Wormify Your Muse!

wormify your muse!

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Tagging: steal it

@estarion

Anne flit between dream and meditation fitfully, as she did more nights than not: even before the leech in her brain, peaceful sleep had eluded her grasp at every turn. Its gross, wiggling presence certainly didn’t make sleep any easier. Despite all of this, and every other warning sign in the night, it was base need and base need alone which finally dragged Anne back into the waking world. If she ignored the issue much longer, it was going to manifest, with or without her blessing.

Anne turned onto her side and fished for the dagger she kept under her pillow, only changing the unnatural brightness of the dying fire’s glow after she had it in hand. Between the fire and the glare of the full moon, she elected to do without another light, walking a short ways off into the woods. Wouldn’t do to attract unwanted animal visitors, after all, especially not to where they slept. She stopped nearby the short ditch instead, a ways off of where they made camp; it seemed a safe enough distance to her, though some might argue it was excessive.

Her hands stilled on the fastening of her trousers when a scuffle echoed up from the ditch. The nearby corpse of trees rattled with the sounds of it. The dagger was naked in her hand before Anne could blink, abandoning her chosen latrine plot to sneak up on the trees down the ditch instead. She slid down the short hill, staying low as she crept nearer the trees. When the young buck came galloping out, Anne dove to the side, barely missing being trampled by the wide-eyed beast. Even without knowing the habits of deer—and why would she, having been at sea all her life?—Anne could tell that whatever had scuffled with that deer was something mucking about with the natural order. In the dead of night like this, anything could be prowling about…but something big enough to tussle with a deer-sized opponent could certainly try tussling with an Anne-sized one, or some other in their company. Best to deal with this quickly, away from the others.

Anne picked her way through the corpse as carefully as possible, moonlight making shadows between the tree roots below and through its branches above. She stayed as close to the shadowed trunk as possible, hoping for the element of surprise—only to lose it in the next moment, too startled by what she finds on the other side of the tree to remember secrecy.

He doesn’t look well; he’s always been pale, mind, but he looks especially bloodless in the moonlight in a way the campfire prevents one from seeing. Or perhaps that’s not a trick of the light, and rather than it being moonlight robbing him of all color, it might be his health. He truly doesn’t look well, tired about the eyes in a strange sort of way Anne’s only seen once before, a very long time ago. She can’t quite place the look now, but she knows she’s seen it. They haven’t traveled together long, but even so, she’s moved to concern for him. It’s that damned look. It isn’t good news.

“You alright there, Astarion?”

Anne wouldn’t, doesn’t, disagree. She owes Elizabeth her life, although not for the wound’s sake. At least not in her opinion. Were it not for Elizabeth, she’d never have managed the jailbreak, let alone have taken the ship she now steered. The problem Elizabeth faced was that Anne simply did not care. When Elizabeth grabs the wheel Anne came only sigh, giving up and leaning most of her weight against it. That was another count she was right about: Anne needed rest, and a doctor, badly. If it were (almost) any other port in the world, Anne would have conceded. She wouldn’t be having this argument in the first place! She’d have just set the damned course! But Port Royale will only ever mean her end.

She opened her mouth to lecture Elizabeth about why she couldn’t sail there—to explain the situation with her bounty, with Jack, with everything tied up in it and how her next visit to that port may very well be the thing to damn them all—when she keeps going. Anne chokes on her disbelieving laugh. Gold? Opium? Ridiculous on their own, given Anne’s interests in piracy, but added to the idea that anyone could vouch for her and have the courts save her life? It’s at least as funny as it is insulting.

“Christ alive!, I’d’ve thought even Jack’s whore knew better than that!” It slips about unbidden. She sounds, looks, incredulous. “Don’t you have any idea who I am? I signed my life away at age nineteen. Afore that, even, when I were still a wain. I’m Anne fuckin’ Bonny.”

Anne grunts and leaves the mooring, about to head for the helm when Elizabeth shoots ice directly into her veins using just two words: Port Royale. Wouldn’t that just fucking figure? The cellmate turned partner in crime, helping her pull a legger, isn’t just English but fucking English. And an idiot to boot. Who in the acquaintance of Jack would ever willingly sail to Port Royale, of all places? Anne resumes her walk—it’s a limo, really—back to the helm, setting them on a course that wouldn’t lead straight to the gallows. Port Royale can catch the fucking plague for all she cares; their heading is New Providence. She says none of this, guiding them out to sea without a fuss. It’s more important they leave this place, anyway, than that they agree on where they make landfall.

