she had been cast away by her only friends to sit in the rain with nothing to her name (her possessions were still on the Pearl). It was then, in her sixteenth year (an age that I have mentioned far too many times to be healthy), that she learned one of the hardest lessons of her life; people will do anything to get what they want--and it was a rule that she, from that point on, lived her life by, for the most part.

She couldn't stand to reminisce anymore. She opened her eyes to find herself back where she started, eleven years after Tortuga and who knows how many miles away, many of the people who had been sitting around when she had come in, gone. She looked around--the waitress of sorts/whore who was wandering around with nothing to do gave her an odd glance, then continued meandering. She looked out the window--dark, of course. She hadn't realized just how long she had been sitting there. She was sure that people had probably thought she was dead or something.

She sometimes wished she was.

She blearily asked the bartender if she could stay at the tavern, and he showed her to her room, which looked stunningly like her old room in…Tortuga…which was a place she would have rather not thought about. As she lay in bed, she honestly hoped that the rest of her week away wouldn't be as depressing as this.

She spent the next five days exploring her sector--seeing the sights, talking with the street folk, eating from vendors (…without paying), and generally trying to make the best of things--and it worked. She almost completely forgot about her past--at least for a while, she could run away from that nightmarish year.

The sixth day was both the best day and the worst of the week. Around the middle of the day, she was strolling down the street when she saw someone she could hardly believe was standing in front of her--Jack.

She dropped her jaw and stared at him, his back facing her. She stood there for almost two minutes before he turned around and noticed her. "Sarah…there you are."

"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be…over there…someplace…" She gestured nonspecifically to a direction she hoped was north. Jack gave her a clueless look and shrugged.

"I was bored. Uhh…and I wanted to address something t'you." She rolled her eyes and sighed. He certainly wasn't who she was hoping to talk to that day. And he certainly wasn't who she had been expecting to see, either. She looked away and watched the port, trying to convey her obvious I-don't-care attitude as to what he was going to talk to her about. "…I…uh…wanted to give you the chance to come on the Black Pearl…now. Without Talia and I bargaining you back and forth." She couldn't believe he was bringing this up. The one week she had away from him and he was barging into her serenity and asking questions that would no doubt anger her to a frightful extent.

"Who do you think you are?" She asked, her eyes narrowed. "Why do you keep asking me this?"

He drew his lips together thoughtfully. "Uh. Be…cause?"

"Oh. Good excuse." Another roll of her eyes. "It's getting really irritating, you asking all the time. I hope you fail to help Talia--I'd much rather stay with her. And she's a crazy, homicidal wench." She almost felt sorry for him as she insulted him to his face--almost. She was really just getting worked up over nothing. He didn't ask her that often.

"Can't you listen to me for once?"

"I will once you tell me why you keep asking!"

"You're hopeless!"

She turned around, throwing her hands into the air. "You are!! Why is it so important that I join your merry crew? Tell me that, and I'll consider coming aboard." She turned around again to watch him and he hesitated in his reply. "Well? Why am I such a vital person to you?" At his silence, she turned away again. She couldn't put up with this kind of frustration. She had low tolerance. She started walking away.

"Well--maybe it's because I love you!"

She froze in mid-step.

He…whated her?

That was a phrase no one had ever addressed to her, in particular.

She turned around for a second time in that conversation. She narrowed her eyes in confusion, her eyes watching the desperate look on his face. "…Are you…just saying that?" She paused. "And no lies this time."

He shook his head. "I'm not just saying it."

"How can I trust you?"

"You can't."

The two of them stood in silence for an extended amount of time, just thinking and wondering what the other was thinking, which was a difficult task, indeed. Finally, Sarah dropped her gaze and half-smiled at the ground.

"…I'll see you tomorrow then," She said, knowing full well that there was one more day of her vacation left. He agreed.

As she trudged 'home' to her room above the tavern, she felt happier than she had in eleven years. Perhaps…things would turn out alright…and maybe…her luck was taking a turn for the better. She smiled and looked forward to tomorrow--she finally felt that she was accepted, at least by one person.

And she even looked forward to the day after when she would see Talia and the rest of the Death Lily crew (though she wouldn't admit it to the mad, mad, mad, mad captain--or basically anyone else). She hadn't known she'd miss them until she was separated from them for even a mere seven days.

Life was so strange.