The Flight of Time.

The clock and the bell

Alight and swell

Are beating upon the hour

Her quivering hands, skin stretched tight over bone, grasped the rocking chair's arms. They unintentionally betrayed the raging turmoil she was battling inside.

This did not just happen. This is not true. She chanted over and over to herself, hoping for a favourable resolution. It is simply a wildly, incredibly drawn out piece of fiction my run-of-the-mill imagination made unnervingly real.

Besides, it has happened before.

But this time didn't feel like the last, nor the one before. The nostalgia in the air was tangible to the touch and hovered all around. Everything had the air of a very real reality. A sick and twisted reality. The atmosphere smelt of acid.

The hand that now lay surreptitiously atop her own felt cold and unfamiliar. Something she could surely never imagine. And then she knew that it was real. This cruel truth staggered her and caught her by the throat, inducing her to say it. Admit what was the truth. To exit from her made-up worlds and acknowledge the present.

“I'm so sorry,” his words cracked the fictitious landscape in her mind and she saw it. She finally saw it.

“Madamoiselle, h-he was brave and strong. He did not suffer for long, I-our troops out in the fields and Lieutenant Garret made sure his last hours were spent in the blissful sleep he deserved. Pete- Monsieur du Beurette told me to give you this.” The awkward soldier, silhouetted in the early morning dawn, reached inside his navy blue tunic and emerged with a worn, earthen envelope that was noticeably once a pristine ivory.

On the front, in beautifully slanted script, read “To my dearest Élodie”.

Slowly, as if to delay the inevitable, she opened the envelope to reveal an equally worn, earthen letter.

Seeing the overflow of emotion in her eyes as she stared for immeasurable time at the letter, to the soldier seemed too intimate for him to stand guard for any longer. He had done his job. He delivered the letter. The Lieutenant General was waiting for him to make their peremptory voyage back to the barricades. This he told himself, over and over and over. But something kept compelling him to stay, if just a little while longer. If he was a lesser man, a man of foolish stature, maybe he would have. But he had a commitment. And by God, he would stand by it.

With that he turned to leave the forlorn maiden with as much stealth as he could muster, recalling what he learnt while in training to perform surprise attacks on the enemy from behind. The deadliest and least expected, he reflected in black irony.

But as he took the first step, his foot weighing down on the porch's weathered boards with an ominous croak, he heard a small voice beckoning.

“Antoine?”

How did she know his name? Curious, he turned with a skilled swiftness and waited.

“I'm sorry, I... I know you must be a very pre-occupied man, and in your own right, but could you please read me the letter?” She spoke in a soft but determined tone that was at odds with the slight sight of her. Her eyes were already brimmed with the ripe tears of mourning and he was afraid that if he read the letter to her, they would cascade and crumble away with her.

“Madamoiselle, I'm so deeply grieved for you loss, but I-”

“Oh, no. I understand.” She produced a sad half-smile. “It... It's fi-” Her voice caught and she started to breathe erratically, the hand clutching the letter slumped down from the arm of the rocking chair and her head bent back on her spine and against the chair's back - trying in half-heartened attempt to recapture the stolen fresh air from her lungs. To breathe new hope into her broken body.

The lone soldier -with his navy tunic, his cotton trousers and his various embellishments- felt utterly out of place and at odds as to how to conduct himself. He had not been trained to deal with grief or despair. Rather, he was told to discard it. Those feelings only taint the victorious mind, the Lieutenant General once told him.

But his father taught him chivalry.

He walked to the frail Élodie and lifted her now unconscious form up from the chair and carried her through the doorway of the house beyond. The entrance was dark but his gaze caught a door held conspicuously ajar by a wooden right-angled object and he decided to enter it. To his relief, it looked to be her chambers. He carried her to the modest bed and lay her down, caressing her gleaming forehead. Absentmindedly, he traced the lines of stress already evident on her lovely, youthful face.

She looked almost at peace in her unconscious state. Her face transformed into Peter's and he found himself looking back at his dead comrade.

Something wet appeared and spread on the cotton of his trousers. It took a while for him to comprehend that he was crying. He had never shed a tear in his life. Not when his father beat him with wooden cane for taking a forbidden cookie. Nor when his mother died of cancer. Nor when he killed a man -a man that meant something to somebody- in battle. Never.

Élodie's serene countenance did nothing to lessen the violent blow of his suppressed collision of emotions. There, his back to the edge of her bed, he sat in reverie for a very long time. Élodie never came to.

In his despair he pounded on the dust-veiled floor, when he noticed an earthen paper. The letter. In all his contemplations, he never noticed it.

He took it in shaking hands and regarded it's entirety. Here and there, he saw a smudge of ink, which could only be tears.

“My dearest, my love.

Do you believe in fate? I like to believe so. I like to believe that God put us on this planet for a specific purpose.

I've never been good at anything. I cannot climb the trees like you can. I cannot tell stories straight out the imagination like you. I cannot aim a rock to hit a clear target even with the aid of a sling-shot. (Which really makes you wonder why in the world I got registered into the army.)

And so, as I sit here in these desolate barricades, and look over my talents (or lack-thereof), I realise that, my love, my purpose her on earth is not to climb some tree, nor to hit a target in perfection, nor even to tell the most wondrous story. My purpose is you.

Now, I know, if you have been handed down this letter by Antoine, (he can be a little cumbersome, as he surely knows, but his heart is in the right place. Be sure to pass him my thanks for his troubles and his loyalty to me in my dire circumstances) and that you have read thus far, you would have learnt of my demise. But do not cry, oh how I hate to see you cry. Do not taint that beautiful face I love so much with those ugly monsters they call tears, because this is not goodbye.

You hear me, Élodie? This is not the end. Remember what I told you before I was sent away?Remember the bird? We'll fly away like that bird, Élodie. Away, we will.

And when you're ready. When you feel your work is done, and there is nothing else you feel you need to live for; you just spread your wings and I'll help you fly. We'll fly our way through the heavenly skies with the stars as our guide and stay with the clouds and the moon forever. I promise.

I'll see you soon, my love. I'll be waiting,

Peter.”

She read it.

Antoine picked himself up, gathered his bearings, turned on his heals and slowly looked down, and he smiled a knowing smile at the lifeless face of the girl. The girl who flew away and never returned.

Time flits by

Oh how it seems to fly

But oh, how it also devours 

--Ani.

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Midnight rush/product of Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles. Très inspiré.