Drabble Challenge: 'First Day'

[dwgm]

I have me a wonderful new Gibbs icon, thanks to honorat's kindness in permitting me to use her artwork. Had to write some Mr. Gibbs dialogue to go with it, of course, so here's my reply to the current drabble challenge at Black Pearl Sails ('First Day').

~ A Change in the Weather ~

A prequel to A Word in Private

By the Saints, the lass were in a foul mood that morning. “Josh, yer with me!” she says, and I cringed some, for I knew ‘er plan: muckin’ out the captain’s quarters.

The place stank of Barbossa, and that blasted monkey of his, too. Disgustin’. We polished up the windows, an’ opened ‘em wide, lettin’ in the sea air. Then we got busy, chuckin’ out ten years' worth of leavin’s, and Ana mutterin’ to ‘erself, like the edge of a storm, all the while.

Well, we’d gone through near all of it when the mutterin’ stops, sudden like, and she calls me over to ‘er. She’d moved a chest away from the bulkhead, and there was a bookcase, built right in, the books untouched an’ all over dust, but bound with leather, most of ‘em.

She took one out, an’ opened it, and now she asks me what it says.

I’ll tell ye, seein’ those words, writ in that bold, flourishin' hand, the voice stuck in me throat a bit. “It’s Jack’s,” I says, finally. “Captain Jack Sparrow. It’s ‘is journal. From before.”

She studied the words a while, an’ leafed through it. Couldn’t read it, but it seems to’ve spoke to ‘er anyway, ‘cause she left off mutterin’.

“All right. Back to work,” is all she says to me.

I went, but saw how she took and dusted off each o’ those books, holdin’ ‘em like they was treasure.

An’ that night, after supper, she asks me to read her a bit out o’ that journal. Which I did. An’ every night after that, too, even after we’d reached Tortuga.

Every night. ‘Til Turner came to find us.

But she’d made up ‘er mind that first day, I reckon.



~.~





Author's Note: You may have noticed this renders my recent story, Spindrift A/U. I was thinking about that whole gapfiller thing and decided this was the better way to go.

Also, I had forgotten I'd promised to write more present tense Gibbs/Ana/Jack for linaelyn after I posted A Word In Private. Since that's part of that gapfiller at the end of the movie, I'm going to work on that this week.

Such fun!

Comments

[honorat.livejournal.com]

PotC novels would be loverly. But when you have a movie that is made by the performance of a certain actor, the cartoons would have to be horrid. And from those fifteen-minute-to-the-commercial climaxes and one half hour long save-the-universe plots of the modern cartoon, Dear Lord deliver us!

I've discovered there's a problem with temptation. Call out the little plotbunny devil on the shoulder and you never know whose shoulder the wretch will perch on next. I spent until three a.m. last night chasing one that this story inspired. Got to get the end of the movie written before I see what you do! And I won't publish until you do, so I don't muddy your water either. Then a new bunny showed up this morning on the same theme. Thank you so much for the inspiration, but ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz.

[geekmama.livejournal.com]

3 a.m.!! It's been a while since I've done that, although when I was writing H&theP 1 and 2 I did it on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes you just have to write.

I'll be very very interested to see what you come up with. I'm writing a piece now, another prequel to "A Word in Private" from Jack's POV. Although actually that's post-movie, come to think of it. But that's what wanted to be written, today. You know how it is.

[honorat.livejournal.com]

We are the muses' willing slaves. I do love Jack's POV and am looking forward with anticipation (read slavering rabidly) to reading it.