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Dear guys-
This is the last part I wrote on SHADE. Hope you like it....also, that little scene at
the end is the precurser to where Esteban meets Theresa. He meets her in the
marketplace...
Njoy-
Karmacat
No one knew what happened in that room that night, but one thing was for certain;
Vargas did not bother Esteban for a long time afterwards. Unfortunately, the other
children did it for him. The tremendous teasing he endured from them grew worse with his
age. As the other children had seen Vargas do, they did; the teasing soon elapsed into
beatings, mostly in response to some cocky comment Esteban tended to make because he
“thought he was smarter than everybody”. Ha, he thought. He was smarter
than everybody. They just weren’t smart enough to know how smart he was.
Of course, Esteban would never admit to anyone that he was unsure of this conclusion
himself; it was based purely on what Gypsy Mother had been telling him his whole life, and
his own experience. He was eleven, and they couldn’t read....
When he was thirteen Esteban’s throat burned with anger. Gypsy Mother still loved
him, and yes, they couldn’t read, but they all laughed when Vargas jumped at him and
he instinctually flinched. He was beginning to realize that even so slight a show of
vulnerability could get him killed. Thirteen and he built another wall around himself,
tried to avoid conflicts - he knew his dedicated group of reject friends would never
defend him, and he would never defend them. Nothing to depend on there. He grew more
scornful of his peers. He was determined to show them...and, in some way, to
show Vargas.
Vargas’s fist still burned in Esteban’s memory. The gray wolf still sneered at
him with contempt. The boy would catch his looks of disgust every so often out of the
corner of his eye, and came close to feeling the same disgust in return....but he never
did.
Esteban did not know why he refused to hate Vargas. Every logical bone in him said that he
should hate him with the fire of a thousand suns, yet he could not; his admiration
overtook that hate. Esteban still had a strong desire to emulate Vargas, to be that
strong, to have that kind of control. A fever of envy hit him when he saw Vargas
instructing the other boys his age on how to hold a weapon and then passed him by without
a word. He was determined to make Vargas see that he, too, was a worthy pirate, despite
the fact that he was a...Bandar-Log.
Esteban shivered at the words. Bandar-log. Instant stigma. Why, of all things, did
he have to be that? Over the years the knowledge that he was going to die in middle age
had sunken in, yet he still did not believe it; his middle age was such a terrifically
long time away, eons. As far as he was concerned he had forever...forever to be hated if
anyone found out. So he tried his best to tuck the fact into the deepest facets of his
mind, and bandaged the gouges of doubt they left with a thick layer of cockiness.
When he was fourteen Gypsy Mother informed him that he was a young man. Esteban stood
prouder than usual for a day, until a gang of older pirate children, who had taken a
special dislike to him at Vargas’s coaching, decided he was “in their territory”.
He returned to Gypsy Mother that night, his eye black and swollen, announcing that if he
was now a young man, he sure as hell didn’t feel any different, and that he
was going to bed.
Upon being sixteen, Esteban became fascinated by a new facet of life he had not paid
quite so much attention to in the past: women. He had known from a very young age how
babies were made; in fact, over the years he had gained many valuables from many children
as barter for this knowledge. When he was a young boy the process didn’t make a great
deal of sense to him, and it even went so far as to disgust him. But now, all he could
seem to think about was the process.
Upon speaking to other boys his age he discovered that they had a similar thought pattern,
but something about their behavior puzzled Esteban a great deal: they spoke of women they
liked in such horrible ways, such disgusting, derogatory ways...he had heard older male
pirates talking like that, so he tried it in order to look tough. That kind of talk just
didn’t fit him somehow. He would start thinking of Gypsy Mother, and the thought of
someone talking about her that way made him incredibly angry. When his friends began to
speak disrespectfully about the females aboard the Red Fandango, he just kept his mouth
shut.
They weren’t the things the boys said they were. Esteban loved women. He loved
everything about them. He loved their sloping shoulders, their pretty eyes, their necks
and backs and legs, delicate voices and long, long hair....he especially loved the way
they walked, their lightly swinging hips. He loved how they were shaped so differently
than he was. When he saw a pretty girl he was struck by a tremendous desire to possess her
in every way there was to possess a person, yet he wanted her
to be his willing possession. These two feelings often conflicted within him and he became
unsure how to act around girls. Nevertheless, the girls in the clan seemed to sense, as
they always seemed to oddly sense things, that he loved them; as a result they either
steered clear of him or cast him longing glances. However, very few of them actually spoke
to him because he was “weird” and a “reject”.
He had heard through many a gossip that he was rather stunning. Once he learned this he
took full advantage of it, even though the girls who kissed him never fully admitted to
it. That didn’t matter to him, he loved all of them. The boys his age knew that he
had something they didn’t have. They had no idea what, but whatever it was, they
wanted it. They would ask him how he was able to kiss so many girls, and he would just
smirk and say he had no clue why, maybe it was just because he was
devastatingly handsome while their looks lacked severely. He usually ended up getting
punched, with a biting comment inquiring what that would do to his good looks.
Esteban didn’t retract his comments about his appearance. Instead, he learned how to
block punches.
When he was sixteen, at Gypsy Mother’s begrudging, Esteban was old enough to join
Drum Fires.
Drum Fires were pirate parties that broke out for no apparent reason when a group of
pirates lit upon a beach. Someone would light a bonfire and open a few crates of stolen
liqueurs, another would whip out their drum kit, and all hell would break loose. Pirates
and Gypsies performed crazed dances around the fire until morning’s light, when they
often collapsed where they stood. For some unknown reason children were prohibited from
these parties. Esteban soon understood why. He saw people do things at these parties he knew
they didn’t generally do in public.
One time, a girl, just barely a woman, who had formerly been crawling all over Vargas
decided she now wanted to crawl all over Esteban. She kissed his neck and urged him away
from the fire to join her in the dark, and Esteban was already on his feet when she was
suddenly yanked away from him. She cried out and he found Vargas holding her by the arm.
He slapped her, telling her never to go near “//that little ass//”, and that she
was his. The girl-woman stumbled away and the two’s eyes met for just a
moment. Esteban looked down, away; he couldn’t stand looking into Vargas’s eyes.
The older’s fist flexed, but Esteban’s avoidance of his glare seemed to satisfy
him enough, and he went away.
Esteban swallowed hard and watched him go, laughing, illuminated by the fire.
Next day, and Esteban and his friends went out to prowl the bustling boardwalk a short
distance away from where their ship had landed. The authorities of the island were well
aware of the pirate presence, so they had their officers out in full; however, they could
not arrest unless one of them committed a crime. So the boys had been instructed not to
steal anything; they had landed upon that island for rest, not plunder.
Of course, that didn’t make the temptation any easier to resist. They sat around and
tried to look menacing, salaciously eying the booths of expensive spices and gold
trinkets. Esteban’s mind sparkled with the thought of how much money he could make on
the black market with just a little, just a pocketful.... he practically had to sit on his
hands to keep himself from swiping anything.
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