Donkey Dice

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Davy Jones would never understand it. He'd watched for centuries as his conscripts played their games, rolled their dice, some losing far more than they ever won, and yet they kept playing. He would have thought they might resign themselves to their fate, accept their ill luck, but no. The resiliency of the human spirit never ceased to amuse him. Watching a fifty-year crewman be upped to a two-hundred year and roll the dice again, his barnacled face set and grim, but refusing to give up or back down – it was absurd.

He could only suppose some block in the human mind prevented them from realizing how pointless their little lives were. What was a hundred years of service to a man who would live for eternity? They thought their fates so terrible. He heard the newcomers bemoaning their suffering, the injustice of their fate.

Pah! The fools had no idea of suffering, of injustice. Suffering was cutting out your own heart only to live forever apart from the woman you love. Injustice was knowing your only sin was love of a woman too great for mortal affections.

But he knew just as well – the fools would learn. He would teach them.

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