and as she faced the sun, she cast no shadow...
I was supposed to write this for commodoresexual, for the PoTC Tertiary Ficathon. Unfortunately, part 2 never got finished and part 3? Woe, it was never written at all! Mostly because I suck. Yea, verily, say I.
1 :: Cast No Shadow
No man had ever seen me unveiled before the day my father’s xebec was reduced to a sodden hulk of charred wood. They took my father’s cutlass and used it to execute the crew. My father died prostrate at the feet of his captors, a prayer to Allah dying upon his lips.
Instead of staying locked in the cabin like the milk and water misses of our enemies, my mother and I brandished cutlasses of our own, whirling dervishes who wounded through swiftness and steel. When my mother died, cut down by a ball to the throat, my father let out a cry like a wounded animal in the throes of death. That is when all hope perished.
For his love of my mother, we lost the battle that day. For his love, many a good man was executed by the infidels. For his love, I was lost-to the streets of a foreign land, to the beds of unbelievers, and to walk unveiled amongst strange men. For his love, I will never let such an emotion trap me in its jutting steel jaws. And I will walk amidst unbelievers, naked and unashamed.
~*~
This is my true name. I will say it in the language of my people. Listen, how the vowels sound guttural and sad, like the ashes of a dead dream that once sustained you. They cut the veil from my eyes in this manner, laughing raucously as they peeled away my garments like a fisherman scales the brill fish-swift and without respect for the creature once living.
“She looks like a sultan’s queen, don’t she boys?” Captain Lawlor chuckled, squeezing at my budding breasts with his meaty paws. I only remember his name because I killed him, but that came later. I did it with a dull knife and a slow precision, with the same mercies he had neglected to show my father.
Later-the sound of the waves as they lapped against the side of the English ship-blending in with my silent screams as the cabin boy rubbed salt into the open gashes their whips had given me. The vague melody I used to hear as the captain robbed me of the last vestiges of my innocence. The slave market, the damp cobblestones of London Town, all of these things are in the past.
When they stole my veil, they also stole Amine from me, and I became Anamaria, though that ghost self still cries for Allah’s vengeance in the tatters of my memory. I rose above it and lived for my father, a corsair upon a different sea. I did it with blood and steel and Jack Sparrow, but that is a tale for another time.
A/N: Xebecs were ships used by the Barbary Corsairs, pirates who preyed the Meditteranean and as far as Ireland in the Age of Piracy. From "1750-1815: The Seven Years War, Revolution, and Napoleon": The Spanish, French, and even the English used them...
1 :: Cast No Shadow
No man had ever seen me unveiled before the day my father’s xebec was reduced to a sodden hulk of charred wood. They took my father’s cutlass and used it to execute the crew. My father died prostrate at the feet of his captors, a prayer to Allah dying upon his lips.
Instead of staying locked in the cabin like the milk and water misses of our enemies, my mother and I brandished cutlasses of our own, whirling dervishes who wounded through swiftness and steel. When my mother died, cut down by a ball to the throat, my father let out a cry like a wounded animal in the throes of death. That is when all hope perished.
For his love of my mother, we lost the battle that day. For his love, many a good man was executed by the infidels. For his love, I was lost-to the streets of a foreign land, to the beds of unbelievers, and to walk unveiled amongst strange men. For his love, I will never let such an emotion trap me in its jutting steel jaws. And I will walk amidst unbelievers, naked and unashamed.
~*~
This is my true name. I will say it in the language of my people. Listen, how the vowels sound guttural and sad, like the ashes of a dead dream that once sustained you. They cut the veil from my eyes in this manner, laughing raucously as they peeled away my garments like a fisherman scales the brill fish-swift and without respect for the creature once living.
“She looks like a sultan’s queen, don’t she boys?” Captain Lawlor chuckled, squeezing at my budding breasts with his meaty paws. I only remember his name because I killed him, but that came later. I did it with a dull knife and a slow precision, with the same mercies he had neglected to show my father.
Later-the sound of the waves as they lapped against the side of the English ship-blending in with my silent screams as the cabin boy rubbed salt into the open gashes their whips had given me. The vague melody I used to hear as the captain robbed me of the last vestiges of my innocence. The slave market, the damp cobblestones of London Town, all of these things are in the past.
When they stole my veil, they also stole Amine from me, and I became Anamaria, though that ghost self still cries for Allah’s vengeance in the tatters of my memory. I rose above it and lived for my father, a corsair upon a different sea. I did it with blood and steel and Jack Sparrow, but that is a tale for another time.
A/N: Xebecs were ships used by the Barbary Corsairs, pirates who preyed the Meditteranean and as far as Ireland in the Age of Piracy. From "1750-1815: The Seven Years War, Revolution, and Napoleon": The Spanish, French, and even the English used them...