I am incredibly sorry that it's taken so long for me to pump out another group of chapters. It's only been like, what, eight months? School started almost immediately after camp and I was just absolutely not inspired to do anything but homework and fart around on Gaia. Lame, I know, but it's my creative process. One of my Star Wars fics got locked for inactivity and I realized it was time to kick my ass into gear.
This was actually more stress relief while writing my IB Extended Essay than anything, really. It's amazing how slowly I churn out 4000 words on Yiddish Theater but how quickly I can finish 1000 on Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh, and I watched At World's End a few dozen times. That helped.
As usual, I don't own Pirates of the Caribbean, any of the canon characters, or locations, or even in this case the events.
Sparry, on the other hand, is mine, and I would be much obliged if you wouldn't take her without asking nicely. She'll be sue-ified in the next chapter or two, anyway, so taking her isn't really even worth it.
Supposing anyone is still reading, thank you! (There's one more chapter I've finished that goes with this one. I'll post it in a few days.)
-Vongy
…And Really Bad Eggs…
Adventure Seven: Sparry Tate's World Isn't Fair.
As she ran through the marketplace at breakneck speed, Sparry Tate pretended she was a fearsome pirate captain chasing a mutinous first mate. She imagined that he had stolen away with loot, maps, and information about a big haul and that she had to find him and get the story from him toe by toe and knuckle by knuckle. In reality, it was much less interesting. She was not a fearsome pirate captain, at least, she wasn't yet. She was not chasing a mutinous first mate, only looking for an absentee best friend, and along the way she certainly wouldn't be finding doubloons and treasure. More likely, she would be finding half a dozen eggs, a bottle of goat's milk, and a fish, all items her mother had mentioned she ought to bring back. The money already rattling in her pocket was not loot, it was coins given to her for that express purpose.
So, all told, the pirate fantasy was not further from the truth. But at least it made chores fun and exciting.
On any other day if she had been unable to find Will she would have simply finished her shopping list and gone home to let him find her. But today was special. Will had been going on all week about how today his father would be home for the one time in ten years. It was Sparry's opinion that this was complete and utter horse manure, but just to be sure, she wanted to see with her own eyes the man that her friend claimed walked around with no heart in his chest, commanded a ship crewed by the undead, and was all around just too good to be true.
But more than that, Sparry wanted Will's father to be made up because the fact that neither of them had one made them alike. If he really did have one that was alive, or at least alive as you could consider someone without a heart in his chest, then that was one more place that he was better than her. She could pretend her father was a handsome military commander, or a dashing pirate captain, or whatever, all she liked, but that didn't make it any truer. No one ever talked about her father – either he was dead, or he wasn't much better off.
When she stopped at the fish seller's stall to get her mother's order, she dawdled as the bulky woman behind the counter slit a whiting gullet-to-tail and scooped its intestines out.
"Have you seen my friend Will?" Sparry accusatorially asked the fishwife, as if Will was hiding somewhere among the barrels of pickled herring.
"No," replied the woman, who had now moved on to wrapping fish halves in thin paper. Her hands were covered in gore. Sparry felt sick. "His mother was here yesterday buying vegetables, though, and some meat at the butcher next door. She mentioned a picnic up on the cliffs."
Sparry nodded but felt unenthusiastic about the idea. The cliffs were a good half-hour's walk outside of town, and if she took the groceries with her Mother would be angry. The fishwife handed her the packaged fish, which was already beginning to seep blood. It smelled terrible. Sparry wrinkled her nose and scowled.
"Get that home to your mother before it goes bad," suggested the woman. Sparry, still torn between finishing her chores and going home or skipping them and going to the cliffs, made a gagging sound and dropped the fish into her basket. She'd have to wait until later to see if all this nonsense about Will's father was true.
It was nearing ten o' clock by the time she finished with her shopping and obtained her mother's permission to go run wild in the streets until suppertime. Sparry began the long walk to the cliffs, slogging through marshy coastland where the path had been wiped out, and generally getting covered in mud up to her thighs. Mother wouldn't be happy with her, and neither would Elizabeth, who had made it her business to make sure Sparry was usually some semblance of clean.
That in mind, she made it her job to keep out of site. If Elizabeth saw what she'd done to her trousers, which had been in a fairly reasonable state before, Sparry would get fussed over again in a strictly un-pirate-like fashion.
Which, all things considered, might be kind of nice…
Sparry forced her mind back to attention and dropped to her hands and knees in the grass. After all, she figured, if she was already this dirty, why care about the rest of her? What did it matter if she found a banana spider the size of her hand in her hair later?
She was coming up on the cliffs now, and wasn't entirely certain of what she would do had Will been right. Concede defeat? No, Sparry Tate was never defeated. She could experience setbacks, but never defeat.
She could hear people up ahead.
"Jones's bones," swore Sparry, pushing her way forwards through the grass. She could see them now.
Will had never lied, she realized sadly. At least, not about his father. He had been totally honest with her – that much Sparry couldn't deny from where she crouched in the dunes. She didn't necessarily have to come from a happy family in order to know one when she saw it.
She was admittedly jealous of Will (after all, who wouldn't be?), but decided to compensate with anger and frustration. How was this fair? Why did Will get a caring mother and an exciting father who actually existed (that was the important part) and she got…
Well, basically nothing, thought Sparry, considering it.
She felt like an intruder sitting there in the grass. Even if she prided herself on being the scourge of the Tortuga gutters, she was of the opinion that it would be wrong to interrupt. It would be best if she just went home and pretended this hadn't happened. Will would be thrilled to tell her all about it tomorrow, anyway.
Sparry set about working herself into a right good rage and stalked off back down the hill. She tried to justify it – after all, the world wasn't fair, so she had every right to be mad at it, didn't she?
And it wasn't like there was anything she could do about it, anyway.