“The sun is coming up”

He snapped back into the moment, from his reverie, and looked into her eyes. He reached up and brushed the hair away from her eyes and fell deeper into them, trying to to reach her without speaking.

“What is it, David?”

He smiled;

“Nothing, Cara. Well nothing bad anyway. I was just thinking about how much I love you, and how happy it makes me to be awake all night with you. My mind was wandering when you spoke; I was wondering if you would marry me.

Her face fell just a little and his heart sank. She had not said a word and already he was wishing he could do the previous fifteen seconds over again. They had been seeing each other for well over a year, living together for eight months; they were happy, or so he thought. It was not as though he was even asking her because he thought it was what she wanted. No, this was something that he wanted and now, seeing her reaction, he was starting to think that his first guess might be wrong; she did not want to marry him.

“David, I – I don’t know how.”

—

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Elena closed her eyes, took a deep breath and tried to calm her beating heart, to slow and deepen her breathing, and prepare herself. She anchored her thoughts onto the soft babbling of the stream as it flowed into the silvery pool, and brought the first few bars of the tune up to the front of her mind as she raised the pipe to her mouth. She began to play, and she quickly lost any sense of time as the music flowed through her and out into the woods lifting her mood and her hopes.

Across the clearing, not trying to hide but also not trying to be seen, Luca watched. He was hunting when he first found her practicing out in the woods. He wondered why such a clearly talented young woman would wander over a mile into the woods in order to practice her music in the relative cold and potential danger of being alone and some distance from safety. That was not all he was fascinated by of course; she was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen outside the palace. He longed to speak to her, but did not know how.

—

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“I don’t mean to sound confrontational, but I have been pushed into this room and told nothing for five hours, and while I could have left I came here at the urging of the mayor’s spokesperson; why did I do that if there is no information to be had here?”

The young aide blinked as if to clear his eyes from this barrage, looked down at his clipboard;

“Er, I’m sorry but I’ve got nothing new for you yet, but the Press Secretary has let me know that he will be with you in no more than ten minutes,”

he softened a little,

“I know that you are frightened, and confused, and I am so sorry that this has taken so long.”

The angry man sat down again, muttering under his breath and shaking his head.

It all happened so fast. We had all been waiting for our kids to come back from the summer school trip and then the deputy head was on the school steps with a very worried look on her face asking us to assemble at the mayor’s office. Have you ever found yourself somewhere else and not known how it happened? That’s what it felt like.

—

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—

I forgot to run the Wednesday Poll and so I offer this instead.

“Who is that man, Daddy?”

The little boy was pointing at the famed statue of Bonhoeffer, the one that had been raised in Berlin only two years after the Abwehr successfully ended World War Two by assassinating Hitler. Now, sixty-five years later, I was curious to hear how this young father would explain why Dietrich Bonhoeffer holds an honoured place in our history.

“Well, son, that’s a statue of a great man.”

The little boy stopped for a moment, his finger by his mouth, his face a picture of childish confusion.

“But Daddy, how do you know that?”

And now the confusion was on the father’s face. He was grappling with how to explain.

“Well, have you learned about the war in school?”

The boy nodded.

“And you heard how the people who took our country into that war used the fact that we were at war to secretly do many bad things here and in other nearby countries? Well that man was one of the people that stopped those bad men. He was a priest and his wisdom helped to justify what was done.”

I smiled; it was well explained.

—

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“What are we going to do about this Edgar?”

“What do you mean?”

“This idiot Chamberlain really thinks that this agreement he has made with the Austrian Corporal, Mussolini and Daladier will stop what is really going on. It’s delightful really that the Prime Minister of our country is still someone that believes in honour, but if what we are hearing from our men on the ground in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich is true then this is only the beginning.”

Edgar nodded, pushed himself up in his chair and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“So the intelligence coming in is reliable, Tom? We’ve been hearing this scare mongering for a while and then the politicians come back from summits with their treaties and tell us that it’s not true.”

“What I am about to tell you, Edgar, it’s shocking, but the time has come to share this information at the higher levels and you are cleared Top Secret. I checked before I invited you to dinner, it bears mentioning that this is an official approach from the director of the Foreign Service.”

—

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—

This Ficlet was inspired by the front page of Wikipedia for the 29th of September 2008, in English. The Article was from the “On This Day…” section from the 29th of September 2008 and concerned The Signing of The Munich Agreement on September 29th 1938; you can find out more here.

