Author’s note: English isn’t my first language, so I’m bound to make mistakes. If my English is horrible, please tell me.
That said: here’s the story!
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At first, she doesn’t remember where she is. The darkness is damp around her, the scent of salt in the air. Buffy felt dizzy, and grabbed the sides of the bed to steady herself. Seasickness, her mother used to call it. “The thing land people like you and me feel when we get on a ship.” She knew this wasn’t seasickness though; this was the opposite. This was the first night she had spent on shore for almost eight years.
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Her life wasn’t supposed to be a life on the sea. She was raised to be a lady, to be skilled with the needle and know every step in every dance. She was supposed to smile and blush and hide her face behind a fan, and get married to a gentleman. By eighteen, she was supposed to be a mother herself. Things hadn’t turned out that way. First of all, the ladylike life never suited her. She was more likely to be found with muddy skirts, climbing a tree, than inside the house, reading or doing the needlework as was expected of her. Then the unfortunate event with her father had happened. Her father had been a merchant, with his own ships that came home with cargo from every corner of the world. Her father had also been a card addict who lost everything he owned in a single game of cards. She remembered that night; he had been drunk when he came home, very drunk, and he had almost laughed when he told the story to her mother. Her mother hadn’t laughed though, and she hadn’t believed his ramblings about winning it all back the next night. They’d packed up and left before dawn, leaving the house and the drunken man she used to call dad, her mother never looking back. Buffy had carried her little sister through the night to the small town house where her grandparents used to live, and her mother had built a home for the three of them in the house. They never saw their father again.
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She got dressed in the darkness, picking up the clothes from the floor. A piece of cloth around her breasts pressed them to her chest, hid them, and when she was fully dressed her disguise was almost believable. She rummaged through her bag, searching for something to put her hair up with, when her hand stroked against something soft. For a second, she hesitated, stroking the soft piece of fabric with her thumb, but then she found a small piece of string for her hair. Pulling it back and tying it up, she was ready for the day to begin.
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Life hadn’t been so bad in the town house. For a while, they had even been happy. When her mother got that terrible cough, they hadn’t really thought too much of it. In the windy, costal town where they lived, everybody got colds and coughs. Not everyone coughed blood though, but her mother had never told anyone about it. Buffy found out the day she came home and found her mother dead on the floor, a bloody handkerchief held hard in her hand.
That really was when things took a turn for the worse. Barely eleven, she wasn’t old enough to take care of things. Their father was nowhere to be found, and they had no other relatives that they knew of. The next door neighbour, a lovely family with four children of their own, did their best to help. They offered to take her little sister in, to raise her as their own. They didn’t have the money to take them both in, the wife of the family explained to Buffy with tear-filled eyes. At the age of eleven, she had to make a decision that would for ever change both her and her sisters’ life. It was the hardest thing she had ever been faced with. She cried when she left her sister in the care of the neighbours, but in her heart she knew it was the only thing she could do. The five-year-old would forget, eventually, and she would have a better life than any life Buffy could offer her.
That night, she crept through the garden where the family had left their clothes out to dry over the night. Quickly, she grabbed two pair of pants, and two shirts. It wasn’t right to steal, her mother had always taught her that, but Buffy was sure this wasn’t really stealing. She had given up her sister; to lose some clothes was nothing compared to that.
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She threw her bag over her shoulder and opened the door to the small room she had rented over the night. The inn wasn’t a good one, as the brawling voices coming from the common room proved as she walked passed it. The sun was rising outside, but to the drunken men inside the sun was only something that annoyed your eyes if you happened to step outside during the day. Buffy hurried outside, feeling a bit better when the fresh, cold air swept over her.
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Early in the morning, she cut her long curls off with her mothers sewing scissors before she put the stolen clothes on. They almost fit, the pants being just a little too long for her legs. The second pair she pressed down a small bag, swinging it over her shoulder as she had seen the men down at the docks do. She felt sick to her stomach when she walked down to the docks, her bare feet hurting from the gravel on the road. The first ship she passed by, and the second one too. The third one, she stopped and looked at. Named The Belle, it had once been her fathers’ flag ship. Now, it was owned by someone else, and the entire crew had been replaced. One of the deckhands had spotted her.
“What are you looking at, boy?” he had shouted down at her. Buffy never knew where she got the courage to answer him.
“I want to see the captain,” she had shouted back. “I want a job!”
The deckhand had laughed at her, but it hadn’t been an unfriendly laugh.
“You want a job, boy? How old are you?”
Putting her chin up, she lied through her teeth. “Thirteen.”
“Well, come on up then. You’re lucky; we’re hiring.”
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Standing down at the docks, the motion of the sea calmed her down. The ship she came in on the night before, the Alma, was at the far end of the docks. She hoped word hadn’t gotten out, and that she could find hire on one of the other ships. Most of them would ship out the next night, taking the last chance before the storms came in. She had to be on one of them.
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Author's note (again): Did you like it? Did you hate it? Do you want to know what happened during those eight years Buffy's been sailing the seas? Please review and let me know! :)
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