I've never done a short story before but here goes nothing:

The Bonnet: Part 1 of ?


The wind was getting colder as the days went by, colder and less forgiving to the girl's exposed face. The whistling of the wind as it raced through the towering masts of the ships in the harbor formed together with the creaking of the worn wooden planks below the girls feet and the ever present sounds of the waves frothing and foaming on the stone jetty that ran parallel to the docks. At the far end of the extensive wooden pier was the ship that her love captained. The Ship was named the Defiance an apt name considering the men that crewed Her. They were the men that had challenged the ships of the King's Navy to a race around the Cape and they were the men who had faced down none other than "Gentleman" John Graves and his infamous Buccaneers.

The girl always felt nervous when she came to visit the man she knew simply as 'the Captain' on his ship, but he was leaving this morning and she had promised she would be there to see him off personally. The girl was small and of uncommon beauty with gentle, blue eyes and graceful, thin wrists that stood out from the rough peasant women and tawdry whores that were the common fare of the island. She was a delicate creature, too delicate for such a squalid little town. That was the only thing the Captain and the girl's father could agree on. The problem was that their ideas of where she should be were quite different: her father wanted to take her back to the mainland while the Captain wanted her to come with him to the beautiful and secluded "Isle of Pines" he had discovered years ago.

The girl knew nothing about the Isle of Pines beyond what the Captain had told her but it sounded wonderful: waterfalls cascading down sheer cliff faces into the Oceans below, wild horses galloping together in pairs up and down the shimmering white sand beaches, and endless forests of eternally green pine trees. The Captain promised that when he returned from his last journey to the mainland he would sell the Defiance and buy a small ship for just the two of them to take them to the Isle of Pines where they would live together in ever lasting bliss. She wanted to see him off, she wanted to be there when he departed to wish him luck and give him a parting kiss but the wind seemed determined to stop her. The wind started by kissing her lily-white skin where it was exposed but then the kisses turned to nipping and the nipping turned to vicious bites.

A gust of wind blasted through the pier and filled the sails of all the nearby ships. The girl's little blue bonnet was nearly snatched away from her by the cruel wind but she grabbed it from the air and pulled it down over her head, holding it with both hands over her cold ears. When she finally got to the end of the pier her heart sank, for the Defiance had already shoved off and departed. She rushed down the rest of the pier as fast as she could possibly go wearing such obstructive frocks and began to wave frantically at the ship. The Captain was at the stern, in his hands was a map of the local waters and next to him was his First Mate, an old gray-beard from a far away land where the people spoke a language that sounded like clearing one's throat. The Captain was a handsome, swarthy, broad shouldered young man with dark eyes and rough well-worked hands. He heard the girl's frantic screams and immediately felt like a fool. How could he have forgotten about her?

"Hey, who's that then, Captain?" the First Mate asked, pointing with a calloused finger at the girl at the end of the pier.
"That's the girl I love," the Captain replied, solemnly. He knew he couldn't turn the ship around now, not with such a strong wind filling their sails and pushing them out to sea, all he could do is return the girl's forlorn stare. Then there was a wind of such power that it tore the bonnet out from the girl's grip and spirited it aloft through the wind toward the Defiance. The Captain's sharp eye and quick hand allowed him to catch the bit of cloth and steal it from the greedy wind's grasp. With her bonnet in his hand the Captain smiled at the girl who looked smaller and smaller by the second. As the ship became a dot on the horizon the girl swore she saw the Captain press the bonnet to his heart and blow her a passing kiss. The Captain was grinning hugely, his every fiber buzzing with the ecstatic sensation of true love. It took him a little while to notice his First Mate's bemused expression, "What is it?" the Captain asked.
"You miserable little softie you," the First Mate slapped the Captain hard on the back. Only he could get away with that.

A short story with defined characters and a suitable conclusion? Impossible! Doesn't everyone know short stories should be mindless drabbles with vaguely depressing endings that really don't resolve anything?

I loved it.

Thank you but that isn't the conclusion. I'm planning to make it take a supernatural turn should I find the inspiration to write some more.

I meant that it could be a conclusion, it has the ability to be an ending or merely the beginning of something new. Oh yeah, one thing that kinda sorta bothered me:

The wind was biting at her face, implying it was blowing in from the ocean, but at the docks it was pushing the ship out and away, implying it is going from the land to the sea. I have incredibly poor sense of direction so you might have explained that the ship was pointing a different direction, or the dock was. I'm just kinda weird in my psychosis...

My concern is that I don't know how long it might end up, maybe five pages maybe fifty.
Ah yes, well I suppose the wind shifted then didn't it? That or the wind is so strong that she can feel it on her face even though her back's turned to it, I've felt wind like that before.

I have too, I was just being nit picky. Come to think of it you never said the dock stuck straight out, could be at an angle. Ignore me!

I imagine its a fairly large port with many piers in the docks so it could be in a lot of different angles relative to the land.