The League Of Extaordinary Teenagers; A Pirate's Life For Me

I wink at Elizabeth “Thank you father!” We chirp together as our dressing maids get us behind our screens; obviously we’ll be wearing them today when the idiotic snob James Warrington gets promoted to Commodore. Very, very boring, but he has his sights set on Elizabeth, so I won’t let her out of my sight, she simply cannot marry that oaf.

And, I now call Weatherby Swan father, he requested it, and anything to bring me and Elizabeth closer together than too actually be thought of as sisters. We swore a blood oath in our bedroom the first night in Jamaica, in the breezy villa style mansion we call home, too never be separated as long as we both shall live.

I peer at Elizabeth from over the top of our opposite facing screens, seeing the many underskirts and scary looking petticoats. She looks back at me, with a look of ‘may look better when it’s on?’

A corset is fixed firmly around my larger than normal bosom, and pulled tightly, a load grunt escapes from my firmly clamped mouth, as a more ladylike gasp comes from Elizabeth.

“Elizabeth, how’s yours coming?”

“It’s difficult to say” she replied in a breathless voice, obviously it wasn’t just me who found this a cruel and unusual sense of punishment

“I’m told it’s the latest fashion in London.” Weatherby continues, as my lungs start to deflate, as Adrianna, my dresser, pulls the thing even tighter, “Well girls in London must have learnt not to breathe!” I gasp out indignantly. “Now, Eva, watch your tongue!”

“Sorry father” I say, rolling my eyes being the wooden carved screen.

“Elizabeth, how’s yours looking?” He asked

I grip my hands round the sides of the screen and brace myself as the corset pulled even tighter, my head started too spin.

When I stood up straight so my maid could pull on the petticoat and skirts, the tightness of the corset became a little bit more bearable. “Elizabeth?” I whispered, as Weatherby was called away by the butler. I looked out onto the deep blue sea and the green mountains that surrounded it, such an amazing change to the musty grey scenery of London.

“Yes?”

“I think I may feint” I reply

“I know the feeling, what colour’s yours?” She managed to get out

“Blue. Why is everything I receive now blue?” I ask “I mean, I pass comment on the colour of the sea just once.”

“Well, blue does look lovely on your colouring.” She replied trying to lighten my complaining, she knows the real reason is just too fill the empty air space, because James hangs in it like his cloud of white horse hair wig.

Elizabeth is well aware that he likes her, and she despises him in return, well, I despise him, she just dislikes his company. I haven’t had that many suitors, the young handsome sailors father won’t let though the door, and the older ones, more like James , think that it won’t suit them very well, they see me as the unbroken mare, if you will, the rouge pony, because I look nothing like the other girls and women.

“Ready?” Elizabeth asks, standing before me, her dress is pale with tiny embroidered flowers in different pastel shades and darker tones. “Well at least one of us looks lovely” I say, raising my eyebrows.

“Port Royal just isn’t ready for the rather tanned young lady yet miss” My maid said grinning as the two dressers left.  Elizabeth’s hair had been curled and her bonnet put on, I was inclined to not even bother, and just leave my hair to the wild dark mess it liked to be, but Elizabeth sat me down and quickly worked her magic and turned the wild waves into spiralling pin curls, in a half up half down style, after I refused to wear a bonnet.