shyaway (shyaway) wrote in wallflowering, @ 2008-02-27 22:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | fic: potc - gen |
PotC fic: The Twelve Days of Christmas (Elizabeth, G, 7/12)
Title: The Twelve Days of Christmas
Author: shyaway
Rating: G
Characters: Elizabeth
Disclaimer: Pirates of the Caribbean and its characters belong to Disney.
Summary: Twelve festive piratey drabbles inspired by the carol.
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
Turtle Doves
French Hens
Calling Birds
Gold Rings
Geese a-Laying
Elizabeth daintily lifted her skirt a few inches and tested the water with her bare foot. A perfect heat, and clear and blue like the sky. How cold the lake on the estate in England would be on Christmas Day! But the salty waters of the Caribbean were warm and welcoming even in December.
After checking for prying eyes, and finding none, she started to shed her dress. The inhabitants of Port Royal would be dozing after their Christmas lunch, as was her father, who was taking a nap before their party that evening. Therefore he had not seen his sixteen-year-old daughter slip out to this sheltered cove, and the servants would be too busy to notice her absence. There would be no one to spy on the governor’s daughter sea-bathing in her petticoat.
The dress dropped down and she left it on the sand by her shoes and stockings. She waded into the sea, feeling her petticoat skirt clinging and wafting around her legs. She ventured a little further and tried a few strokes, but she was not a strong swimmer, having received no proper instruction, and so was content to float. She spread out her arms. Her skirt swirled around her. Elizabeth imagined herself a mermaid, the queen of Atlantis. Removed from the fuss of society life, she was as free as the fish beneath her and the birds above her.
At length, relaxed and renewed, she paddled back to the shore, dried herself – the hot sun would take care of her damp petticoat – and donned her dress again. Her wet hair she covered with a lace cap and a hat.
With a refreshed heart she started back to the mansion, feeling fortified against all the officers and society ladies who would be their guests that evening. There would be few people she really called her friends there. Not the old woman whose son kept the bakery, who always had a sweetmeat and a new tale of the island’s ancient past for Elizabeth; and not Will, who would be stuck in the Browns’ dreary home on this beautiful day.
Languorously, as if she were still flowing through water, but purposefully, she changed her course. Will should have livelier company than Mr Brown’s. There was still time to pay a call that afternoon.