Nature's Wrath
Challenge: Nature
By FalconWing
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When Jack first heard the news he choked on his rum.
He hadn't even been listening in on the conversation occurring at the next table over, but he would be surprised if the whole tavern hadn't heard the exclamation. "Port Royal! Destroyed!"
He had abandoned his mug and was left hurrying to catch up with the bearer of these tidings as the man got up and exited the tavern. "Hey mate," he called as he came alongside the fellow and tapped him on the shoulder. "What was that about Port Royal bein' destroyed?"
The man spun around angrily but stopped short when he came face to face with an unusually subdued and grim Captain Jack Sparrow. "Didn' ya hear? Day afore yesterday the unfort'nate Port of the Royals so t' speak was hit wi' an earthquake. Completely destroyed, or close 'nough as makes no diff'rence. Now if that's be all…?"
Not waiting for an answer the man pulled away and hurried off, leaving a very shocked Jack Sparrow in his wake.
Somehow he knew that Will and Elizabeth were gone… dead. He knew it in his bones and the fact affected him more deeply than he would ever have expected. In his line of work good men died every day – shot, run through, lost to sea during a storm; there was certainly no shortage of deaths aboard a pirate ship.
But the young couple weren't pirates and they didn't live that sort of life. They had married and started a family in a sturdy home on the land. But now that land had turned on them, taking their home, their family and their lives.
But the ways of the world were nothing if not unpredictable, nature's wrath volatile.
The one thing in its favor was that it was mercifully swift.