A/N: Elizabeth POV at the very beginning of the movie (when she wakes up after dreaming of the crossing to Port Royal).
Lately
by Laura
Lately, my thoughts have been less firm than they used to be. It is easier to mold them into whichever shape I want to see. One moment I am thinking of Captain Norrington and the finery leading up to the expression in his eyes; the next moment, my mind's eye rests upon Will's hands. My heart skips more when I picture the latter – his hands brown and dusty; I do not know why everything inside flutters when I think about the fact that he makes fine, sharp swords that look to be for ceremony but have the potential to –
Every morning, I fade fitfully between dreaming and waking. The room is dark because the windows are shut and the curtains are drawn. It could be afternoon and I would be huddled in dark. Those images go all about and I snatch at them for another chance – he talks to me, someone… but I do not see his face before waking. I can only recognize those figures from the past, and they haunt me sometimes.
Lately, my thoughts have been swimming. I am surrounded by their mucky weight. Sometimes I float with a dim contentment, but more often I struggle to be free of this dimness. I feel foggy and my father says I am catching cold. In the middle of summer, the days are too hot and I breathe too little.
Will is making a sword in the smithy and the hammer is pounding on steel. I hear it just as though I were there. I am dreaming of the dusty places in the world – deep and cavernous echoes made by time's blacksmiths. I feel itchy inside and want to get out.
Lately, things have been more disjointed than they used to be. I do not know why I get up every morning and go to the mirror and watch my ghost as she fastens a chain round her neck and lets her lips part: a pirate medallion rests at her chest. The haze parts a little then and I can see clouds of dust in the small shafts of light that come through right before they disappear. They hear me down the hall and doors burst open.
Why is the light so blinding? I never used to be this way. I was much happier on the crossing from England and in the time afterward – time that lasted years-long; things have faded now to gold crossed by silver; hammers pounding in the smithy. I think: do I want those sword-making hands to touch me instead? And I look in the mirror at that gold around my neck and think that it was crafted by no blacksmith, instead like a pearl by the saltwater and mythology…
I am the same sometimes. It is just in the cracks that I am so dusty and – I cannot think of what I am. I feel like I am waiting for the hammer-stroke somewhere far away and for the dust to fly up in clouds so that I can cough and cover my mouth with a handkerchief like any proper lady but be ripped away from myself, by dustier hands –
But maybe in the full light his hands would not look as dark as I see them in the dirty half-light. Who are you? Who are you?
Lately, I think that I have had cause to drift.