"Reality is often cruel to those who dream, as how the seas, too, are often cruel to those who call themselves pirates."
A seasoned merchant of the New World drifts in the weakest sea of all, and finds a dream in the form of Luffy, adventures, and p...
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The Nameless Dream
She thinks, before dying, she had been promised freedom.
.
.
.
But even before that, she had a home. The memories are muddled together, blurred faces and echoing voices of those she doesn't recognize.
She thinks she'd like to meet them again, sometime.
-
They brought her to the land so high up the ground, towering over the seas it separated. She likes the view, of the endless blue waves and the passing ships that bear the flag of the world.
She thinks she would like it anyway. There was no way to tell from the spotless windows she scrubbed before dawn.
(She claws the mark on her back.)
-
She always liked corn cobs, but her taste buds don't even know the difference between sweetness and bitterness, and it leaves something unfamiliar on her tongue.
The fruit tasted disgusting as the appearance of it, with its weird unnatural colors and the way it held the presence of making a deal with the devil.
Like they would give her a choice anyway.
(And before the markings danced on her skin, ink swirling in patterns, she thinks she always drew squiggly lines on her forearms and legs with a marker she stole.)
-
She's running now, chains left behind in her wake, as the man gave everyone back the seas and their dreams.
She'd like to thank him, she thinks. Maybe next time when they meet again, in the endless sea of impossible dreams.
-
She had been stupid.
There's nothing else to describe showing the mark on her back for the whole town to see, unaware of the problems they faced behind closed doors, of declining resources and dwindling money.
And when the next ship that bore the flag of the world came, the seas had never looked more far away than it ever did that day.
-
She sat quietly next to two sisters. Her wrists suffocated under the familiar weight, legs tied together and her back is itching and burning.
(The two sisters gripped each other, whispering for the safety of the third sister who got away in time with an old lady. She thinks she prayed for her too, but her mind is numb and all she wants is to sleep.)
-
She liked red before. The red of the sunrise, the red of the roses, the red of the fire that gave her freedom, the red of the Fish-Man that climbed the steep red line.
