Author's Note: Curse of the Black Pearl Scene Shots in short story style. This one's for FreeomOftheSeas!
Fear. Fog. Darkness.
They hung over Port Royal in the gathering storm, thunder rumbling menacingly in the distance.
It started when the wind had changed so suddenly. The villagers had talked about it as he crossed the square-hurried whispers, fingers raised to a snapping flag, shouts of surprise and gossips' glee. But Will Turner had ignored them, thinking only of the news he had heard while returning home from the Governor's mansion: Elizabeth.
He slammed the mallet down fiercely, striking the anvil and sending up showers of hot white sparks. Elizabeth frightened, hurt, and helpless; the Pirate's filthy, blackened fingers on her, his rank breath near her face…Again he struck, denting the softened iron with the mallet's head. One, two, three times he forced the metals together, driving the image from his mind.
But it was no longer the Pirate that filled him with sickening rage and doubt. He had held him at bay—to defend her, protect her—risked his own life to bring Elizabeth's attacker to justice but received no thanks in return. His drunk master receiving thanks in his stead he had known for years—but whispered words of James Norrington's proposal had reached his ears, poisoning his resign. Elizabeth would never belong to him, this much he knew, but just this one little thanks….this piece belonged rightfully to him, yet even that too, had been stripped away.
But just this morning—this morning!—for one fleeting, magical moment she had belonged to him. Good day, Mr. Turner she said so coldy, and yet, the words not wounded but thrilled him. Good day, he whispered, Elizabeth. Naively he had dared to hope--what exactly, he did not know, but that hope had filled him, stirred him, raised him as though from an age-long slumber. I love her, he had breathed in wonder, and she loves me…
Yet sometime today that sweetness and innocence had been stripped away, perhaps torn from him by the changing winds, leaving nothing but empty bitterness in their dying wake. He doused the hot metal hissing into a vat of water, then slammed it back to the anvil, and began to strike anew, every ringing blow a nail, and deeper and deeper he drove them as though into a coffin for his dead and foolish dreams. He was a blacksmith—just a blacksmith, and he had no hope nor right to ever be anything else but what he was.
He sought refuge from his anger and emptiness in the familiarity of his craft, but even in this small comfort where the falls of the hammer were the only sound, it was not enough to fight away the enveloping gloom from neither skin nor soul. The overwhelming emptiness came not only from inside him—it surrounded him. For the first time in his eight years in Port Royal, Will Turner felt chilled. Even standing close to the blazing furnace he was strangely cold. Something was out there, waiting, looming, ominous in the dark. An eerie doubt gripped him, and suddenly he dropped the tools and put one red, roughened hand to the shutters, peering through the fog at the silent street.
But there was nothing; no answers, no solace, no threats. Nothing but the ghostly streams of fog—and the dim shape of a cat, fleeing.
But something was coming. Closer, stronger, nearer…
A boom echoed in the distant harbor. It was here.