The exercise:
Write something that has to do with the number: nine.
Max celebrated his ninth birthday today. The four of us went for a nice hike in the morning, bowling with the farm family in the afternoon, and lots of much appreciated presents topped things off quite nicely.
2 comments:
Happy birthday to Max! How old does it make you feel to realise that your eldest son is now nearly ten?
It sounds like you had a great day all told then, and the bowling sound like a lot of fun!
Nine
Isabella Bonfontaine sighed. She was sat on the steps of San Sebastian on top of the second highest mountain on the island of Palma. The wind howled around her, tugging at her clothes first and then her, trying to push her over and down the steps, where she would have a choice of tumbling down the road to the first hairpin bend, and then probably just straight down the mountainside, or tumbling off the road first and hoping that she could get a grip on the walking trail before she hit the mountainside again. She adjusted her position slightly to be more certain that the wind couldn't get a good grip on her.
Behind her, the high stone walls of the temple rose upwards, topped by a statue of Christ, and inside the walls, a single small room barely big enough for two people where the font was. Now it was protected from the tourists by iron bars that kept them out of the room and away from the water, but that was nothing that a hacksaw couldn't fix. Or, in her case, a small oxyacetylene torch that she'd bought down at the harbour, telling the shop-owner about the welding she needed to do on a boat that wasn't being dry-docked just yet.
"Nine," she said under her breath, counting minutes. She stood up, stretching. The wind wasn't exactly cold, but its persistence and strength meant it sapped the heat from her body and she was stiff. She considered jumping up and down a little, but decided that that was just tempting the wind to gust extra hard while she was in the air and blow her off the steps.
"Nine minutes for salvation," she said quietly as she walked back up the steps, crouching slightly to minimise her cross-section to the near-gale howling around her. At the top she stepped around the bars that she'd cut out and neatly set aside, and reached through the gap to the font. A small travel cup, bright red and apparently made out of bamboo fibre, was sat under the trickle of water that would have filled the basin if it hadn't been cracked and moss-ravaged. She pulled the cup gently free -- she'd had to wedge it in place otherwise the wind would have blown it out and off the top of the mountain and, as well prepared as she was, even she didn't carry six or seven cups with her at all times. It might have been her imagination but the water seemed crystal clear and sparkling despite the grey clouds scudding across the sky and hiding the sun.
Shielding the cup with her body and letting the wind flutter her clothes like an impatient lover trying to tear them off she decanted the water into three test-tubes with rubber stoppers and then placed them equally carefully into a slim steel container like a cigar-holder. There were a couple of drops of water left and she considered them carefully. She could, of course, taste them herself, but she wasn't sure she was ready for salvation just yet. She also suspected that boiling the water before drinking it would be prudent. But just casting them to the wind seemed sacrilegious and she definitely knew better than to anger any gods who might be watching. So finally she carefully set the cup back in place in the font and welded the bars back across to stop anyone picking it up, and wondered if any passing priest would be moved to call it a miracle.
Greg - very, very old.
Really enjoyed the descriptions here, particularly of the wind and its strength. I'm not sure who she's collecting the salvation for, but I'm certain it's for a very good price.
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