Fic: The Pearl River (J/E, PG)
Friday, April 6th, 2007 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
orange_crushedThe Pearl River. PotC fic, J/E of course, set in some nebulous time after AWE. PG for pretty much no bad language (shame) and ridiculously little suggestion (double shame.)
Afterwards, lying against him on the bare floor, she dreams of nothing but great grey-winged cranes, breaking their embroidered lines to spread pinion feathers against the evening sky; unfettered, bright and free.
Did she ever dream of it ? Silk, satin; she knew the road to China from books, but she'd never imagined the mouth of the Xi Jiang so wide, as to encompass the long deltas and floods in one leonine smile.
"Pearl," Jack says, from behind her; trust him to know the furthest point of her horizon. "It flows from the Zhū Jiāng. The pearl river." She swivels on the rail, lets her hips rest, warm and solid, against his.
"Named for your ship, of course, O Humble One." He tugs at his sparse beard and grins.
"Local legend, darling."
They trade in the marketplace for rice and oil, new rope- slick and fine between her fingers. All around her are birds in cages, glittering beaks and talons, fresh fish still steaming from the sea in the coolness of morning air. They eat fried dumplings on a bridge, feet dangling over the water; children stop to touch her hair and grin at her, Jack watching and laughing at her discomfort.
She lingers over the finer fabrics, at the more elegant stalls. Here are robes so soft and light they slip around her shoulders like a coat of fireflies. Embroidery of silver and gold, forming perfect lotus blossoms, a flock of herons, the first crystalline snows. Jack says a few words in a language she doesn't catch, and the shopkeepers pin her hair up and turn her around. In a snap of folding cloth she's a new temple to some sun-goddess in gold and cream; flushed skin where the sun has painted, disappearing into ivory shadows.
It frightens her suddenly, and she startles like a faun, slipping her narrow shoulders out and letting the fabric slide away.
"I'm not-" she begins, and chokes on it. "I don't want this." Jack's eyes darken into moths, that seem to flutter around her skin. "I'm not this person," she murmurs, buried in silk, so surely that she can feel the overturned earth on her coffin. He doesn't question it, doesn't pause.
They buy new canvas, very sturdy and very cheap.
She's in a mood the next day; all sharp words and sulky rosebud mouth, which she knows Jack loves, but she doesn't have the heart to care. She harasses and needles him to the very end of his tether, at which point he snaps and hauls her into the cabin to wrap her around his waist; but instead she sits in a chair and stares out the window, and bats away his roving hands.
"You could help, dearest," he says calmly, placing a deft kiss on the inside of her thigh.
"I'd prefer to be left alone." He stares at her for a long moment, sizing up the danger of staying, and seems to tip a scale internally.
"Suit yourself." She frowns more deeply and sets herself with crossed arms against the ledge. The door shuts after him, though she doesn't turn to look.
And this is the problem: she has never turned to look. All manner of things have dropped from her world like a ship without a bottom, and she has rowed swiftly forward with all the feeling of a stone.
Her father had indulged her in nearly all respects- Elizabeth, being so narrow, had a taste for fine things; for softness and comfort, for silk in the summer and satin in the winter, for freshly laundered linen sheets, worn soft as feathers by her body in dreaming. It was never vanity, only the bliss of experience and a delight in the senses that pulled at her from all directions.
She knows her father is dead. Her father is dead and Will is gone and her senses seem dull, and she can only run her hands along her arms and chafe at the meanness of things, and wonder why she never cried.
"What sort of person are you, then ?" he says, from the shadows. She sits upright, awake; never having noticed a descent into sleep. The lamps are lit, he must have moved around her, never making a sound.
"I don't know."
"May I respectfully counter with a suggestion ?" He smiles a fox's smile, one that she can't help but be charmed by.
"You may."
"I submit that you are this sort of person," he says casually, leaning behind her and pressing his lips to the skin below her earlobes, "and this sort of person," now a deft unlacing of her shirt, "and this sort of person." He kneels before her and kisses her, pulling her flush against him, letting her rock him backwards as she returns in kind. They part a little, and he strokes stray hairs from out of her eyes.
"You seem to know me," she murmurs.
"I find you familiar and pleasing," he agrees. "And terrifying by turns. Just the sort of girl to sail with."
"I'm sorry, Jack." She leans her head against his, nipping his neck thoughtfully. "That now and then I drift so far away, and leave you no sign." He takes this and seems to consider it, playing with the ends of her lacings.
"Well, you could," he says. And lifts the shirt up over her head with her encouragement. He pretends to examine the shirt and ignore the fairer territory below it. "For example- this would make a particularly good flag." She yelps in outrage and he drags her onto the floor on top of him.
Afterwards, lying against him on the bare floor, she dreams of nothing but great grey-winged cranes, breaking their embroidered lines to spread pinion feathers against the evening sky; unfettered, bright and free.
In the spare light of an oil lamp, wick floating on the last thickening dregs and glass half-clouded with soot, she watches her man sleep.
