I thought you guys might need a break after that last chapter... I sure did! xD Enjoy!
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Chapter 11
The freezing fog enveloped Jack in a perverse embrace. He shivered. The Pearl wasn't equipped for a journey like this one. His men barely had enough clothes to keep warm. Every day Jack heard their coughs and sniffles and wondered again if this whole chase was futile. But then he remembered her face and steeled himself, for he knew that they were all doing the same without one complaint among them.
…
Three blankets and a fire were required to keep Pocahontas warm now, yet she still shivered. What Barbossa had told her was more chilling than any Northern cold. He's crazy, he's crazy, she kept thinking. Gods were beings, yes, but beings in the spirit and not the physical world. Giants were the monsters of tales told to scare children, definitely not real. Yet… Barbossa seemed like he was being totally honest with her. Maybe his madness was so complete, he really did believe his own story.
What Pocahontas really couldn't believe was how much she'd been through in the past couple of months. She had left to reunite herself with her true love, yet had fallen in love with a pirate. She had been kidnapped by a dread pirate who wanted to become a god to serve his own selfish ends, and make her rule alongside him, whether or not it was all in his head. Jack, out of spite perhaps, wasn't coming for her and John Smith would never know her fate. I left home to follow my path to John, and now I'll never see him again. At that thought her self-control broke, and she curled closer to herself in the blankets and gave herself up to weeping.
The cabin door opened, footsteps approached. Pocahontas peered up through the film of hair and tears streaked across her face at Barbossa. He was holding a bundle of fur in his arms.
"Better put these on, dear," he said, dropping them onto the window seat next to her. "You be goin' topside today."
"Why?" Pocahontas reached for the fur – anything to add extra warmth at this point.
He grinned, "My immortality awaits." He strode out of the cabin again.
Pocahontas froze mid-reach. This was it. The day she would come face-to-face with gods – or be left to die in an icy grave.
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Next chapter will be very long. Very long. xD But well worth it, I promise! Catch ya laterz!