It Begins, Jon

[Lilah Paige]

Lilah hadn't gotten any sleep the night before. Ever since she'd left Jon to clean up the dinner he'd brought, and gone back inside, she hadn't been able to do anything but sit up or pace around and think about what she'd agreed to do. She could hardly believe that she had actually sai dthat she would go withhim to... she didn't even know where it was she would be going. Maybe there wasn't a set destination, and Jon just sailed around wherever the wind took him.

She didn't have a clue what she was doing, or what she might be needing to take along. Along with those questions, came the worries that just had to do with leaving. Leaving the home that she had been in since she was five years old. She'd taken care of the home, and the people in it for years, and what was she going to do without that? She'd always had her place here, and without it.... what was she supposed to do?

Throughout the day she had gone along doing all of the chores that she was supposed to do every day, cooking, cleaning, anything that she was asked to do. There was enough to keep her occupied, but she still had time to stand in the middle of her little room and look around at the things she had. What would she take with her? She knew she couldn't take most of it, but what was she going to need?

She'd ended up packing her things into an averaged sized sack, mostly things that she would need. She brought a spare dress, a brush, a cloth to was herself with, and that was pretty much it. But there were a few other things that she'd taken , that were a little less useful, but more important to her. She had a few items that had belonged to her parents, that she could never leave behind.

Her mother had owned a silver chained necklace, with a beautiful blue gem in the middle. It was modest, but very elegent and beautiful. She'd hidden it when her parents things were being sold, along with a pocket watch that had belonged to her father, with his name engraved in it. She also took one other thing. Her father's pipe. She didn't smoke, but she always thought that she could still smell the scent of his tobacco.

They were little things, and two of them might havebeen extremely valuable, but they were the world to her. If she had them, she felt like maybe she could really go through with the whole thing. When her masters had gone to sleep, Lilah wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, and grabbed her bag as she headed outside the manor for the last time and started walking to the main road.

[Captain Jonathan Ballentine]

Since the night before, Jon had been just worrying himself. Thoughts of rejection kept running through his mind, and he was convinced that Lilah wasn’t going to come. He just kept telling himself that she knew that coming with him was a mistake, and there was nothing that he could do to change her mind. It had been that bad at one point that he had almost decided not to go back for her at all. That sounds horrific, but he had told himself so many times that she wanted to stay where she was that it made a kind of weird sense to him.

Luckily, he managed to break free of the cycle and do what he knew he needed to do. On one side of Port Royal, he had organised transportation straight to Tortuga. It had cost more because of the promise that a woman was coming too, but it was worth it. Jon had even been running around all day to get around his business faster. He had probably visited everyone individually on the island, and he acted completely like an ordinary citizen, paying for everything and being terribly polite.

Firstly, he had gone to the blacksmith to sharpen and strengthen his sword and daggers. He had moved along to purchase more ammunition for his single gun. Jon had even spent a couple of hours with the local tailor sorting out some of his clothes before he went for the rest of the supplies. Food, water, soap – he had to – and all the rest of it were packed and ready on Jon’s small boat, hidden around the other side of the island. It was all ready. Now, he just needed to know whether he would be going alone or not.

Out on the dirt track, Jon was about ten minutes late for when he wanted to be there, and saw Lilah already there. She even had a bag filled with her odds and ends, making Jon smile widely. All he wanted to do was shout, ‘you’re really coming!’ like a schoolboy, but he managed to control himself. Instead, he walked right up to her, the smile happily on his expression. “Are you ready?” he asked, holding out a hand, offering to carry her belongings for her. “We have a fair walk ahead.”

[Lilah Paige]

Lilah had been waiting for a while before the captain had come to collect her, like he'd promised. She had left the house as soon as she'd gotten the chance, worried that if she'd stuck around, she might have lost her nerve. It was better that she just get out, and once she was on the road, there was no turning back, so she just stood their and waiting, hoping that he didn't forget about her.

As the minutes passed, she wondered if he might hve gone without her, but not too much time later, she saw him walking towards her. It was official, this was all really happening, and she wasn't about to turn back now. Her determination had strengthened, and she felt like this was somethign that she needed to do. It was important, even if she didn't know why, just yet.

"Yes, I'm ready."

She wasn't worried about walking. She was and had always been a hard worker, so she didn't tire easily. When he offered to take her bag from her, she smiled anf handed it over for him. It was kid of wierd to be treated like this, but she wasn't about to complain about it. She might as well enjoy the ride, wherever it ended up taking her. She started walking, letting him lead the way to wherever he had his ship.

"Where are we going, Captain?"

When it came right down to it, it didn't actually matter. Wherever Jon was setting sail for, it didn't mean anything to Lilah. The thing that matter was just the simple fact that they were sailing away, away from Port Royal, and away from the life she had known. On to new things, wherever they ended up going. But even if it didn't change things much one way or another, she was still curious.

