White and Black Pearls 3 - Ten Pearl Strand

Chapter Three

Celeste paused just before she entered the first tunnel, frowning and lifting her head. She’d heard a noise just then, almost a soft cry bubbling up from underwater… a familiar one.

The woman turned back around the way she’d come, scrambling back out of the hole as fast as she could. “Jack!” she cried out desperately as the skies saw him, washed up on shore like driftwood. He wasn’t moving. “Jack!”


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Calypso’s head lifted and she let out a sharp cry of anger before dropping the spear she’d been holding inside the prison cell. “He’s on the surface!” she belted out. “On the shore!” The goddess ran out of the cell and back up the stairs to the outcropping, to go back the way they’d come.

Barbossa found himself impressed; he hadn’t thought anybody could actually move that fast while in dresses that restricting, but he followed after her anyhow, though not before grabbing up a few items off the floor and putting them in his pockets, including a very curious looking clump of black fungus.

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“No more bread rolls…” Jack groaned weakly.

“Whatever you want Jack,” Celeste replied in a whisper. She was sitting on the shore right in the wet sand, her cloak and dress getting messy as she held Jack’s head in her lap and stroked his hair and chest. “Just please wake up.”

His eyelashes fluttered as he let out another quiet moan.

“Please Jack. I love you. Wake up.”

Surely this is a dream, Jack thought in his strange, half-lucid state. He was hearing Celestiana tell him she loved him – that was definitely the dream part – and he was also hearing the roar of the tide going out, that part wasn’t a dream he was sure. That rather annoying groaning noise was a bother as well…

Oh wait. That groaning was him. He closed his mouth slowly, moving his tongue in his mouth and feeling how sluggish and thick it was, before opening his eyes just a little, squinting at the bright sunlight. “Unnh,” he croaked intelligently.

“Jack,” Celeste gasped out, her voice filled with sorrow and joy.

Jack’s eyes opened a little more as he felt a warm body curl around his head and give him an upside-down hug, leaving his face pressed against a set of rather nice breasts. It was not that he didn’t like it, but he also had this strange fondness for breathing, so he struggled within the hug. When the woman sat back up, Jack was left staring up into Celestiana’s face, and he was left speechless as his eyes widened.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Celeste whispered before covering her mouth and trying to suppress a soft sob.

He sat up slowly – pausing to touch the back of his head where he had a nasty headache and a swelling bump – and looked at Celestiana warily. “Is this a hallucination?” he asked her as she took hold of his hands and kissed them. His eyebrows shot up when she laced her fingers between his and leaned in, kissing him on the mouth. “This is definitely a hallucination,” he mumbled against her lips.

“If you’re trying to wreck the moment you’re doing it rather well,” Celeste breathed, a soft laugh coming out before it was chased with a gentle gasping sob. “I was so terrified for you, I was so…” She lifted her head and looked at him.

They both looked horrible. Jack was emaciated and filthy, covered in dried blood and cuts, and he looked like a prisoner of war. Celeste looked weary and tired, her hair and clothes in a mess and her face and eyes portraying the deep weight that had been and still rested on her shoulders from the strain of worrying about Jack, searching the entire planet with the skies to try and spot him, and keeping her wall of winds up at World’s End while inspecting every soul that passed.

“Jack Sparrow I love you,” Celeste assured as she pulled his arms to wrap around her. “No matter who you have shared a bed with, no matter what you’ve done… there is not a deed on this planet that you can accomplish and not a thing you can say,” she paused to sniffle as her cheeks darkened and she spoke words she never would have spoken even five or twenty years ago. “…To make me stop loving you. I will never let you die by my watch.”

His arms slipped about her waist as guided but Jack still wasn’t buying this and it was obvious in his expression. “I don’t suppose you have any rum on you?” he asked the hallucination. When she shook her head no, he grunted in disappointment. “Davy Jones didn’t have any either.”

“Jack,” Celeste mumbled, “You’re talking nonsense. Davy Jones is dead. I watched you and William kill him.”

“Not as dead as you think,” Jack retorted. He paused then, and looked Celestiana over. Jack tilted his head to one side, then the other, pursing his lips and trying to decide if hallucination-Celeste was as pretty as the real one or not. “Push your lips out and say ‘Jack Sparrow you are the king of everything and the best pirate in the world,’” he suggested. As an afterthought he added, “While naked. Yeah, get that dress off, hurry.”

Seconds passed before Celeste’s eyes narrowed and she set her jaw, her mouth straightening in a hard, angry line.

“Oh, bugger.” Jack started, as though struck. “You’re the real Celestiana aren’t you?” he mumbled apprehensively, curling his fingers against her bodice and turning his face to the side in a growing wince, waiting to be struck for real.

“Jack, where’s the pearl?” Celeste interjected, wanting to leave the conversation of the last few moments in the past so she could forget about it and try to forgive it.

He blinked then, and turned to face her once more. “Barbossa took it,” he said frankly. “Shouldn’t you know that already?”

“No,” Celeste said urgently, her patience thinning, “Not the Black Pearl. The pearl! My pearl. The last one. It’s the most important one Jack, it’s the Seed Pearl.”

He did not have time to ask her what a Seed Pearl was.

“That is a very good question!” a familiar voice called out angrily. Calypso’s silhouette breached the shoreline a few yards away, her back to the setting sun. “Hand it over Jack Sparrow!” She thrust her hand into the air palm-up, her expression wicked as she didn’t even regard Celeste’s presence.

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More to come...