<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/2/24/Token_1.png)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Penny (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=300519.msg14693656#msg14693656)<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Guns | Lawton's Ladies<br/><strong>Time &amp; Date</strong>: Day 1 | Morning<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Open<br/><strong>Content:</strong>Talking to Matilda<br/><hr/>After shouting her agreement with the others, an agreement that was spirited if ignorant of what she was fully agreeing to, Penny left Lawton and went back below decks.  Lawton's Ladies, as she thought of them in her mind, lay waiting in brooding, heavy silence.  The Captain might own the ship, might own all aboard for all that she hadn't but could put a collar and manacles on any of them, but somehow Penny knew the cannon would forever be Lawton's.  A vision of a sunken Esperanza, wavy with weed over her gone slimy decks filled her mind.  Below, in the gloom where the black tipped sharks swam in and out of the open gunports, Lawton would still be with his ladies, skin swollen with water and eyes mad with his love for them even in their rusted, strewn about state.  He'd never leave them, Penny though, and shivered at the image.<br/><br/>Without even thinking about it she curtsied again to Matilda then went to move her bounty of rats out of the Iron Lady's view.  "Sorry about that, mum," she said to the cannon.  "Penny'll just tidy up."  After trading them for two quarter-pennies that she stashed in her pouch with al her other treasures, the girl returned to the gun deck and went to sit in a cross-legged sprawl underneath the cannon's great bronze barrel.  Her head barely brushed the underside of it.<br/><br/>"Ye know me pop's a prince?" she told the cannon, and anyone who might be listening that she couldn't see.  "Don't larf, 's true," she insisted.  "Mama told me so once just afore she died of the gaol fever God rest her soul," Penny's hand made a motion that might have been crossing herself, might have just been something she thought was reverent.  "He was small, like ma and me, but not runty," she said proudly.  "Small like - like how them ladies is small.  Delicate like," she described.  "A gent'man.  Mama said he wore a fancy coat, all buttons 'n brocade and dipped snuff out of a pure gold snuff box and had all of his teeth even.  A real prince.  Not the Prince," you could hear her capitalize the word, "but a prince.  From -" the girl hesitated, "um, foreign lands.  Don't know which ones but I knows he'll knows me when we sees each other.  Then it's all gravy and biscuits what don't break your teeth!  Cor, imagine me in a fancy gown eatin' grapes and having someone to spit the pips at.  That'd be right, wouldnit?  Just you wait.  I'll get him to buy you and the other ladies and hire Lawton to protect his castle - he's got a castle!  A biggun wot with all pointy bits along the top and a big wossname.  Tower and like a ha' dozen gibbets to put them in wot need gibbeting and feed 'em to the crows."<br/><br/>"I seed that a lot.  Sometimes you feel horrible for the poor bastards but sometimes thems as needs it gets it.  Not as good as a hangin' course, or a lopping off of the 'ead.  You can get close, real close, and get a spray of claret across your face while you're dipping some rich bleeder's pocket.  Thas' a day I tell you!"  Penny shifted to lay back with her head on Matilda's carriage, feet poking out towards the gun port.  "I bet you got some stories you could tell me.  Go on, I'll listen," she encouraged and expected the guns to talk to her.  After all, Lawton had all but aid they were alive.  Surely a great lady like Matilda would spare a moment to talk to a grimy little girl.