[Captain Jonathan Ballentine]

Taking her bag, the captain then turned and led the way away from the manor. He couldn’t believe that Lilah was actually coming with him. Imagine if he hadn’t returned for her, and she had been standing on the track alone? All of her hopes for dreams to come would have been destroyed. Being left out in the cold was one of the worst things that could happen to anyone. And when she had gone back, what if her family saw her with the bag and had just thrown her out? It didn’t bear thinking about.

“Jon, please. We’re not on deck, or in front of the rest of the crew,” he said. When he introduced her to his faithful friends, she would have to call him ‘captain’. Otherwise, there would be talk of preference to a new girl, and there would be a few out there that would hate that. Respect and the rest of it had to be earned out on the sea, not because of the life you happened to be born into. Everyone had to have their own merits. “And… we’re off to the cove at the other side of Port Royal. I have a boat hidden there where I’ve kept all of my supplies.”

It would be a fair trek, but it would be worth it. Jon had had to walk farther than that by a great deal before, so he wasn’t bothered by it. He hoped that Lilah’s running around after the family back in the manor had prepared her for something like this. “After that, we’re going to Tortuga. My crew are there. Plus, I need barrels of rum and the rest of it for the men. The Dalliance is in port there,” he smiled. Oh, that ship of his. Unless you had that love of the sea, and had worked so hard to become a captain, no one could understand the love for something like a ship. It was Jon’s first and only command, and there would never be a time where he would willingly leave her for another ship. She meant too much for him, and carried too many memories.

[Lilah Paige]

When they had just been talking, her calling him Jon had seemed alright, but if she was supposed ot be a part of his crew, she wasn't really his equal. She hadn't been before, but it was official now, and she knew that you had to sow respect like that to the people you worked for. But it seemed he wasn't changing things, and he still wanted her to call him Jon. At least when they were alone.

"Tortuga? I supposed I might have guessed that one."

Pirates were known for going there, weren't they? They went there to have a good time or to find a crew, or some other reason that wasn't really mentionable. It made sense, but she wasn't sure what a girl like her would do in a palce like that. Come to think of it, she wasn;t sure what she was suposed to be doing on the ship, itself. She wasn't a passenger, and would have to pull her own weight.

"What will you have me do for you on the ship?"

She had a number of skills, but couldn't be sure which of them would be valued on a pirate ship. Clearly, he wasn't like others, and she would have to stp listening to all the things she had heard, and go by experience. She could clean and do a fair bit of cooking, but would they even have the kind of food that could be cooked, or care about keeping things tidy?

[Captain Jonathan Ballentine]

“Hey now,” Jon jumped in. Saying ‘might have guessed’ was probably another insult. “As soon as you started walking with me, you became a pirate too. Well… technically it’ll be when you get on board my ship, but there’s not a lot of difference. You can’t keep coming out with things like that. It sounds like you think you’re better than us.” By ‘us,’ Jon meant his crew in general. Yes, there were tensions at times, and he wasn’t exactly best friends with everyone on board, but they all respected each other. Even if it was grudgingly at times. “Tortuga is a safe place. As long as I’m with you. I may not look that strong, but I’m fast… plus, I have some legends of my own going.” The last he grinned. If Lilah wandered off, that could be dangerous, but he was determined to make sure that she would appear on The Dalliance in perfect health. And he wanted to make her much more excited about the whole thing.

But what to do with her on board? “Well, you can start by helping out the cook and washing clothes. Not glamorous, but it’s a start. Then, I’ll have one of the crew show you around and show you the basics. Climbing the rigging, working in the crow’s nest, working a cannon… oh, I hope you don’t mind dressing as a man. Trousers are much easier to run around a ship with,” he added as an afterthought. A dress could get caught in something, which was always a hazard. Imagine if Lilah did that, and made a laughing stock of herself on the first day? Not good.

“Anyway, we’ll have to go from there. If you’re a natural, it’ll be easy. If not… well, when I’m free, I’ll see how much I can help you. But pirates, we never leave one of our own. On my ship, anyway.”

[Lilah Paige]

"I didn't meant it that way.... I'm sorry. I'm a little nervous."

She often had a way of letting her mouth slip away from her, and things were spoken that probaably shouldn't have been. She was used to having a certain banter with this man, but she realized that she had to be more formal now. She couldn't just go about saying things about pirates... and he was right. She was leaving with him, and becoming a part of his crew. At least for the time being, she was a pirate.

Either way, she hadn't really been insulting pirates, not intentionally. She'd just meant that Tortuga was the most talked about place, in terms of where pirates went when they weren't out searching for ill gotten gold, or something. Another thing that she wasn't about to say to him. Lilah looked at the ground as they walked, her mind on so many different things all at once.

"Alright."

