The Explorer's Apprentice

26:A Rather Peculiar Lesson

Unless Mr. James came to my house and gave me rights for Christmas, I still don't own these people, except Marley and Eleanor and Belle. x) Enjoy!

Rose Dewitt Bukater

“Well after that, I worked on a squid-boat on Monterey, then I went down to Los Angeles to the pier in Santa Monica and started doing portraits there for ten cents apiece.”

The pair lean against the edge of Titanic, side-to-side, looking out onto the sea. Rose shakes her head slowly. “Why can’t I be like you, Jack? Just, head out for the horizon whenever I feel like it.” Rose has always had dreams; large dreams, smaller dreams, dreams in between. It's like  a whole world of secret wishes and tresured desires has been bubbling within her very spirit for as long as she can remember.

She wants to travel the globe someday, maybe even buy a house in Italy or something. Rose wants to see things that average people don’t get to see. She wants to paint the world, every inch of it, and stay at a cottage in the Caribbean right by the ocean. She wants to make a difference—feed the hungry in the poorest drenches of the world, and give needy children the very clothes off of her back. She wants to sing, she’s always been a good singer, and cook and drink all kinds of tea and dance and laugh and live.

That’s why she’d wanted the necklace.

She hates thinking about it, it’s a constant reminder of what she’s lost and can never have. Just the thought makes her want to hold her breath until her vision gets spotty and white. That necklace, that magical, beautiful thing, was supposed to take her to happiness. She doesn’t quite remember how exactly, but she refuses to doubt herself on this. She knows what that necklace is capable of, even if she’s forgotten about everything else. And she knows that she’s forgotten a lot. She knows that at one point she used to know much more about her new world, but as time goes on, she can feel herself forgetting. No matter how hard she tries not to.

She turns to Jack and gets an idea. Rose is suddenly feeling very rebellious and strangely...free. Being with Jack makes her feel things she’d never known she could feel. He makes her smile and laugh and dream and forget about the life she lives when he’s not around. This includes everything from Cal to her mother to the necklace and the new world. When Rose is with Jack, she finds herself not really feeling anything but his and her own excitement-- an excitement that inspires her to rise up out of her sad stupor and attack the day with enthusiasm. She’s living in the moment, and its ripping her apart from everything she’s ever known, good and bad. “Say we’ll go there, sometime, to that pier. Even if we only ever just talk about it.”

“Nah, we’ll do it.” Jack says, and his tone is promising. “We’ll drink cheap beer, we’ll ride on the roller-coaster ‘till we throw up—“

Rose breaks in with her own laughter, hard and loud and she can feel it in the pit of her belly.

“Then we’ll ride horses on the beach, right in the surf.” He pauses. “But you’ll have to do it like a real cow-boy, none of that side-saddle stuff.”

Rose has never ridden any other way in her whole life, even when she lived with her grandmother. She swallows hard.“You mean…one leg on each side?”

“Yeah.” He smiles, real big, and it’s unlike anything else she’s ever seen before. Every part of his face lights up. His cheeks lift, his nose crinkles cutely, his mouth widens, and his pretty bright eyes shimmer, like sapphires. She’s never seen anyone look so genuinely happy. Happiness. It has to be one of the most beautiful things she’s ever seen, right up there with the ocean and early sunrises over her grandmother’s rainbow garden. For a moment, it literally takes her breath away.