Snow In Summer

And the bombs fell like the snow.

It had looked to be masses of snow, falling in the clear night sky. Glittering like fallen stars, like fairy dust, a flurry of heavy snow. But they kept falling, and as their bellies suddenly reflected orange in the over glow of the city clear, they lost their instant of beauty. Each swollen star smashed the ground and fire erupted from their ice cold sparkle, blossoming between the hills cradling the city. The buildings burned as bomb and bomb and bomb fell like snow from the sky.

We could watch, surely, with the fires raging so far below us, in the depth of the valley. Doubtful they would ever reach here, across the river and the rocks, where our homes clutched to the wooded hillside, elegant and elaborate. With our eclectic gardens of green, blue, and musty wine winding between opposing planes of rock and wall. We reclined, picnic like, midway of the span of green, one of the few open places on this strongly rolling slope. We had the perfect view.

And the stars collided.

Elbows bent into the prickly grass, necks craned to see the dizzy distance above, we gazed raptly upward, until the world itself seemed only a crazy midnight dome scattered with diamonds and it all sliding side to side, falling silken edges glistening, or dew spark from a leisured oar paddling a great dark lake. In a tiny puff of nova, one disappears, there, and now here. So many stars, dancing and destroying.

A stray patch of light glided along our slope of green, reached out and brushed us, here at our picnic, bathed us in momentary daylight, here on our mountain. Perhaps, well, just to be safe, not really the most savory of spectacles, when one considered the nature of the bedlam of those stars and that snow of bombs.

The house was still, no sounds of trickling water or soft strings and flutes. No sconce glowed, no breath of transgenic rose wafted through the room. We’d taken no notice to reserve power, but we’d logs from the forest, and kindling, and matches. These we gathered, setting them in the smaller hearth at the wall rather than the ashen stones of the open fire pit, remembering at last that there would be no fan to drive out the smoke. But the match remained unlit, as we passed a glance amongst us, thinking of the smoke, the fires, the signal we would send.

Food, then, before it should spoil, and yes, we would go sit in the grotto. Like an earthen womb, the grotto, like an elfin home. Hidden behind a wall of books, just to make it secret, with a precarious stone stair, for added mystery. Bare earth and stone planted in herb and fern, quiet pools, still and timeless. Branches and ivies had long over grown the one way window, leaving only a hint of sky to break the dark.

And the night sky glowed orange.

The portacom, the link to the world when in need, was silent. We huddled in the shadow of the fronds, the cushions over lounges of rock comforting and familiar, when the world was not. We shared bread and cheese and light wine with the solemn quiet of the grotto.

We slept, some time or another, or sang quietly, to keep the young ones content. Soon, the sky will lighten and the grotto will fill with sleepy golden sun. We will be hungry, all, and the pets will be hungry, and the plants will need watered, since the pumps won’t work. Then, we will need to emerge again, maybe just one at a time, just to see. If the power is yet gone, if the valley still burns, if the bombs and the planes are still playing among the skies.

If we’re lucky, someone will already have won.