His work plan sounded good enough. She would be doing the same things she was doing here... so what was the real differnce? That fact that it was her choice to be doing it there? The possibility that she would be changing jobs, to do more tings around the ship? Work was work, wasn't it? Why was doing work on the sea supposed to be more free than doing it on land? Maybe she'd find out soon enough... maybe there was no difference, and she would be heading back before too long.

"Trousers? I didn't have any..."

[Captain Jonathan Ballentine]

“It’s alright. Don’t worry.” Jon smiled, patting her shoulder with his hand. Even if he couldn’t be anything else, he could always be the girl’s mentor when it came to the sea. The freedom was wonderful. Yes, everyone worked, but it was definitely different out on a ship, far from home. Just because you changed location, that didn’t mean that the usual laws of the world had completely disappeared. Clothes still got dirty, and people still needed to be fed. Even though it may seem the same to an outsider, on the ship everyone knew that they pulled together for greater goals. They were all a family out there, and had to rely on everyone else for a comfortable existence.

The fact that Lilah didn’t have any trousers wasn’t too much of a problem, though. “I didn’t think you would,” the captain admitted. “But, I think that with a few alterations, some of mine would fit you. I have enough to spare.” Jon, unfortunately, was one of those men where fashion and looking good was important. It had gone back to his year of becoming a true gentlemen. Some of the teachings he had lost over the years, but others would haunt him forever, it seemed.

“We can take a few measurements and I’ll sort those out for you. I’ve never even worn some of the brown pairs,” he then thought aloud. Because Jon had such a thin frame, it would be much easier to fit a pair for Lilah. As long as she didn’t mind, of course. And he would even sew everything together for her, if she gave him her correct measurements. Obviously, that would be in the privacy of his own cabin so none of the rest of his crew could see, of course. Jon was a man of many talents.

[Lilah Paige]

"Thank you. I can adjust them, if you have a needle and thread."

Lilah wasn't against borrowing a pair of trousers to wear, considering she didn't have any of her own, she he was right, it woul dbe smarter to wear them than the dresses she hard. However, looking at the way he was dressed, his clothes were so nice. They were very beautiful, compaired to hers, they looked like they had been made just for him, and they might have.

The idea of her wearing something like that was a little crazy, in her mind. But she kept those thoughts to herself. Maybe the brown ones weren't as classy, which was why he hadn't worn them. As they made their way along, Lilah found herself looking up at the stars high above their heads. She did a lot of star-gazing when she had the time, or when she was out with Marabelle.

They were so beautiful to her, shining so far away. That was freedome to her. Birds were free, flying up high, above the rest of the world and looking down on it like a king. Stars, shining as brightly as they wanted to. That was one reason she loved riding horses so much, to felt like flying if you went fast enough, which she tended to do when she was alone at night.

[Captain Jonathan Ballentine]

“Of course.” Jon probably had a lot of unusual things in his cabin that he possibly couldn’t explain. It was just another quirk to his character. After all, he was weird enough to dress himself in things that possibly only at home in Italy or France. The fine fabric, the bright colours: to here Jon utter an English accent was a little funny. Yes, navymen were people that needed to look respectable, but anything more than that was just showing off. Jon could afford to show off. As captain, he was king of his own castle. His castle just happened to be floating along on the ocean.

Anyway, the trousers were the least that Jon could do, considering he was ripping Lilah away from her home and her roots, near enough. She had agreed, that was true, but he had been the one to give her that chance. If he hadn’t have happened to open his mouth about her coming along, she would be back at the manor now, just getting on with whatever she usually would be doing at this time. If everything went wrong, it would be Jon who would be blamed. He wasn’t an idiot.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” he smiled. The pirate noticed how distracted the girl was, looking upwards. Being out in the ocean, seeing the stars on a calm night… it was wonderful. “I defy you not to sleep out under the stars and not be amazed,” he laughed. “The first time I did it, I thought I had found God.” He shook his head at his own daft thoughts. “I was only… ah… fourteen? It feels like a lifetime ago. It was, really,” he thought aloud. “I’m practically an old man now!”

[Lilah Paige]

"Yes... I feel like I'm on a different world when I look at them."

She almost felt like anything was possible when she got lost in their never ending patterns and their beautiful glow. Almost like they were making promises that there was something else out there, something she couldn't even dream of that was waiting. Lilah had heard that you could wish on a star, but she never had. She could never pick one, it was supposed to be the brightest, right? She couldn't pick.

"Old? How old are you?"

If he'd already been in the navy, working his way through the ranks, and had been a pirate for some time... wow, he really could have been a bit older. She hadn't really given it too much though, because she always got such a youthful vibe from him. The way he smiled, and the way he moved, there was a cetain childishness about his maturity... it that made any sense at all.

