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Black Pearl Cookie destroyed every sunken ship that was unfortunate enough to be in range of her wrath. The broken planks of wood forcefully stabbed the skin of the sea floor after being flung around in a giant maelstrom. The lone sovereign of the abyss slammed her staff to the ground in a child-like fit as she covered her ears with her hands and shrieked violently.
“I HATE HIM. I HATE HIM. I HATE HIM!”
—Is what she tried to convince herself. It had been many a year since she had allowed herself to feel. To harbor feelings for others was a curse, she had thought. To care is to allow yourself to be vulnerable. To love is to open your heart for betrayal. That is what she had learned when she watched the sea damned herself as she wept for the moonlight’s soft kiss, and that is what she had learned when she was cursed to descend from heaven into the lightless abyss for it.
“Such insolent cookies,” she thought, “to even think of entering my realm to mock me…!”
Black Pearl Cookie whirled her head around, her flowy white hair weaving through the water as she stared with ire at the coral path that the captain and the diver had used to escape.
“And they escape my waters, without so much as a scratch? I will CRUMBLE them…no…HIM.”
She harbored these unexplained, unwanted feelings for that insolent captain—she convinced herself that she did not know Captain Caviar Cookie’s name—that she had festered a hatred for when she had no choice but to acknowledge them.
It was a cruel twist of fate, when she thought about how much he reminded her of…
…Lord Oyster Cookie.
Black Pearl Cookie’s eyes shot open in anger at the thought of that two-faced, deceitful, good-for-nothing lump of dough. Once more, she shrieked—so violently that nothing could be heard in the maelstrom’s cacophony.
“Oh, but he is nothing like him!” She could hear a long forgotten part of her inside her mind, voice ringing softly, like the pale moonlight the sea continues to long for. “He’s loyal, and strong and…”
The sovereign slowly lowered her hands from her head. Beads of tears long contained started to prick in her serpentine eyes.
“Do you remember the last time I listened to you? I trusted him. And he—he—I LOST EVERYTHING THAT DAY.”
The voice of the faded moonlight spoke once more.
“You have seen how he does not just hear his crew, but listens. You have seen how his leadership has given his crew direction. You have seen his selflessness in choosing to save another cookie when he was faced with crumbling.”
She refused to listen. But a desperate, heartbroken part of her did.
“...”
“Please. Open your heart once more.”
“...”
Black Pearl Cookie ached. She ached so badly, for what she thought was rotten. A fruit so tempting and so sweet that she had chosen to forget—but had never really forgotten. She had secretly, desperately, wanted connection, no matter how much she convinced herself she wanted solitude. And so she had been persuaded by what was once her, but is now her guiding light—what she wished she had snuffed out—but was silently, gently leading her towards what she should be. What she should have stayed.
She cursed herself under her breath as she snatched her staff off of the ground and swam to the surface of the Duskgloom Sea. “I wish I'd forgotten about you…” She turned toward where Captain Caviar Cookie would be. “...Both you AND that captain.” Black Pearl Cookie begrudgingly made her way to the docks of Choco Mud Town. It didn’t take long for her to spot the captain sitting on one of the docks, looking off into the vast open sea.
“Well, look who it is. Mighty big storm ya made, eh?”
“Save it, pest.”
“Heh.” The captain shifted to turn from his view and look at the sovereign. “As mean as ever, huh? You ain’t here to crumble me, are ya?”
“I would have done so if I wanted to.”
“Fair. So, what’cha here for then?”
Black Pearl Cookie had too much hubris to tell him the truth. That she had finally decided to give cookiekind another chance. She muttered under her breath. “With the fool who humiliated me, of all people…” She rose from the murky waters, and easily towered over him. She narrowed her serpentine eyes and looked down. Captain Caviar Cookie raised an eyebrow and looked up in return, unwavering in his spot. The sovereign hated how he was never scared of her.
“Don’t make me regret sparing you, pest.”