Beauty, whose conquests still are made
O’er hearts by cowards kept, or else betray’d!
Weak victor! Who thyself destroy’d must be
When sickness storms, or time besieges thee!
Thou unwholesome thaw to frozen age!
Thou strong wine, which youth’s fever dost enrage,
Thou tyrant which leav’st no man free!
Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be!
Thou murth’rer which hast kill’d, and devil which wouldst damn me.
-Abraham Cowley, from “Beauty”

Almalure had been having a very, very nice dream. It was one of the usual few that recycled themselves about her sleep cycle. When some variation on these visions was not present, she was having a nightmare. This particular instance, she found herself lounging in a very large palace, perhaps not unlike something Cleopatra might have called her own, expect for the fact that the windows did not look out on Egypt but on a particularly lovely region of Andalusia. It soon became apparent that she was no one’s mistress but her own and was waited on by handsome young men willing to please her in any way she wished. Very…gifted…young men, she had to say. Men and women who at one point had been her friends were often about her. Old clients, too: the Corsican without a name whose life she had reluctantly sewed back inside of him; Señor Juan Perez, who had first pulled her out of the Galician brothel; the English Lord, one Earl of Canterbury who had opened her eyes to the rest of the world; the irrepressible Marquis de Loincourt, a Frenchman of impeccable taste; Don Jevez, of which there is much to be left unsaid. Even her current client, Captain Sparrow, made a cameo, nearly getting himself killed (and therefore killing) the nameless Corsican over some past vendetta. It was all very amusing in her dream: you know how Corsican’s are.

As these visions of past and present scrambled through her brain, the comfortable position she had taken up upon Jack’s chest had been taken from her. As a general rule, Almalure was a very light sleeper. However, a mix of little sleep and no caffeine had taken its toll. Where once the whisper of voices or heavy tread if boots would have summoned her from the arms of sleep, she had just shifted closer to her human cushion. Only after she had been removed and propped up against the poll was the torn from the aforementioned dream, entirely loathe to leave it. Her eyes fluttered in bleary perception, bringing the situation into focus. The sunlight threw the glint of polished weaponry back into her eyes. In a moment, she was sitting bolt upright against the post. Well, then, sword out for this again. She did so hate this, and was not to sure of the aim of either, as they were both thoroughly inebriated. An incredulous eyebrow snaked up her face. This was going to be very interesting. Making little noise, she shifter into a position not quite so near the blades to watch. What else could she do?

A L M A L U R E

Age cannot whither her, nor her custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where she most satisfies
-William Shakespeare, "Antony and Cleopatra"