They Grow So Fast...
The upper-class society of Britain have always stuck together – more for the sake of having contacts and allies then friendship – and while parents discuss important matters, children are often left in each others companies, and sometimes that can be pretty futile...
----------
Smellizabeth, a young Cutler Beckett mouthed at Elizabeth Swann across the dining table. She frowned at him, and kicked his foot as hard as she could in her small, girly, strap-up (but surprisingly hard) shoes. Cutler tried not to let it show on his face as the maid laid down another plate of food in front of them both.
"Elizabeth, don't take two sandwiches, take one at a time," Weatherby Swann scolded her. She looked from one of her hands to the other, each one containing a sandwich, and then put one back. Weatherby sighed. "Just... oh, never mind."
"But daddy, why can't-" At this point, Cutler decided to put into motion a revenge attack on her ankle, which stung like anything. She tucked her legs away from him, glaring at him.
"Elizabeth?" Her father asked, giving her a funny look.
"Sorry, daddy," She said through gritted teeth, shooting a look of pure hate at Cutler. He just licked some jam off of a finger, and earned a reprimanding from his mother. "I was saying... why can't we take two at a time?" She asked, cocking her head, and shooting a 'ha-ha' smug, smiling look at Cutler as he was told off.
"It's not... proper, dear." Weatherby said, with a smile at his daughter.
"Not proper what?" Elizabeth asked, feeling like being awkward because Cutler was annoying her, and she was in a mean mood.
"Not proper... uh, manners." Weatherby Swann waved his hand at his daughter, "Elizabeth, daddy has to talk to Mr Beckett now, you talk to Cutter."
"Cutler." Muttered Cutler Beckett, irritated. As his parents turned to speak to Weatherby, he stuck his fingers in his mouth and pulled a hideous face at Elizabeth.
"Daddy!" Elizabeth wailed. He turned around, frowning. When he looked over to Cutler, he was sitting there, smiling like a little angel, playing the original blonde-haired boy. Elizabeth glared at him.
"Sorry, dear, I meant Cutler... I always get it wrong," he said with his kind smile.
"But that's not what I-" Elizabeth started, but her father was already back to talking about boring politics with the other Beckett's. They only saw each other about once a year, but it still annoyed Elizabeth no end. She went back to glaring at Cutler, who crossed his eyes at her. And he was quite a few years older then her too!
God, she hated that boy.
----------
"Cutler, doesn't Elizabeth look nice?" His mother asked him, giving him a big, lipsticky smile. God, why did she have to choose this moment to suddenly start a conversation with him? She could go months without saying anything to him; he'd been pretty much raised by a nanny.
"She looks lovely," He managed to force out.
"Thank you, Cutler." Elizabeth replied, with a big, false smile, which slipped off of her face the moment Cutler's mother turned away. Cutler frowned at her, and then walked off. Posh dinner parties were the worst. And now that Cutler was a teenager, he was expected to hang around making connections with people, instead of playing with her, which at least had been company.
Though that time they'd played hide and seek in the middle of a ball and she had ended up chasing Beckett on her hands and knees under the tables and had accidentally knocked down a huge ice sculpture had gotten her into immense trouble.
And that time Cutler told her about the 'don't touch the floor' game, in which they could only stand on rugs, chairs, and anything that wasn't the floor (well, duh) and then he'd started off a game of tag and they'd collapsed half of the nursery as they ran around on tabletops and so on.
And in that particular game, Cutler ended up running across the top of her dolls house, and half smashing it to bits.
She pulled a face at his back, and then went off to find Mary, a girl who was one year younger then her, and quite divvy, but nice most of the time.
----------
"Yeah... y'know, I was born on board a ship during a typhoon," Jack Teague said, to a bunch of Port Royale boys, who were listening to his tale, agog. "I've got seawater running through my veins. My dad's a real-life pirate, you know, and the best there is. I had to operate a cannon during a sea-battle once, you know – it was really difficult, but one of my cannon balls got the other ship right in the rudder! Sent her right down!"
Complete and utter garbage, of course. And firing a cannon at a rudder of a ship was pretty much impossible from the side. But the scruffy young boys all nodded, absolutely fascinated by the smooth-talking boy from the sea's stories...
----------
Young William Turner stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he steadied the hammer carefully, being careful with his tongs and white-hot iron, ready to stamp the insignia of Port Royale on a horse's bit. The man who had taken him as his apprentice shook his head, and carefully corrected him.
Will would usually have been annoyed at the corrections he was always accumulating, when suddenly... It seemed to work. The grip on his hammer seemed right. And he knew, then and there, that he would be a blacksmith. A good one.
----------
"Cutler! Play with me!" Elizabeth ordered, pulling on his jacket lapel. He looked down at her from the desk he was sitting on, then went back to reading his book, turning the page slowly. "Cutler!"
"Elizabeth, go away!" He snapped at her, "I'm trying to read!"
"But I want to play! I'll tell daddy!" She said, folding her arms. He gave her a long-suffering look, before smiling, all too suddenly. He marked his page, and closed it.
"Okay, here's a game. It's called 'whoever is silent for longest wins'..."
----------
"Elizabeth? Why are you being so quiet all of a sudden?" Her father asked at dinner. She shot him an alarmed look, and then shrugged her shoulders, nonchalantly.
"And you, Cutler." His mother said, deciding that she should pretend to notice something about her son so that she didn't look like she didn't know him at all. (Which she didn't.) (Know him at all, that is.)
Cutler and Elizabeth looked at each other, and then towards their parents. Shrugging simultaneously, they went on to eating. Cutler kicked Elizabeth under the table, nearly making her spit all of her food back onto her plate.
"That's cheating!" She exclaimed, and then groaned and closed her eyes, Cutler's smug smile etched all over her brain.
NB: Don't ask how on earth this would work. Just enjoy the fun, fluffy little fiction like a gooood reader. Reviews would be most appreciated... Thank you and ta ta for now.