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A Change in the Weather
Written for the 'First Day' Drabble Challenge
Prequel to A Word In Private

by Geek Mama
October 1, 2005

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.

~.~

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