May 1, 17--: She is defiant today; her eyes flash and her lips curve in a wicked, mocking smile, though she greets me with the regal bearing and propriety of her breeding. Her hair falls in dirty snarls around her shoulders, save for the single braid swinging bead-heavy against her left cheek, a white feather adorning its end; she looks like a haughty blonde savage, an Amazon queen of legend. There is a scar on her right cheek, a crescent nick in the smooth golden skin, as if from the point of a blade.
It does not decrease her beauty.
III. Imprudence
Do not look so restive and uncomfortable, Your Reverence. You asked how I, "a lady such as myself," became what I am now. Do not blame me if you do not like what you hear. Did you want me to say that piracy in the form of Jack Sparrow seduced me, coerced me, misled me, degraded me until I loved my degradation and its perpetrator? That he remade me in his image like a selfish god? The tale could be told that way, I suppose. Same story, different version. But you asked for the truth, and this is the truth I choose to tell.
Begin at the beginning? If you wish. But what beginning do you mean? There are so many, you see. Did you wish to hear of the first time I read his name in a book, and the thrill it gave me, thirteen years old and my body just stirring into womanhood? Of our first meeting, when he saved my life and I saved his, when he smiled at me as if he knew a secret about me I did not know myself? The moment I first realized I loved him; our first kiss; the first night we lay together, on the deck of the Black Pearl, naked between stars and sea?
You blush very charmingly, sir. But I beg your pardon; that was vulgar of me, wasn't it? You don't want to hear of that, how he looked at me, how he touched me, the way he spoke my name against my skin as other men might pray, and how I—
No? Are you sure? I could show you, if you like. You could be Jack to me for a little while, and I could teach you all the things he taught me. You might even learn something of what it is like to be free.
Ah. Very well, then. But you disappoint me. I know you're curious; I can see it in your eyes. You want to know what it tastes like.
It's useless to deny it. Do you think I never tried?