Night [9]

The night time is awfully romantic.

It changes a town.

Lights reflect messily on the rippling surface of the river, and when she walks across the bridge under the lampposts and the falling leaves of a dark, dark November night… why, the possibilities are endless.

She thinks things she would never dare contemplate in broad daylight.

Things she has tucked away in the furthest corners of her mind.

The streets, so familiar by daylight, have turned into magical avenues. Lined with tall trees, branches half bare, half covered with yellow and brown leaves. Leaves adoring each avenue, piling under the lampposts, which light up the night softly. Delicately.

Allowing room for thoughts to steal into her mind where they have no business to be.

Mellowing her firm heart.

There he was, waiting for her, just as Mary said he would be. He stood in the doorway of the post office, his cap pulled low over his eyes, arms folded to keep out the cold. Their eyes met and his lit up. Hers scanned the ground by his feet.

‘I told Mary I would walk you as far as the dorm block,’ he began, when she stopped in front of him.

‘That would be… thank you..’ she said, her voice low and demure.

‘I daren’t go any further than that,’ he went on and a wry smile took hold of his features.

‘Aunt Martha would hang you,’ Laura smiled then.

There.

That was not so hard.

Things were normal.

It was just the night, and these strange strange streets.

Grim November evenings, still gorgeously autumnal, the river and its lights, the students walking back from the ball, carefree laughter.

Endless possibilities.

Rendered skewed by the romantic nature of the night.

‘She would hang me, and roast my legs and serve them up with dinner,’

‘Thank you, Tom. For taking the time. You needn’t have bothered yourself.’

‘Don’t I always walk you home?’

Yes but this time it feels different.

‘Yes, and thank you,’

She did not see the bewildered glance he threw in her direction, nor the way his eyes lingered on her face as she looked up through the half bare branches at the beautiful old moon, which was witness to…

It was witness, that ancient moon.

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