The Pirate and the Poem Lover

Once Upon A Time....

 Once upon a time, in the Victorian year of 1842 there was a family that lived in a small dock-town. Not a large family or a small family but a perfectly sized family with a mother and a father, two strapping young gentlemen and a beautiful young daughter. This is a tale of the young daughter, in fact. It is the adventurous and tragic love story of the beautiful Eliza Palmer.

Eliza grew up the youngest child of her perfectly sized family, and ever since she was a young child, all little Eliza wanted to do was read. She read all sorts of books in all sorts of places. Some days, you would find her in a tree, reading about astrology. And some days, you would find her sitting in her father's study, reading about machines that could speak to people and move around on their own. In fact, there didn't seem to be a single thing that Eliza wouldn't read.

Eliza's mother tried to discourage the habit but her father could not bare to say no to his dear, darling daughter. As the years progressed, and Eliza grew into a young woman and her beauty, both inwardly and outwardly, shinned throughout the small town by the docks. Eliza's two older brothers often found themselves shooing away possible suitors for their baby sister and Eliza delighted in the chaos it brought upon their poor mother.

"If he is not a well-read man, I shall want nothing to do with him," Eliza would always tell her mother, and she of course, would always dismiss such ridiculous standards.

"My dear, I fear you hold men on too high a pedestal for there is rare a man who is nearly as well-read as you mean to be," her mother would always reply with a flustered voice.

This would bring a smile to Eliza's lips. She never wished to marry, if she was just going to stand in a kitchen for the rest of her life, serving others while perfectly good books collected dust in an abandoned library.

One day, Eliza had left her treasured books to walk out in the town.

"It's a beautiful day, Eliza!" Her mother had stated as she looked out the window of the salon. "Go for a walk and embrace the bright rays of the sun! Talk to people, smell the ocean! Go on now, and don't come back too early," Eliza's mother ordered.

She gently pushed Eliza out of the house and locked the doors behind herself. Eliza frowned at the closed front door and huffed. She blew a piece of hair out of her face before regretibly making her way toward the town's docks, just a few minute's stroll away.

As Eliza looked around herself at the gleaming sun and perfectly blue water, all she could think about was hundreds of adventures that she had read about. Far off places with bright, sandy beaches; beautiful flowers and tropical fruits; handsome man who could sweep women right off their feet and carry them on a long, romantical adventures.

Eliza sighed with a smile as she leaned against a random wooden post and imagined a handsome, kind, smart man suddenly appearing and whisking her off to a desolate island covered in skeletons and filled with hidden pirate's booty.

She was so distracted with her day-dreams she hadn't even realized that a large, dark ship with cream colored sails was slowly making its way to the docks. When the ship's shadow was upon Eliza, she gasped and laughed at herself for forgetting where she was.

As the ship slowly stopped at the docks, Eliza turned to make her way home, she stopped when she heard a child just a few paces away from her, screaming at the top of his lungs. First, she looked at the child then she looked in the direction the young child had began pointing at to see that the ship that had docked was no mere ship.

"Pirates...." She breathed out with wide eyes before running to the defenseless child that had first alerted her.

As Eliza reached the child and wrapped him in her tight embrace, the entire town erupted into chaos. Eliza lifted the child up to rest on her hip as she anxiously looked about her for any sort of place to hide. As she searched for a hiding place for herself and small child, Eliza gaped at the scene before her.