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It's cold tonight.
The wind of Nassau smells like the sea, and you never know what it will bring.
Eleanor's blonde hair knows the salt, the smell of blood of that wind, but not in which direction the wind will push her this time. But she will follow it. And she will find a way to stand. As she has ever done.
“At what price...”
Eleanor Guthrie is a merchant, she knows everything has a price. For every movement, for every decision, wrong or right, there's something to pay. Something to risk. Something to lose. Something to sacrifice.
The more she goes on in her decision to free Nassau, the more she feels her world falling apart. Now, it's like walking in the dark. She is walking on a rope, standing over the ocean. The fog hides the other side.
The winds moves him too.
Hanged, all day.
He slightly oscillates. In the dark, she can perceive it, when the moonlight hits a pendant, a necklace, on that body. Then, she sees a brief, quick flash of light. Then again, captain Vane sinks in the dark.
Eleanor trembles and tightly holds the shawl on her shoulders, but no cloth could warm up this iced chill.
He is watching her.
All day, in any moment, from any direction, he watched her. And those cursed eyes give her no peace. God, may she take him off from the noose with her very hands and give him back to the ocean. So hanged, over her head, he looks at her, he watches her, he judges her.
Move him from there. Move him from there!
There, where she hanged him, where he will stay, as a horrible warning, a judgment swinging over her head.
He knew her well, captain Vane. But this didn't save him from the gallows.
At very least, she took some satisfaction hitting him, punching that impertinent face that didn't know rules or laws.
She took her revenge.
It is over.
Vane is dead.
Nassau must know. Nassau must see.
Even if she must lose her mind.
When Charles found himself with no support under his feet, Eleanor made a sigh of relief. For all that time she was worried that another fucking pirate would have tried to save him. She watched around, worried like a thief, anxious like a criminal, to keep under control the square.
No, Vane was abandoned.
And now he was dancing hanging on the gallows.
But her first satisfaction lasted just one instant. Quickly, the Guthrie became pale.
Vane was looking at her. Was he challenging her? Was he supplicating her? Was he imploring her?
She found herself helpless and unarmed under those eyes. Those blue eyes she hated, she disdained, she tried to understand what they were hiding.
The noose clenched.
“Is the bone broken? Is he still alive?”
She hated the hideous sounds he was making.
Shut up, shut up, for God's sake! And stop watching me!
It was Eleanor to betray him.
But this time, it was Charles to pay.
She is alive, she is strong. But the sand changes, moves, and there's always the risk that the ground will disappear under your shoes. To leave you hanging, on the gallows. If the Governor died, she would be the next one.
No, the Governor won't die. She would not let it happen, for sincere affection, but also because this would give her a place in Nassau, where everybody hated her.
Those awful people won't see hanging, strangled by a noose. Those hideous men won't come to see under the Guthrie whore's skirt.
Elanor won't permit it.
Charles, instead, didn't even prevent.
A sigh died in his strangled throat, clenched by the noose, and those dead eyes wouldn't tell anything more.
No judgment from that mouth, Eleanor strangled it.
No sigh from those lips, Eleanor stitched them.
No expression on that face, Eleanor punched it until it was bruised and swollen.
No love in that chest, Eleanor gave him back only death.