[Captain Jonathan Ballentine]

“A new world. I like that.” Jon hadn’t thought of the stars like that before. He enjoyed watching them, and thanked God for them as use as nightly compasses, but he hadn’t thought too in depth about it. The last time that he had done that, he realised how tiny and insignificant he really was in the grand scheme of things. Then, the type of honour that his parents wanted for him seemed pointless. It made more sense to make sure that he was doing what he wanted to do. Maybe Jon wouldn’t make a huge impact on the world around him, but as long as he tried to make others smile, that meant something, didn’t it? And whilst he was on the ride, he would have a good time. Piracy was the only way that Jon could be free, and that was all he wanted. The captain said it time and time again, but that was just how he felt.

He grinned at the woman. “I’ll take that surprised tone as a compliment,” he laughed. She seemed a little shocked to think that he was considering himself as ‘old’. Oh, Jon knew that he had a boyish face, but he knew how to look deeper into himself. That made him much older. “I’m thirty-four. Practically middle aged now,” he lamented. “Why, how old do I look?”

From a woman, that question would usually be barbed full of traps, but now the man was just curious. It would be useful to see how young he could actually pass for. Lilah was still a girl as far as he was concerned, mind. “Are you about… ah… twenty? Something like that? You look too innocent to be much older,” he commented wistfully.

[Lilah Paige]

"Take it as you like."

She hadn't really been meaning it as a compliment, but now that he mentioned it, he did look pretty good, if he was old. He was talking like he was fifty or something, and she knew that it couldn't be that high of a number. When she got the actual age, even though it wasn't as high as her unspoken joking age, it was still higher than she would have expected. She probably wouldn't have guessed any older than twenty eight, maybe twenty nine, but not really.

"I don't know... late twenties, maybe"

He was definitely a lot older than she'd thought. Well, a lot might have been a little bit extreme, but a good number of years. He must really live well, because pirates were known to be aed by their work, weren't they? Hard days in the sun, bad diets, bad grooming... yeah, none of those things really matched the man that she was walking beside at that moment.

Maybe it was just because of Lilah's past, but she wasn't the most trusting.... which was why she was so confused about why she had actually agreed to go along with all of this. She had no idea, but what she did know was that she was praying very hard inside that this wasn't all some kind of a trick. She might not have known what she was hoping to find, but she was hoping to find something.

"Twenty, last month."

[Captain Jonathan Ballentine]

“Late twenties? I’ll remember that,” he grinned. It was probably only because he kept himself clean shaven and all the rest of it, though. He definitely looked good compared to some of the others that were on his ship, making him look even better. Plus, he didn’t go for the silly white wig or anything to show off an important command post. Jon wasn’t one of those men that lost their soul when they reached the position that they were after in life, after all. He wanted to push out all of the boundaries and go even further. Maybe he would make a few more legends before his time on Earth was up yet…

When Lilah told him her age, Jon just nodded. “I remember being twenty. Wonderful age. Still learning, but I was well on the way to becoming an officer. The men were a bit too good to me and I’m afraid I was rather worse for wear in the morning!” Oh, the thought of it! He had deliberately sworn off too much alcohol because he was frightened that he would finish up by upsetting someone higher in command than himself, but his birthday out at sea had been fantastic. However, the hangover in the morning, coupled by the eternal wash of the sea wrecked havoc on his head and stomach. Jon hadn’t really know whether he was even still drunk when he woke up for duty.

Twenty was a good age, definitely. “It’s a good age to start on the sea. You’ve already got an idea of the world, and won’t be changed too much by what you see out there. Harder to learn, though. But I’m sure you’ll do fine.” He let out a little laugh. “I hear you have a very understanding captain!”

[Lilah Paige]

He could be as sure as he liked, but that didn't mean that she would really be ay good at sealife. She had many skills, but she didn't know what she would be able to do that would have anything to do with the ship, and the real sailing parts. She could clean and cook, and those were skills that could be done pretty much anywhere, so it wasn't like she was worried that she would be thrown overboard.

However, if she didn't pick up ny useful skills, and all she was able to do was what she did already, than she wasn't really living a life of the sea. She was just being a maid that happened to be doing it on a boat with a bunch of pirates. It probably didn't matter to the captain, so long as she was useful for at least one thing on the ship. It wouldn't do much to realy feel like part of a the crew, instead of just another servent, though. Well, only time could tell.

"It's definitely promising to be an interesting experiment."

Lilah looked on ahead at the road ahead of them, and knew that the way behind her was bound to look just as scary, if she were to turn around, but she owuldn't do that. She wasn't going to turn around, this was the path she'd chosen. There was one very important question that she hadn't asked, though. Living on land, parchment and pen had been one luxury she'd spent money on. Writing was the one thing that made her feel happy, but paper and water didn't really mix well.

"How difficult is it to get ink and parchment for the time on the ship?"