Chapter Three: Don't Touch It

"Oh thank God we're finally out of there!" Arianne exclaimed later that night as she washed herself. "I feel so greasy."
Jack laughed at her fastidiousness as he watched her from the bed. She had to be the oddest pirate he had ever seen. She insisted on washing her body at least twice a week (and would do it more if given the opportunity), and washed her hair on the weekends when she did Jack's hair.

As he watched her, he felt a deep lassitude take over his body and mind. Soon his thoughts began to drift to the Fountain of Youth and he wondered what it would look like, what the waters themselves might taste like. He was several years older than Arianne; he would be old when she was the age he was now. Perhaps he would take just a sip from the Fount...

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She looked behind her when she heard a snore and saw that Jack was sleeping. She grinned as she studied him--he hadn't thought to pull the blankets over himself, and as he slept nude...well, she just couldn't help herself. She smiled as she climbed in next to him, pulling the blanket up and cradling him in her arms.
Before she herself drifted into sleep, she found herself thinking about the Fountain of Youth as well. What would it look like? she wondered to herself. She was excited about this adventure more because she wanted to see the Fount than actually drink from it. What need had she to drink the waters of the Fount anyway? She was young, full of life, and she couldn't quite conceive of ever being old.
She shrugged mentally, and thought that she would just accept it when the time came. There wasn't much else she could do, really.
With that final thought, the gentle rocking of the ship finally lulled her into the world of dreams.

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When in the morning Jack woke, he woke to find Arianne twitching in her sleep, her face a mask of concentration and confusion. He watched her for a while, debating about whether it might be a good idea to wake her up and decided not to. He had learned not to interrupt her when she seemed to be dreaming--she tended to wake up violently and had once nearly driven a knee so hard into his groin that he would never bear her any children.
He winced as he remembered that close miss, and climbed out of bed as carefully as he could. How did she always end up on the outside, anyway? he asked himself, not remembering last night's thoughts.

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Don't touch it.
Don't drink it.
Those two small sentences were whispered all around her, but she could not see the whisperers for the darkness. They continued to speak to her.
Help us, wake us, they said now.
If the voices had sounded threatening, she might have been frightened, but instead they sounded forlorn, so very sad. She asked them who they were, and received no answer save the same things they had been repeating over and over.
Soon, the voices started to sound more urgent, more frantic, as though they were trying to impart a crucial message to her before they were captured, but she couldn't understand what they were trying to say.
She shortly came to understand why they started sounding so frightened, and a chill of fear settled in her heart. There was...something...approaching...something menacing...The voices were very frightened now, and though she could not see them, she sensed that they were milling about with fear, some with a little anger. They crowded in close about her; she could feel them touching her though she still could not see them.
Finally, the menacing thing grew too close for the voices--spirits?-- to bear, and they vanished from around her, leaving her to face the horrible something that was coming. It howled, then, as if scenting its prey, and

she woke, a scream catching in her throat, making her cough as she looked wildly about her. When she realized that she was no longer in the blinding darkness, but in the captain's cabin that she shared with Jack, she lay back, her entire body trembling with remembered fear. Her heart still beat wildly, and she tried to breathe slowly, trying to slow its erratic beat.
She couldn't remember quite what she had been dreaming, but whatever it had been, she sensed that she had come very close to death. This only set her to trembling with fear again, her heart's beat rising once more in tempo.

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Jack was beginning to wonder why Arianne was still sleeping. She never slept so late, and especially never while the ship was moving. They had been out at sea for some hours now, long enough that Tortuga was no longer visible even as a speck of darkness on the horizon, and still she had not appeared on deck. Worried, he signaled for Anna Maria to take over the wheel and went down to the cabin to check on her.
What he found stunned him to his core. She was huddled in a tiny ball on the bed, her whole body shaking. He had never seen her so frightened, not even when she had gone through bouts of fear over what Amos would do to her if he ever got hold of her.
He walked over to her quietly and touched her shoulder. She startled so badly that she jumped nearly a foot off the bed, and then huddled as close to the wall as she could. He realized that he had erred in being so quiet, and physically smacked himself on the forehead.
He sat on the very edge of the bed, speaking soothingly to Arianne, telling her how much he loved her, and that he wanted to protect her from whatever had frightened her so badly. Soon she was in his arms, still shaking, but now it was but a small tremor compared to what it had been before. He stroked her hair back from her clammy forehead; though how she could sweat when she was ice cold he would never know.
Eventually, she stopped trembling completely, and her body slowly began to grow warm. "What happened, love?" he asked, whispering softly to her, his mouth close to her ear.
She shook her head, though not, he thought, in refusal to answer. His suspicion proved right when she said, "I...I'm not sure, Jack. I was...I was dreaming...I couldn't see anything and..."
He watched her face and realized that she was struggling to remember. When her face relaxed completely save for her drawn eyebrows, he realized that she had given up and felt disgusted that she could not remember. "I can't remember, Jack. Damn it, I can't remember! I felt...I felt like I was about to die, but I don't remember why."
When she would have stood and paced, cursing herself, he instead held her closer and told her that it was alright, that it had only been a dream.

They stayed like this for a long time, and when she lifted her face to look him in the eye, a slight smile turned the corners of her lips up. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Oh, not at all, love," he said, and sensing that she needed humor now, he said it with a cocky smile. "Why ever would I turn down the chance to hold a naked woman in my arms?"
She grimaced and slapped his chest with her hand, and tried to stand. He caught her about the waist and pulled her back down, making her grunt in protest. She sent a flurry of poking fingers at his sides, and he let go of her, laughing and struggling as she tickled him mercilessly.
"Stop!" he choked out when he got a slight breath of air. "I surrender!"
"You better, you scoundrel," she said, but she stopped and stood up. He lay on the bed panting, trying to restore a normal breathing rhythm, and watched as she put her hands to her hips, looking down at him impatiently.
"What, I don't get time to recover?" he asked with mock indignance "Of course not! Now get out and let me get dressed!" He mumbled something about how she was a cruel taskmaster as he got up and started to leave, but she pulled him back and kissed his mouth before pushing him out. He laughed as she slammed the door behind him.

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For a minute or two, she leaned her back against the door, thinking about the morning. The fear had faded enough that it was only a slight nagging at the back of her mind. She had had strange dreams before, she thought to herself as she pushed off of the door and started to pull her clothes on, and she would have more strange dreams, no doubt, so what was the point in worrying about them?

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*shudder* I've had strange dreams where when I woke up I knew that if I hadn't escaped right at that moment I would have died. Not one quite like Arianne's, mind you, but it has happened and I tell you dreams like that tend to hold onto a person for a long time. *shudders again* It's hard to shake off the shadow of near-death.