His face is turned inward, elbow flung above his head- there's no mystery to Jack when he's unconscious, no glamour; just the muted copper of his skin, the honesty of his half-open mouth; the yielding iron bands of his arms the only only anchor she's pulled steadily by, anymore. If he were awake, she'd ask for the sound of his voice, the rough syllables of rolling Chinese that he uses to barter in the marketplace; and sometimes, in the darkest watches of the night, to comfort her into dreams: wo ai ni, yíng huǒ chóng, sung into her hair. Elizabeth crooks her head, narrows her eyes; but she can't stop looking at him. If the world were starlight and glass, he'd be her reflection there, a hundred cat's eyes.
She tried to move on, in some long-ago life she barely remembers; tried, even, to hate him for spoiling her in some abstract sense. She can't blame him, can't ignore him, can't reject him and herself by extension. She's aware that she was once a rose in bloom, thornless and cultivated, corseted. So unlike herself now, and yet more like than ever. He spins her like a common daisy in a sudden wind.
When she climbs above and past him, lingering with her hips resting over his, relishing the slow, sleepy way he turns and rises to her; she closes her eyes and lies beside him, her face in the valley of his shoulderblades, her hands cradled in the warmth of his spine. Distantly, she remembers satin- not like this, this skin that flares to life under her own. She's still surprised at how soft he is in sleep. He is a hundred little stones at the bottom of a riverbed, smoothed by the pulse of a thousand years- no. Ten thousand.
"You're not sleeping," he says blurrily, from over his shoulder.
"I will." He seems to accept this while she shuts her eyes tighter, and a million stars flare and die behind her eyelids. She's underwater, smelling the salt in her hair; she's a bird, smelling the sun in his. When she opens her lashes everything seems brighter.
"I don't know what you look at, Lizzie," he sighs. She knows his vanity does not extend that far.
She wraps her long, skinny arms around his middle, which is warm and pressed in lines from the bed-linen. The trails in his flesh are like the rails of the ship, and as easy and appealing to run her hands along.
"I'm not just looking."
"Ah." He rolls and rests his chin on her hair, while she puts her ear to the shell of his pulse. "That's alright, then."
Jack sings her to sleep.
Afterwards, lying against him on the bare floor, she dreams of nothing but great grey-winged cranes, breaking their embroidered lines to spread pinion feathers against the evening sky; unfettered, bright and free.
Did she ever dream of it ? Silk, satin; she knew the road to China from books, but she'd never imagined the mouth of the Xi Jiang so wide, as to encompass the long deltas and floods in one leonine smile.
"Pearl," Jack says, from behind her; trust him to know the furthest point of her horizon. "It flows from the Zhū Jiāng. The pearl river." She swivels on the rail, lets her hips rest, warm and solid, against his.
"Named for your ship, of course, O Humble One." He tugs at his sparse beard and grins.
"Local legend, darling."
They trade in the marketplace for rice and oil, new rope- slick and fine between her fingers. All around her are birds in cages, glittering beaks and talons, fresh fish still steaming from the sea in the coolness of morning air. They eat fried dumplings on a bridge, feet dangling over the water; children stop to touch her hair and grin at her, Jack watching and laughing at her discomfort.
She lingers over the finer fabrics, at the more elegant stalls. Here are robes so soft and light they slip around her shoulders like a coat of fireflies. Embroidery of silver and gold, forming perfect lotus blossoms, a flock of herons, the first crystalline snows. Jack says a few words in a language she doesn't catch, and the shopkeepers pin her hair up and turn her around. In a snap of folding cloth she's a new temple to some sun-goddess in gold and cream; flushed skin where the sun has painted, disappearing into ivory shadows.
It frightens her suddenly, and she startles like a faun, slipping her narrow shoulders out and letting the fabric slide away.
"I'm not-" she begins, and chokes on it. "I don't want this." Jack's eyes darken into moths, that seem to flutter around her skin. "I'm not this person," she murmurs, buried in silk, so surely that she can feel the overturned earth on her coffin. He doesn't question it, doesn't pause.
They buy new canvas, very sturdy and very cheap.
She's in a mood the next day; all sharp words and sulky rosebud mouth, which she knows Jack loves, but she doesn't have the heart to care. She harasses and needles him to the very end of his tether, at which point he snaps and hauls her into the cabin to wrap her around his waist; but instead she sits in a chair and stares out the window, and bats away his roving hands.
"You could help, dearest," he says calmly, placing a deft kiss on the inside of her thigh.
"I'd prefer to be left alone." He stares at her for a long moment, sizing up the danger of staying, and seems to tip a scale internally.
"Suit yourself." She frowns more deeply and sets herself with crossed arms against the ledge. The door shuts after him, though she doesn't turn to look.
And this is the problem: she has never turned to look. All manner of things have dropped from her world like a ship without a bottom, and she has rowed swiftly forward with all the feeling of a stone.
