Uncharted Destiny: A 17th Century Pirate Love Story

The town of La Ciotat was a cesspool. A den of iniquity. A haven for the wicked and vile.

Well, at least that's what I'd heard from the locals. I'm sure it wasn't all that bad, but pirates always get a bad reputation, no matter where they go. It's hard to shake off the years of piracy life when you've been part of one of the most feared pirate ships in the world.

I'd served Captain Delacroix and his crew for almost thirty years, ever since I was just a little girl. When my parents died in the plague in 1722, he took me in and never turned his back on me. Never even questioned why a child so young was alone in this world without any family or friends to take care of her. And after his death, I stayed with his crew as we continued our journey across the world and into history books.

My youth was spent on the seas, fighting against enemy ships and plundering treasure from their holds. My adulthood was spent retired from life at sea, living out my days in France with my fellow comrades. But I could never forget what it felt like to be sailing through waves under the moonlight with wind in my hair and salt on my lips, or how it felt to see gold glint as you pulled an entire fortune out of the ocean floor with your bare hands.

But now all that was over. I'd settled down into a quiet life with a few select members of Delacroix's crew who had been by my side since I was just fifteen years old, but there were times when I wished those days were still here; those days when we would be sailing into some isolated port town, ready to find trouble and have fun until the money ran out and we moved onto the next town where more trouble awaited us.

But now we were stuck here. They built this town up right on top of what used to be a massive harbor filled with ships that made their way across the Mediterranean Sea during Delacroix's time as a pirate. There used to be warehouses filled with goods all around us, while vessels lay anchored in deep water waiting to take on new cargo before making their voyage east or west across the sea towards their final destinations. Now all that remained were the wrecks of these ships left buried deep underneath us after decades- maybe even centuries -of erosion slowly destroyed them piece by piece until there wasn't much left except for an empty pit far below our feet.

I did want to leave sometimes, though I respected my crew too much to abandon them like that so long after all we had been through together despite how bored I got here sometimes. But wherever else we went around Europe or Africa or back home to America again now that colonization had taken over there too... well... people knew who we were and what we did before they met us face-to-face, so they didn't exactly trust us around their towns or villages anymore than they trusted pirates themselves back then. So here we were: stuck in one spot until we either died off or someone decided it was time for us to retire once again and let younger generations take over for us who knew nothing about our lifestyle other than what they read in books written by people like Charles Dickens or Daniel Defoe** or saw play out on stage in some theater performance if they lived back home in places like London or New York City***.

I didn't mind being here so much anymore; especially now that our numbers had thinned out from old age or accidents over the years -though Charles often joked about how he made himself disappear one night because no one liked him anyways- so it was easier for me to direct them away from whatever trouble they might find themselves getting involved into these days instead of just being dragged along behind them like I usually had to do when there were more than five of us sticking together at once trying to keep tabs on each other every moment of every day whenever we decided to step outside these walls surrounding our city within a city*****.