Neverhangd - NeverHang'd!

I figured it out 👀 🍿

The retort forming on her lips sails away unfinished on the crest of an unexpectedly tall wave. It takes her a surprised moment to realize she’s being dragged deeper into the wake—she laughs and slaps Jan’s chest lightly, more of a tap, as she regains her footing. The salt water’s chilled him: his hand’s cold despite his smiling warmth. She’s versed enough in Dutch to catch the endearment but not its meaning—and then too distracted by his dazzling display of either idiocy or audacity. It’s hard to decide which.

“Ye’d ask an Irish lass wanted by their crown asides to sail with the English? Think again, chum! It wouldn’t be better to sail with the English, ‘less ye mean to say ye’ve grown tired of my company.” Political cannibalism and the unmistakable stench of a peat bog aside—some of it familiar with lessons of her own national history—the Dutch were more level with women by far than any other European power in these waters. She’d take her chances with the Dutch sooner than anyone else. “In which case, of course, fuck you.”

But there’s no malice in her tone, stating it almost as fact.

He’s a handful, Jan, but somehow he’s proven to be a handful Anne doesn’t mind. He’s like the sea breeze: light, playful, whimsical. A breath of fresh air, he fills sails and lungs and joyful songs, flitting to and fro in his fancy. What is must be like to live so light of heart, Anne can’t even begin to guess.

Talk of chains and walls and worser fates bring to mind an spook story that she damned near tells—a rarity, especially away from the quiet of a sleeping ship—when he takes possession of her wrist and pulls her into the sea beside him as if she weren’t trying to keep her good boots dry, the prick! She lets out a disbelieving laugh (could’ve passed for a scoff if that ghost of a smile weren’t haunting her face) and shoves him to land arse-first in the water.

“Speak for yerself! The world could do with fewer menaces like you.” There’s no steel in her words, no venom, not even so much as a barb: the curse of her self-imposed contrarian streak rears its head most often as contradictions between word and fact. She would miss him if he were to go. More people could stand to follow in his way.

A world without Jan would be a poorer world indeed—but that’s a thing she can’t say. (It reeks of the exact sort of wanton fuckery she’s only just convinced the crew is outside of her nature. The kind of frivolous idiot shite steeped in sentimentality that they claim women are solely so prone to. A reason to cast Anne out of their company.) She settles for a smile and leans towards him, offering him a hand up. She has to hope it’s sufficient, being very nearly as rare as a compliment from her.

“I only meant—t’ain’t so bad, to go a-pirating again. Even if it is with some dick-shit gang of Dutchmen.” A frequent term of almost-endearment Anne liked to use. She’s hardly a woman famous for love of any flag that wasn’t black and boned, after all. “At least we’re none of us fucking English, hey?”

This beard sucks, wtf?

The person I reblogged this from is awesome as fuck.