A/N: Prompt Off the edge of the map, Originally posted 25/1/08. Set on the Isla de Muerta.
If the site allowed for longer chapter titles, I'd have been tempted to steal from Lois McMaster Bujold and call this one The only thing you cannot trade for your heart's desire is your heart, but since it doesn't, I'm stealing from Robert Frost instead =)
She passed the last borders of civilisation long ago.
All the books of advice ever written for gently-born young ladies had been entirely unable to offer her any useful counsel on the subject of a proper response to kidnapping and imminent death; the rules that had loomed so large in the drawing-rooms of Port Royal were of little use in determining how to cope with obnoxious pirates and effect one's rescue from desert islands.
She had left the neat paths of social scruples on the high wall of the fort and stepped into a vague wilderness of disasters and desires. And now she pays the price: unable to give logical account for the pounding of her heart as he approaches, with no explanation for the ache that fills her as they face each other, almost touching but so distant, separated by her promise—the words she has spoken and cannot speak. The pre-ordained course is far away now, the ground crumbling beneath her feet.
These are uncharted waters.