Author:
Pairing: No pairing.
Set: pre-Pirates of the Caribbean. Rating: PG.
For: Circe's Appease the Heathen Gods Challenge.
She turns over the coin again. It's full of blood; she can see that now.
The crew of the Black Pearl has gone insane. They don't know. But she does.
Her mother, a tavern whore, would read her stories as a child and make up tales of the pirate men who visited her bed. The Aztec gold, her mother said, built to curse every soul. And pirates will fall into its trap.
She stands in the moonlight looking at her bones. Men run around with food and drink that spills right through them. She's hungry, but she knows. She's a pirate, and she's fallen into its trap.
The fortuneteller looked at him as he walked in. "Cursed!" she yelled.
"Tell me something I don't know, and I won't cut your throat," he said. He sat down on the bench in front of her.
"You lie," she hissed. "The gold drives you to kill, and you will kill me before I'm done."
"Read the cards," he commanded and pointed to the Tarot deck.
She laid them out in a circular pattern. "Bring the gold back. All of it. And you shall be free."
He took the long dagger out of his tunic, reached over, and slit the fortuneteller's throat.