Hook's voice turned into a warning growl and for a second her chin jerked up so high that one could almost have expected her to act like a child after all. It would correspond to what he expected from her and saw in her: that she reacted with childish defiance. But... what sense would it have made? He would drag her to the chair, tie her up, and if she got too much for him, simply cut her open.
"I didn't worry too little... I just wasn't fast enough," she grumbled reluctantly.No misplaced pride, but steely dignity, unbroken even now in this situation. If only she had been a little faster.... damn it. This was all his fault. Why couldn't the stockfish be slower for his age?
She groaned, started moving, and finally did sink onto the soft cushion of the chair. The red coat gave off a soft rustling sound, threw large folds around the chair, because the small figure did not even begin to fill it, and looked at first glance as if she had wrapped one of the noble curtains of dark red brocade around her body. Luke could have escaped from one of the carnival tents with this image she presented. A figure that did not want to fit into the world that surrounded her colorfully stood out and drew the eye as if by itself.
A little obscure, a little out of place, a little different, and yet it was this out-of-place otherness that sometimes gave an object the polish that made it special. To stand out from the crowd, to wear the otherness like a crown instead of a burden. Still, she slid back and forth on the chair, not taking her eyes off Hook. Though the seat cushion was soft and stylish in contrast to the environment she'd lived in for some time - especially the last few weeks - she couldn't find a comfortable position. Restlessness and nervousness pricked her butt like a horde of crawling, nipping ants.
And then there was a knock and the other pirates entered. All were relatively young, in aprons that made them look almost uniformly formal in a strange way-at least for pirates. And Luke wondered if Hook was trying to find his unique coloring in Neverland in just this way. By standing out from the rest of the pirate pack that huffed and puffed along the coasts here and abroad, a filthy, dishonorable pack that changed sides when the wind shifted? There were always those who stood out. Like Bellamy, the pirate who became known as the 'Gentleman Pirate' and yet met his tragic end: Capsized and drowned just 150 meters from the shore of his destination while returning to his beloved, because of whom he had first become a pirate.
The clatter of a shell snapped her out of her grim thoughts. The unexpected sound made her flinch as one of the fellows leaned close to her, and as her gaze traveled up, their eyes met because he was furtively squinting to the side. Curiosity flared beneath the brown-green of his eyes, veiled by clouds of rules through... what? Fear or obedience? He paused in his movement, but then jerked back even more hurriedly as if he had burned himself in looking longer at a lost man.
Rule 1: Don't talk to pirates.
Whether pirates had the same or similar rules as the lost?Something like: 'No mercy to the lost'?The killing was in the blood of pirates, they said. They enjoyed it. And she reminded herself of that sharply: they were pirates. She couldn't forget that. She had no love for pirates. She hated them. And she hated herself that her gaze slipped to the food after all and that in a way she could almost.... admiration, how pirates could do such a thing HERE.
The food, to her amazement, not only looked excellent. It gave off an enticing aroma. A fried fish lay on a large leaf, surrounded by sliced potatoes and a tiny bowl of salt and coarse pepper. On the plate in front of her, a pea rolled out of the pile, bumped into some long strips of carrots (at least she assumed they were, in Neverland you could never be TOTALLY sure), and joined some shreds of loosened meat lying in a dark sauce. On a wooden board, a loaf of crusty bread had been sliced. Stubbornly she pressed her lips together and suppressed the thought that the last meal she had eaten was hours ago and nothing but berries she had picked from the bushes on her way to the beach in the woods.
YOU ARE READING
A Neverland Tale - HOOKED (eng)
Fantasy** Only one thing can still prevent Neverland's downfall: In the dark times when a star's light perishes, a new one must be found! ** Neverland - a world in which simply everything was possible as long as you could dream it. But behind a shining lig...