Her father had indulged her in nearly all respects- Elizabeth, being so narrow, had a taste for fine things; for softness and comfort, for silk in the summer and satin in the winter, for freshly laundered linen sheets, worn soft as feathers by her body in dreaming. It was never vanity, only the bliss of experience and a delight in the senses that pulled at her from all directions.
She knows her father is dead. Her father is dead and Will is gone and her senses seem dull, and she can only run her hands along her arms and chafe at the meanness of things, and wonder why she never cried.
"What sort of person are you, then ?" he says, from the shadows. She sits upright, awake; never having noticed a descent into sleep. The lamps are lit, he must have moved around her, never making a sound.
"I don't know."
"May I respectfully counter with a suggestion ?" He smiles a fox's smile, one that she can't help but be charmed by.
"You may."
"I submit that you are this sort of person," he says casually, leaning behind her and pressing his lips to the skin below her earlobes, "and this sort of person," now a deft unlacing of her shirt, "and this sort of person." He kneels before her and kisses her, pulling her flush against him, letting her rock him backwards as she returns in kind. They part a little, and he strokes stray hairs from out of her eyes.
"You seem to know me," she murmurs.
"I find you familiar and pleasing," he agrees. "And terrifying by turns. Just the sort of girl to sail with."
"I'm sorry, Jack." She leans her head against his, nipping his neck thoughtfully. "That now and then I drift so far away, and leave you no sign." He takes this and seems to consider it, playing with the ends of her lacings.
"Well, you could," he says. And lifts the shirt up over her head with her encouragement. He pretends to examine the shirt and ignore the fairer territory below it. "For example- this would make a particularly good flag." She yelps in outrage and he drags her onto the floor on top of him.
Afterwards, lying against him on the bare floor, she dreams of nothing but great grey-winged cranes, breaking their embroidered lines to spread pinion feathers against the evening sky; unfettered, bright and free.
In the spare light of an oil lamp, wick floating on the last thickening dregs and glass half-clouded with soot, she watches her man sleep.
His face is turned inward, elbow flung above his head- there's no mystery to Jack when he's unconscious, no glamour; just the muted copper of his skin, the honesty of his half-open mouth; the yielding iron bands of his arms the only only anchor she's pulled steadily by, anymore. If he were awake, she'd ask for the sound of his voice, the rough syllables of rolling Chinese that he uses to barter in the marketplace; and sometimes, in the darkest watches of the night, to comfort her into dreams: wo ai ni, yíng huǒ chóng, sung into her hair. Elizabeth crooks her head, narrows her eyes; but she can't stop looking at him. If the world were starlight and glass, he'd be her reflection there, a hundred cat's eyes.
She tried to move on, in some long-ago life she barely remembers; tried, even, to hate him for spoiling her in some abstract sense. She can't blame him, can't ignore him, can't reject him and herself by extension. She's aware that she was once a rose in bloom, thornless and cultivated, corseted. So unlike herself now, and yet more like than ever. He spins her like a common daisy in a sudden wind.
When she climbs above and past him, lingering with her hips resting over his, relishing the slow, sleepy way he turns and rises to her; she closes her eyes and lies beside him, her face in the valley of his shoulderblades, her hands cradled in the warmth of his spine. Distantly, she remembers satin- not like this, this skin that flares to life under her own. She's still surprised at how soft he is in sleep. He is a hundred little stones at the bottom of a riverbed, smoothed by the pulse of a thousand years- no. Ten thousand.
"You're not sleeping," he says blurrily, from over his shoulder.
"I will." He seems to accept this while she shuts her eyes tighter, and a million stars flare and die behind her eyelids. She's underwater, smelling the salt in her hair; she's a bird, smelling the sun in his. When she opens her lashes everything seems brighter.
"I don't know what you look at, Lizzie," he sighs. She knows his vanity does not extend that far.
She wraps her long, skinny arms around his middle, which is warm and pressed in lines from the bed-linen. The trails in his flesh are like the rails of the ship, and as easy and appealing to run her hands along.
"I'm not just looking."
"Ah." He rolls and rests his chin on her hair, while she puts her ear to the shell of his pulse. "That's alright, then."
Jack sings her to sleep.
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no subject
Date: Friday, April 6th, 2007 02:18 pm (UTC)And I can just see the silken sheen and colours of Asia in my mind. Wonderful.
(Although, I feel dutied, being a China native, to add that strictly speaking, Jack would be talking in Cantonese in this part of the country, and not Mandarin. *g*)
no subject
Date: Friday, April 6th, 2007 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 02:00 pm (UTC)"I find you familiar and pleasing," he agrees. "And terrifying by turns. Just the sort of girl to sail with." Great!
no subject
Date: Thursday, April 12th, 2007 06:36 pm (UTC)I very much like and admire Elizabeth, and even maybe identify with her a little. I'm still waiting for mainstream fiction to give us more heroes/heroines like her; strong women, fierce women, unapologetic women.
Thank you so.
no subject
Date: Saturday, April 14th, 2007 12:57 am (UTC)"If the world were starlight and glass, he'd be her reflection there, a hundred cat's eyes."
Poetry, my dear Watson. :)