A Storms 'A Brewin'

Captain De' Reeves prepares for a storm after a memory overtakes her

Upon one summer’s morning…

My chest is tight and it feels like I am falling, falling, falling down but never do I reach the bottom for I am floating in the Sea of blue. Or drowning, for my lungs start to get filled up with water and I begin to choke. My arms are flailing as I try to swim to the surface, to try and reach where I had fallen from my father’s ship.

Down by the Walls of Wapping, where I met a sailor gay…

There was a storm that night, the waves billowing, making the ship rock back and forth and I had fallen into the Sea and the last thing I heard before my head brushed the water was the sound of my father screaming my name.

Conversing with a bouncing lass, who seemed to be in pain…

As I was sinking down into the Sea, my thoughts were chaotic- as any mind of a child would when put in a dire situation. I knew how to swim, but the waves crashed into my body and I be but a rag doll in the midst of Mother Nature’s rage.

Saying William, when you go, I fear you will never return again…

Without warning, I had felt two hands grab a hold of me and in one quick moment my lungs greedily took the cold air. I had a coughing fit as my rescuer held me gently in their embrace. I looked over once my body calmed from the near as death state, it was a woman with hair like gold, and piercing blue eyes that held me, and she looks over at me and smiles.

My heart is pierced by Cupid, I disdain all glittering gold…

She takes me to the eye of the storm, where it held a small rock formation. I could faintly hear her speak, and when she did it sounded like the strings of a harp playing softly.

She had asked me to sing, and so I did. I taught her a song my mother would sing to me every night before I went to bed. She then began to sing along with me, though my childish tone could never have matched her melodic hymn.

There is nothing that can console me, but my jolly sailor bold…

Her singing echoed throughout the Sea, and as soon as the storm passed I saw my father’s ship in view. I yelled for him and waved so he could find me. Wanting to thank the woman who rescued me, I looked over to where she was but just like a wave crashing on shore, she had vanished. I look a ways and notice splashing in the water, a fin and then nothing.

I wake suddenly from my dream in a cold sweat. My dream was no such thing but an event that had happened when I was a young lass; during a dangerous storm I had fallen from a small ship my father and I were on and I had been rescued by… a woman of sorts… and when I had told my father what I saw, he believed me.

“And now it is my turn to make the world believe him…”

I get up from my bed and walk over to the small vanity with a mirror and make myself look presentable, which is difficult to achieve when one has limited luxuries. I make due with what I have, a brush and some ties to hold up my auburn hair in one long braid. I change into a white tunic, black vest with trousers and put my boots on. The last thing is my Captain's hat, well my father’s hat that he had given to me on my eighteenth birthday. The sun beated, water washed down black tricorn hat holds more value to me than any chest of treasure could ever hold.

I grab my belt that holds my sword on one side and my pistol on the other, I strap it on my waist as I see myself in the mirror. My emerald eyes reflect back at me, the same eyes every Captain ‘De Reeves has.

I walk up the stairs out of my quarters and I am greeted by waves of motion all around me. My crew is up early working the sails and cleaning the deck, while my first mate Aaron Alistair, “Ace”, is steering the helm. The Mare Liberum is a grand ship made from the finest and most rare of wood; the Azure Oak tree. Giving the ship a blue like hue  with white sails.

“Aye, the she-devil wakes from her slumber!”

“Aye! And there is the swain that gives it for free!”

“You pierce my heart with your words, I just may walk the plank and end it all right here and now.”

“So be it, I will even give you the push if your coward arse can’t take the plunge.”

As we banter back and forth, I finally reach him and we share a good ‘ol fashioned greeting between two friends, and after our short embrace I man the helm as Captain.

“Slumber well, Captain?”

“Nay” is all I end up saying, “You try and get some rest yer’self while I do my duty as Captain and get us to our next destination, eh, savvy?”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

I watch as Ace walks over to the Crew’s Quarters below the deck. He is a tall, handsome fellow with curly locks of onyx and deep brown eyes. I am certain if we had met under different circumstances I may have fallen for a man such as him. We are childhood friends and he be like a brother to me, in which it was only right for him to be my right hand mate. He is the only one I can truly trust out here in the vast Sea. Not to say my crew be untrustworthy, for I hand picked each and every one of the lot, still, you never know. My father did as such and yet his crew mates called munity after he spoke of such monsters, naming him “part of the insane.” Except for his first mate, my Uncle Theodore, who stood by his side even after.

“Aye, Captain! We’r be sailing?” One of my crew members shouts from below.

I smell the air and smile, “North mates, for there be a storm ‘a brewing due South. Let us race against the Mother, eh savvy?”

“Aye! I think this ship of yers can take the beatin’!” My crew mates laugh amongst themselves.

 “Be so, can we take the beatin’?” I shout back at them.

“Aye! Aye! As long as we have Cap’n De Reeves watching are asres!”

“Aye! Matey! Man the sails and prepare for rain!”

I adjust my tricorn and sing softly to myself, “My heart is pierced by Cupid, I disdain all glittering gold, there is nothing that can console me...” And I swear, off in the far distance somewhere, I can hear a sweet voice echoing my own.