Martha

Dear Jack,

I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to write sooner, but things have turned out so much differently than I had planned them. I'm so sorry that I left without telling you my exact plans or where to reach me.

When my father the King had ordered me wed to that slimy Prince Mornfield I had to think quick. If I had fled to you he would have suspected—he probably sent some men to you that were supposed to retrieve me?

One of the maids had helped me find a different means of escape. She had told me of a bar down by the docks where I could find experts in suspicious dealings—pirates! I had fashioned myself a fake beard out of pig's bristles and successfully got hired for a short mission that would have taken only a couple of months.

Jack, you have to understand that I had every intention of coming back to you. But once we were at sea things changed. I noticed how much I enjoyed life on deck. We each had to do tough work, but I quickly started to gain an appreciation. The physical exertion at the fresh air was fulfilling and made me sleep so well, even in the bowels of the shaky ship. I had some great rapport with the other shipmates and there was this reciprocity in the respect we held for each other.

I had feared that there would be a lot of violence when we would plunder other ships, but in most cases they willingly gave up their cargo. Partly because it is ensured and partly because of the reputation our ship had. But after one plundering where we had to use some force we were surprised to find that "John" had lost his moustache. It turns out that "he" was actually a young woman named Mary that had fled some marriage!

I was relieved that it was her and not me that was discovered, but at the same time I had a lot of pity with her as some of the guys started demanding she walk the plank. But then our Captain Harry stepped up and tore of his moustache and revealed she was also a woman named Harriet.

Encouraged by that I also revealed myself and many others followed, until we finally discovered that we were all women!

From that day on the mood around the deck lifted even more and we bonded around all our shared experiences that had driven us to seek out adventure at sea! We have extended our campaign and there's talk of many of us not wanting to ever return.

On "Martha" | 2023-11-20

I've been keeping a list with some bullet points of inspiration as that's often the hardest thing for me. Today I mashed up two of them, "letter" and "pirate."

What I associate most with pirate stories is the element of (mis-)taken identity. Like in the films The Pirate (1948) and The Princess Bride (1987). The Pirates of the Caribbean films are (as I recall) a notable exception to this. The Man In The Iron Mask (1998) also has these vibes though there's no explicit pirate in that story.

The second thing that I associate with pirates is queerness. I'm unsure how correct that is but my mind is telling me that a pirate life provided some affordances in the form of freedoms that society under some kings rule did not provide.

I don't really care how accurate that is as writing this story has demonstrated to me that this really isn't a setting that I enjoy writing in.

Thoughts? Reach out via Mastodon @Optional@dice.camp or shoot me an email.