Work Text:
petrified
/ˈpet.rə.faɪd/
adj.
1. converted into stone through a slow process of mineralization
-
used to describe something that has stopped changing and developing, and often belongs to the past
2. overwhelmingly fearful
My love is like an orange,
petrified, far from the tree;
just questing for buried treasure
when I at once noticed thee.
Mere organic matter changed,
over time, minerally,
as when I fled marriage arranged,
for a life of piracy.
I feared my heart to be made of stone,
having not found the love of my life,
so I handed my heart over to thee,
expecting naught, as with my old wife.
So wonderfully I had erred;
scars of my shortcomings run rife.
But it an orange! thou had declared,
piercing me sweetly with thy knife.
I cherish my half orange;
my daughter has the other,
to whom gave I one half my heart,
for I could not her mother.
But, lo, thou Eighth World Wonder!
Thou did treasure uncover;
‘tis utterly thine to plunder,
nay, not by any another!
“M’kay, are we done? I don’t know if I want to write about you and Blackbeard doing any ‘plundering’.”
Stede tears his glazed eyes away from the ocean view of the porthole window and looks at Lucius as if he forgot he were there. “Blackbeard? Oh!… Who says anything about—… No, this is… This is merely some recreational art. Rhetorical lyric. Fiction.”
Lucius mouths an extremely unconvinced “right” and corks the bottle of ink. “Well, perhaps let’s stop here for the day before it gets too recreational for my taste? It would be a bit awkward.”
“Yes, yes, alright!” Stede’s voice goes high as he waves a hand animatedly. “I’ll just finish it myself if I’m to have such an opinionated audience.” He huffs a sigh to collect himself.
Lucius whispers to himself as he scribbles quickly on the page’s margins, “By...Stede...Bonnet...Recorded...by...Lucius...Nathaniel...Spriggs...the...Second…” He snaps the journal shut and meets Stede’s raised eyebrow. “What? Just giving credit where credit’s due.”
Stede’s face relaxes into the comfortable expression he tends to don with his trusted scribe. “That’ll be all then, Lucius. Thank you.”
Lucius sets the journal and quill pen on the plush central ottoman. With an “Alrightseeyoulatercaptain” and a quick but sincere thin smile, he leaves the captain's quarters.
Later, but not too much later, the next page is continued in different handwriting, slightly crooked as if the writer had been hunched in bed rather than utilizing a flat desk, likely written by candlelight indulgently on the calm, undulating nighttime water:
Depthless siren eyes,
O great pirate feared,
with vast grey ocean waves
upon thy black beard.
Thou fine creature of smoke
blindly embraced my weird,
had foreign feelings awoke
since in my life thou ‘ppeared.
Unto many a heart
thou deliver a fright,
but as for unto mine own
only bestow delight.
No more the place I once called ‘home’
I left after making things right,
knowing my soul shall not sail alone
with thee forever in my sight.
God granted me fortune
when at long last found we,
on the coast St. Augustine,
my treasured love for thee.
Dare I pray it stays savored?
Blessed to be with on the sea
am I, unworthy and favored,
in thy priceless company.
In tender honeyed union,
lips joined were upon that beach;
thenceforth my affection is thine,
my Captain Edward Teach.