Anne relaxes into her duties long before Elizabeth does; it’s well evident that they aren’t being chased, or canon fire would have marked their departure. When they’re out of canon shot Anne breathes easier. Well. Except for where she’s been run through on one side. The wind is strong and in their favor; it won’t be more than a day or two on the water before they reach Anne’s destination, by her own reckoning. Chances are good they’ll meet another crew with her same heading before the coast is even in sight—but whether that’s a good thing or a bad one can only be determined when it happens.

Anne waits until Elizabeth’s done fussing to say her piece, ignoring everything the other woman’s had to say since “Port Royale.” Since they’re taking care of the dire needs first, this comes before wound care.

“We’re headed for New Providence,” Anne announces, deadpan. Had Elizabeth suggested any other port it would have been hers—but the port named is one of only two Anne’s sworn to never dock in again. “I don’t know what kind of pirate ye are, are ye think ye are, but I en’t fuckin’ consigning myself t’death for ye. ‘Will’ can fucking well wait: it’s only a bit further from Providence t’the gallows, I’m sure he’ll survive.”

Who or whatever Will is, he isn’t worth dying for—not for Anne, at least. Port Royale is the bloodiest port in these waters, with its rotten, godforsaken docks soaked through with the blood of pirates hanged there; New Providence, on the other hand, is the capital port of that most dangerous of new ventures, the Republic of Pirates. Anne’s wanted poster hangs in both cities, one in pride and one in infamy. Notorious pirates tend to fare better in one of these ports than in the other, though smuggling ships, privateers, and even some fledgling company sail from one to the other still.

“I can find a ship’s doctor in port and you can find passage to hell for yerself.” On Anne’s tongue, it’s less insult and more barefaced truth, setting aside her vanity and letting Elizabeth see the exhaustion naked on her face. She’d been in that jail for weeks before Elizabeth arrived and made escape possible. She simply won’t give up her freedom again so soon.

“We can fight about it, but let’s call a spade a spade, aye? I paid attention when I were sailed into that port, a’cause I knew it’d be on me t’figure out where in the fuck I’d been landed. I figured it out the next morning, in that jail cell, and been plottin’ a route back out t’open sea ever since. Gotta get there ‘fore ye can get t’either of those ports, and I’m willing t’bet you came up the other way—from the opposite coast. Meanin’ ye don’t know which way’s t’sea and which way’s gonna trap ye in the bay here. Means I gotta be the one navigatin’ either way, so it can be agreed that we’re for Providence or ye can feel deceived when we get there. Choice is yers.”

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❛ you can kiss me, you know. ❜ - @tryckthebard

&. 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐦𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

“Can I, now?” Rather than looking up from her book—a Laerakondan favorite she hadn’t expected to find so far from home, the fairytale adventure of a dread pirate and the woman he loves—Anne turns the next page. Did she read the last of what Wesley was saying about the stupid oversized rats? No. No she didn’t, having flown into a full panic she’s very keen on keeping disguised. She can only hope he won’t see the way the book trembles in her hands.

Is this…a joke? A prank? The result of a lost bet? It’s so hard to say. Anne’s been with the party long enough to have gotten comfortable with them (clearly: here she sits reading as if that hadn’t still been a hidden guilty pleasure only a few short weeks ago!), but certainly no one’s indicated an interest in her. Or her in them, in fairness. Is he just teasing her?

The silence hits critical mass between them and Anne knows her chance to respond is now or never. After another short second of deliberation, she decides on the obvious best course: make it his problem again.

“Why am I the one doin’ the kissing, hey? I en’t the one sitting about bored.”

Gods help her: for all her nerves and grit, Anne Bonny is not a woman gifted in romance. Truly she is a fighter, not a lover, and with the scars to prove it. She’s been left scarred—literally—by love and romance, and, though her pride would never let her say as much, she’s scared shitless of it all now.

Sex is one thing, love is another, and kissing certainly lends itself to the latter over the former.

“You can kiss me, y’know, if yer taste is shite enough t’stomach it.” She’s a bit proud at the way that puts it back on him, the sudden expectation of action.

Try  to  fluster  my  muse.  Do  whatever  it  takes  to  make  them  blush!