It was difficult to decide who or what to write for this one. I went with Anamaria because she is often supposed to be French Creole. Think of 'hen' as in 'hen night', not 'chicken' or anything of that sort. :-P Thanks for the reviews, as always!
Freedom. Anamaria could ask for no better Christmas present than that. Having freedom, all else would follow.
For her freedom she had her mother to thank. Christophine had risked – everything – in escaping that Martinique hellhole they called a sugar plantation, and it had been made infinitely more dangerous by the presence of the infant Anamaria. But with the same tenacity of spirit that she had passed on to her daughter, she achieved their destination. Tortuga.
There she set up as a wise-woman, using skills and knowledge passed down through her family to make her deservedly famous in Tortuga, and trusted too, as far as anybody was in that town; although those who sang her praises were not to know that sometimes when her expertise failed she would get by with obscure caveats and a confident smile, because – as she told her daughter – if you don't look after yourself in this wide world, no one else will. Growing up in the midst of pirates and prostitutes, Anamaria agreed whole-heartedly.
"Take what you can; give nothing back." She took the pirates' creed for her own long before she turned pirate herself. That path had led her here, to this ship and captain who were synonymous with freedom. And in the captain she had found – not someone to be relied on, Anamaria would depend on no one – but there was no one she would rather be independent with than Jack Sparrow.