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 Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2010 5:00 pm
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Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2010 5:01 pm
Giselle had always been privileged. She’d also been arrogant, full of her ways, certain of what she wanted, and assured that she would get it. It was a life of entitlement. She’d always been given anything she could want and more.
Her family weren’t really interested in her as a person, but more as an heir. She was their only daughter, adopted at that. She had always felt like some trinket, something to show off. They had wanted her to puppet their ideas, their ways, but she wasn’t one of them. They didn’t love her and she didn’t love them. She was fond of them in a way, but more fond of her comfort with them. They took care of her, they made sure she had what she wanted. And in return, she was to marry the man they chose.
But still she was not happy. It was too heavy a price at times. She hadn’t had enough of love to realize that that was what she desired. But living in this humdrum place, she knew that she hated this life though she loved it’s comforts. Comfort wasn’t everything. Dresses, and make-up, and warm afternoons with boring conversations. It wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t what she dreamed. She needed more to life than this.
Each day, she sat at her vanity and brushed out her hair. She applied her make-up and talked to men in droll voices, while they made commonplace advances. They promised her everything they could buy, all of their future. But it wasn’t enough. It was what she had now, and she wanted different.
Her family didn’t understand it. Yet, they didn’t care that she wasn’t’ happy. It didn’t matter to them as long as she kept of the façade, because she HAD to be happy. Who wouldn’t with all of this? But more and more, she had learned you couldn’t buy happiness.
She was tired of corsets, and balls. And proprieties. Who cared about proprieties? Why couldn’t she say what she wanted. Do what she wanted.? Why did she have to conform to other’s standards and force herself to be something she was clearly not?
Every boring day. Every night.
Only her dreams offered her escape.
She wondered, as she lay in her luscious bed, what blood ran through her veins? What made her feel like this? What gave her an exotic feel, as if her body was only being barely held to the ground?
She had wings, she could fly away. But where would she go?
Would it matter?
Things were the same everywhere. You had to follow the rules and roles of convention. She had to be demure, dainty...dependant on men. She was suppose to do this...and that. It was enough! It was too much.
Why did she have to be those things? Why did she have to be anything other than herself? If others couldn't except it, then maybe they needed to change and not her.
But she was the different one, she was the one that needed to change. To be something other than she was. And where could she go to change that?
Nowhere, no place. This world that she was in, it wasn't one that you could be who you wanted and still be accepted.
Maybe that was it, maybe she shouldn't be accepted. But then where would she go? How would she exist?
Could she deal without the comforts she loved? Would it be too much to sacrifice?
Giselle didn't know what she was willing to sacrifice, there was nothing different in sight. No saving grace, no light at the end of the tunnel. So that day, that fateful day, she sat and brushed her hair in front of the mirror and when her family came to retrieve her for the ball, she refused. She would not go. She had to be alone, to think.
They dared not cross her in her mood, and so she sat alone and thinking when Captain Mantaceros came.
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Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2010 5:23 pm
Captain Matanceros paced the deck of the ship, from stern to bow and back to stern, over and over again, listening to the clop of his boots on the boards. He frowned to see the sails hanging limply above him. He was walking faster than the ship was moving. The very coral formations far below in the crystal clear water began to look familiar.
“Something’s got to change,” he growled to himself. “A captain loves his ship, but he doesn’t expect to never set foot on land again.”
He stomped into his cabin. The room seemed far too spacious for one sailor. He pulled a key from his boot and opened a locked cabinet. The richest treasures of his spoils on this voyage shone back at him with a stunning brilliance. Gold doubloons, rubies set in bracelets, unstrung pearls, and rich purple silks teetered in a stack as tall as himself. He saw with pleasure that only a boot’s width of space remained at the top of the cabinet. Soon, he would have all he needed to sail away and bury his treasure on a deserted island.
Matanceros couldn’t bear to stand in one place any longer. He slammed the cabinet shut, locked it, and bounded back onto the deck. How in this deserted expanse of water could he find more treasure? No other ships sailed within sight, and ocean stretched as far as the eye could see, into the clouds on the horizon.
A slight breeze stirred, just enough to shift the clouds in his vision. And there, plain as day, he saw land. “Land ho!” sang out a voice from up in the rigging, and Matanceros promised to employ a quicker lookout next voyage. He peered again at the land in the distance. He saw a harbor and houses: a regular village. Matanceros smiled with delight. Where there was a village, there was looting to be done.
He would never get the ship there, not unless the wind changed. “Prepare the longboat!” he called. “I want my best rowers! We’re going to be doing some raiding after dark tonight!”
The pilot came up to him with concern in his eyes. “Captain! It’s so far to row. Are you sure that it’s wise? It’s a long way to ferry heavy treasure.”
“I’ll decide what I can and can’t do,” Matanceros snapped. He knew that the pilot was right though. He couldn’t bring back too much. An idea came to his mind, and he smiled. He would kidnap a maiden and hold her for ransom. Granted, it was painfully easy, but it never failed to bring a good reward. Matanceros chuckled. He couldn’t wait for the sun to go down.
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