Norrington's Darling

Tia Dalma's Journals

POV: Zuri Norrington

1750

Head propped up on my hand, I sat at my desk back in Port Royal between Jack and Gibbs, staring at the bottle on the desk. After our failed venture with the Fountain of Youth but successful recapture of the Black Pearl and needing to rescue my brother from his little island, we were now faced with the daunting task of getting the Pearl out of the bottle. 

"So."

"So," Jack and Gibbs echoed in perfect chorus.

"You have a ship in a bottle."

"Can't you just work some witchy magic on it to get her out?" Jack pleaded.

I scoffed. "Tia didn't leave behind any cheat codes for her 'witchy magic', as you call it, to resize things. But if you want to get the Pearl out so badly we can always smash it on a table corner."

Jack glared at me. "And risk damaging her? Not a chance."

"She'll likely need the water in the bottle," Gibbs guessed. 

I leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms. "Your guess is as good as mine, then. I'll leave you to it. Don't break anything."

"Where are you going?" Jack demanded.

"To see Ana and Theo," I said, "and make sure Cedric is chatting up Rosalind."

"You want him to?" Gibbs asked, incredulous.

I shrugged. "I won't let Cedric suffer the way his father and I did. Good luck, boys." I grabbed my coat and slung it over my shoulders. Really, it was one of James' old commodore's uniforms, but most people had become accustomed to my wearing it. A few newcomers to Port Royal were very confused by the sight of a woman wearing a commodore's jacket until old-timers filled them in on the legend of the woman who wore her fallen husband's coat to honor him. A rather large (and mostly untrue, because I never corrected the wild assumptions) legend now surrounded my name. When the more ridiculous rumors circled around, I could hear James laughing at them, joking with me about how my legend was beginning to surpass my brother's.

Rosalind Groves was just a year younger than Cedric, and he'd taken a liking to her in childhood that had bloomed into romance in their teenage years. Anamaria and I kept prodding at him to pursue her, but he had his father's shyness in him and typically turned into a stuttering mess in her presence. 

When I arrived at the Groves household, however, I was greeted with the pleasant surprise of Cedric talking to Rosalind in low tones, Rosalind snuggled into his chest. I was reminded with a pang of how James had always loved to hold me close. If anything, Cedric was most certainly his father's son. 

Sure the pair of them were getting along just fine, I climbed the stairs to find Anamaria, who was by now pregnant with their sixth child. "Ana! Ana, where are you?"

"The study, RiRi!" she called. When I rounded the corner, she beamed. "There you are! Tell me, tell me—how did it all go?"

I laughed, the sound little more than a warbling sigh. "Well... The Pearl's been made into a trinket."

She raised her brows. "Oh?"

"It's in a bottle."

Ana laughed. "I see the Pearl has met the rage of Blackbeard, then."

"You know of his practice of shoving ships into tiny little bottles?"

She nodded. "I watched him do it once. Witchcraft, I tell you. Of course, nothing as grand as your powers. Nothing like what Tia ever used to do, just moderate magic. Flashy, because he'll settle for nothing less, but its sparkle is useless."