The long drive home was becoming longer and longer as the last can of Red Bull wore off. Joel opened his window and started slapping his chest in time with the loud fast music (Clutch of course) coming from the stereo.

The string of orange lamp posts stretching off towards the main junction for Birmingham, like a string of flourescent beads. He was a few miles from Birmingham and that meant there was only an hour of driving left ahead of him if he kept his wits about him and his right foot down.

He looked over his shoulder into the back of the car to see Lottie and their little daughter Rose soundly asleep, the cutest of smiles on both of their faces. How were they sleeping through the music? He needed to rest; he needed to put their safety ahead of his desire to get home. In his heart he knew that there would be trouble if he kept driving, that he would not be able to stay awake. He could stop and get more Red Bull.

BANG

He could not hold the steering straight; there had been a blowout. At least he was awake…

—

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“It eludes me.”

“I know that, that’s one of the things that I really like about you.”

“Why would they do this? I mean it doesn’t make any sense.”

I nodded and smiled. Even faced with the reality of it all and even with all of her intelligence and education it was her feeling for humanity, or rather what is good about humanity, that came to the fore.

“Look, I understand how this upsets you and how it confuses you in equal measure, but I need you to dig in right now. We will never understand this, but we do have to prepare the public for it as if we do. You know?”

She nodded, and headed out of the office. As my door started to close I could hear her delegating tasks and asking for work from the team. She was going to be okay for that one day, but then I was going to have to have some answers for her.

I picked up the photographs from my desk and tried to make myself look at them again. One hundred and seventeen dead, another two hundred plus injured, and for what? I needed to have an answer when Sheena asked me again.

—

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“So let me get this straight, you are going to walk into his office, shoot him in the face, take the USB key from computer and walk out?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit risky? I mean won’t his people hear the gunshot? Even if they don’t, isn’t there a good chance someone will find his carcass and raise the alarm?”

“Yeah.”

“Shouldn’t we talk about alternatives? Maybe a diversion and I go in to steal the USB key covertly, you know go for the subtle approach?”

“Nope.”

“What do you mean ‘Nope’?”

“I mean, nope.”

“I give up, you have a deathwish, not to mention the psychosis that planning to casually murder someone suggests. Good luck Paden, I can’t be a part of this. I’m sorry.”

He nodded, spat at his feet and pulled the brim of his hat down. He remained silent for just a few more seconds and then;

“Ok then. You’d best scoot.”

“I can’t persuade you to leave the cold blooded murder then?”

“He killed my wife, my mother and my dog. Shooting him once in the face is kind compared to what I’d like to do to him, you know?”

—

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She watched him, sitting on the edge of the bed as he always did, buttoning his shirt and then tying his tie. There was always a point, as he put his street clothes back on, at which he became all business and the man that she had been getting to know each week for seven months went away again.

She had always wondered if this was the way that her regulars rationalised that they were visiting her when their managers thought that they were playing squash or golf, or dining a customer or meeting a prospect to try and close a very different kind of deal. She knew that she had her own tricks, her own mental sleight of hand that helped her forget that she was not just having sex because she wanted to.

She was not developing feelings for him; that had happened once when she started out, but she learned from that experience. She had been hoping that he would make it easier on her, allowing himself to be happy with what he was doing. Just smile at her before he left, instead of the cold face that offered her the cash…

—

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He was leaning over the rail of the balcony when she came out of the shower. Though she was just barely wrapped in a towel, wearing only her necklace, she wandered to the door and ran her finger down his back. He turned and put his back to the rail, back against it.

“Ah, there you are. Come here.”

He smiled as she started to walk towards him, and reached out to take her hands. She let the towel drop and clothed herself in his arms. He nuzzled into her neck, planting kisses between her nape and the lobe of her ear, and then he whispered;

“Do you like the town of my birth then? The Rome that never quite was, this odd little town in Provence?”

“You were born here in Avignon? I did not know that!”

He spun her to face him, grasping her upper arms in his strong hands. He allowed himself a moment to look at her body, to appreciate the perfection and then his eyes came to rest on the key nestling between her breasts on her necklace. He kissed her, wrenched the key from its chain, and flipped backwards over the rail.

—

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—

This Ficlet was inspired by Thom Ryng’s suggestions of a key, Avignon and a kiss as item, place and activity from the Wednesday poll on my Livejournal.