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Feeling the Pearl
For the Black Pearl Drabble Challenge

by Compassrose7577
March 8, 2008

Jack’s eyes suddenly opened, rolling upward, a slight tension in his body.

“What is it?” she asked, rising.

“Nothing.”

The distraction in his voice belied the calm he was trying to present. She gave him a steady stare, in the spirit of pressing him into further explanation.

“Bloody cursed eyes of yours,” he grumbled, making a distasteful face. Finally, he surrendered. “Just listening to me ship.”

Kate couldn’t help but dart her own furtive glance into the dark beyond the candle’s glow. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing serious.” He frowned, his eyes still shifting. “Mizzen needs trimming; she’s luffing.” He looked at her, smiling self-consciously. “She prefers the wind over her shoulder rather than on her nose. Cotton’s on the wheel; he has a tendency to hold her too hard to it. She’d give him more, if he would fall off…just a bit.”

“You know her well, don’t you?”

Nodding thoughtfully, his gaze drifted to the unseen reaches of his ship. The color of his eyes matched the bulkhead behind him, as if they were intrinsically interwoven. “I’ve held her life, she’s held mine, many a time. ‘Tis the same for any captain,” he said in a feeble attempt to dismiss it all.

“I hardly think so,” she scoffed, quietly. “I never had that impression when I was on the Melody. Her captain seemed to think she was just a ship. It’s different, for you and the Pearl.”

He laid a loving palm against the wood. “Aye, I’ve given up a lot for her.”

“That board just above there sometimes creaks.”

He seemed surprised and pleased by her observation. “Aye, that means she’s on a starboard reach. She loves that…then,” he murmured, stroking the wall.

Needing to touch him, but hesitant to interrupt his communion with his ship, she toyed with a cord of his hair where it rested on the mattress.

“I knew that the first—no second—day I was on board, what she was to you, the way you touched the wheel, the look in your eyes. Do you think she minds?” Kate asked, reluctant to hear the answer.

“What?”

“Do you think the Pearl minds me—a woman—on board? Do you think she minds having to share you?”

Jack peered down his nose, arching a dubious brow. “I haven’t heard her complain.”

“I wouldn’t know; she doesn’t talk to me like she does you.”

A sly smile spread across his lips. “Get dressed.”

~.~

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