Lurking beyond Norrington's eyelids was the sea and when he listened he could feel the surf pounding against his battered corpse. He had never thought that burial at sea would be anything like this; a semblance of nothingness interspersed with dreams of healing wounds and nightmares where they were hacked open again and always, always the unease of the sea suffocating him.

Something was different this time; James was awake and could hear the echo of the ocean without pain. Moving his fingers, Norrington felt a blanket of some sort. He sighed and opened his eyes and beheld a ceiling of rock. A frown wrinkled his features as he brought his hands up to rub his sleepy eyes into focus and make sense of things. James shuddered as his knuckles grazed over the empty socket.

A little cry of shock and Norrington sat up and threw the covers aside. He was naked and saw that his legs were whole and there was the authority of his sex at the crux of his thighs. Transfixed, he was afraid to move least he dislodge his parts. James took a breath, reached down and cupped himself. Prick and bullocks intact and attached – he gave a slight tug on each to assure himself – and he let out the breath he had been holding.

James ran a hand down his leg with wonderment; there was no scar from the coral pike. Reexamining his masculine accoutrements, Norrington discovered the absence of scars and when he ran his hand along his side and chest he felt no scars. He was utterly puzzled – had it all been a dream? His hand came up to his eye again and felt its absence. Norrington wondered if the torture had fractured his mind and he would come to his senses covered in scars and missing his manhood.

Reaching down again he pinched his foreskin and accepted the pain with a breath that hissed out between his teeth. Still unsatisfied, Norrington plucked a hair from his scrotum with a yelp. Mollified to a point that this was no delusion, James looked about the cavernous chamber and placed his hands over his cock and bollocks protectively.

One eye flitted hither and thither; he deduced that he was in some sort of cave close to the sea. The air, though dank, was full of brine and the way the light moved across the ceiling from the distant mouth of the cave suggested sunshine reflecting on waves. His bed was a pile of blankets on the soft sandy floor and the walls of the cave were decorated with curtains and lanterns and dried flowers among other…once living…things.

"For an Englishmon ye sure do touch yerself a lot."

James snapped his head towards the voice and spied a dark woman dressed in rags parting the equally ragged curtains. With a low whine in the back of his throat, Norrington grasped at the discarded blankets in an attempt to cover himself. But the dark woman was upon him and flung aside his cover. She smelled of the sea and of death and decay and James Norrington had never been so terrified of a woman in his entire life. He trembled with the urge to get up and away from the creature with jaundiced eyes and blackened teeth, but he found himself weak as a kitten.

"Yer fear o' me marks ye as a wise mon, Jaymes Norrington," the dark woman chuckled as she laid her hands on him and seemed to repeat the earlier inspection he had given himself.

"Madam! I insist you desist!" James squeaked out as he tried to protect his manhood from her manhandling. Dear God, what had he gotten himself into?

"It has taken me three days to undo what Davy Jones had done to ye in one, but such things cannot be hurried and especially not if they are to be done right," the dark woman said and James was blushing furiously as her hands stroked his prick and the damn thing jumped up like an excited puppy. She chuckled throatily as she moved her hands down his legs and Norrington looked everywhere but at her.

"Do ye hunger?" she asked him and he nodded, still looking away from her – an easy task as the dark woman was on James' blind side.

When the curtains rustled closed, Norrington found he could move on his own accord and wrapped the blankets primly around him. Taking the opportunity to look around the decorated cavern again James rested his eye on a collection of eyes…in a very large jar. Oh dear.

James Norrington resolved then and there that when the dark woman came back there would be answers, even if he could only manage to demand them in whispers.