Eliana had spent her whole life looking for something: freedom. The daughter of a whore, she had expected to find freedom inside of a coin purse rather than on the arm of a man, and, for much of her life, she'd believed that was where she found it. Why, then, was she so dissatisfied? Why, then, was she forced to steal and lie, to sometimes murder, and to whore herself out just to scrape by? She was as much a slave to the coin as her mother had been to the madame...and for what? For a lie that she had repeated to herself so many times that she had actually started to believe it...
It wasn't until he was gone that Eliana knew she had missed her chance. Love wasn't the same as freedom -- the young, naive girl whose heart had been broken in Connlaoth had thought that they were. It was a mistake she had sworn to never make again, so when she found herself falling in love, she had run from it: she had left him sitting alone in a tavern without so much as a goodbye or an explanation... He was hardly the first she'd left behind -- and some of them she had truly cared for.
But there was something different about Gherrick, something that had crawled into her heart and warmed it, something that could not be covered with ice. And that something ached, and no amount of wine or sex could drown it.
She was a damned fool.
Eliana robbed that merchant blind and slipped away in the dead of the night. She was a woman who had made her own way in the world -- she fended for herself and admitted when she made a mistake. And leaving Gherrick was, perhaps, one of her greatest. By the time she reached the tavern in which she had left him, however, he was gone...and even if he wouldn't have her now, even if he couldn't look at her, she needed to tell him how very sorry she was, that she had been so afraid of making a mistake that she had made an even bigger one in leaving...and to thank him for making her realize the truth: the freedom she sought would never be purchased with coin, and she would never find it alone.
Gherrick had told her where his ship was anchored, and it was to his ship that she went. He was a pirate -- the sea was in his blood, and he would come back to his ship, eventually. A few words and coins were exchanged with the harbor master, and she could breathe a sigh of relief: his ship remained moored where he had left her, still awaiting the return of her captain. But what, she wondered as she stared upwards at the boat, was the best way to proceed? Ingratiate herself with the crew? (Easily done, she was sure -- pirates were thieves, and she had been slipping in and out of their gangs for years.) Hire a look-out? (There were plenty of kids on the docks here; surely, she could convince them for a fair price to notify her should Gherrick return.) Leave him a letter? And if she did that, should she ask him to meet her somewhere, or should she just tell him on paper what she had come all this way to tell him in person?
(Soundtrack for this post:
Foo Fighters - Best of You)
