Ferrier of Souls

Disclaimer: Pirates of the Caribbean characters are not mine, they belong to Disney. I am however borrowing them for this story. Don't sue me, please.

Captain's Log

8 Years, 11 Months, 4 Days, 16 Hours

Each hour feels like a day, each day an eternity.

Today I ferried a family across this great eternal undead sea. A fair-haired mother, two sons, and a baby daughter who was the spitting image of one I used to know.

Some days, this task is easy, especially when I have quiet souls contemplating their lives, or rambunctious men chatting like fools and livening up the crew with stories from the world. Tall tales and ghost stories usually give us all a chuckle. For we have seen more ghosts and legends made and broken across these waves in a matter of minutes than what some storyteller can dream up in a lifetime. We are the ghosts and phantoms that haunt children's dreams, yet the world still goes on living and dying and sending me their dead.

But like I said, today I ferried a family. The hardest part about this eternity is not the labor of ferrying people, guiding them to their afterlife between the land of the living and land of the dead. Oh no, the hardest part is seeing people that remind me of home; that remind me of the people I love…Eliz…

I ferried a family today. Two smart young lads barely four years apart. The youngest was solemn and big eyed. He studied everything and I could tell he was just itching to ask questions that even I couldn't answer. He watched and he learned. He would have made a good scholar had he lived.

The older boy was built like a firecracker. Solid, quick, and ready to explode. He could hardly sit still for even a moment. He even wanted to be at the helm directing our course. When I asked him if he was afraid of death, as is part of my charge, he simply looked me straight in the eye for a solid minute. "No sir," he said, "I ain't afraid, but I'd like another adventure before I die."

Another adventure. Funny how little he knows about death. Why, it's the biggest adventure there is.

The mother and the babe were perhaps the hardest members to ferry; not because they got in the way or anything, but because the two of them were well…I don't know. The mother had these lively eyes like her younger son and yet I could sense it wasn't just her eyes that were lively. She just felt too alive to be on my ship. Additionally, she kept humming to her dear babe nestled so serenely in her arms. The picture was too perfect, too alive. The scar across my chest began to ache. Didn't they know they were dead?