![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Well, I'm back :o) No idea when/if I'll be writing/posting the next chapter, but at least this one's done - and boy, I rarely had as much trouble getting words down as this. I could see the end like the end of a tunnel, but it was slooooowww. But it's complete now!
Quand la vie ne tient qu’à un fil, c’est fou le prix du fil !
(When life hangs by a thread, you won’t believe the price of the thread.)
Daniel Pennac, La Petite Marchande de prose (Write to Kill)
Vigil
August 1944
In the heart of summer, heat is no laughing matter in the Lowlands. Whoever decides to go out on the roads in the dead hour, between one and three in the afternoon, when the air trembles above the ground and you can burn your fingers just picking up a pebble, needs at the very least the protection of a hat if they don’t want to keel over from sunstroke. Going from the cooler houses out into the sun too quickly feels like being on the receiving end of the hottest, most powerful slap in the face you can imagine.
When the sun is at its zenith, everything is painted white: the sky, the roads, and even the grass on the dykes. Thin shiny threads of stagnant water stretch in the bottom of canals whose proportions then look completely excessive to an outsider. Lizards and grass snakes loll on hot stones, birds hide in trees or in the cool of hedges. Everything slows down, everybody waits for the worst to pass. The searing heat makes it hard for anyone to believe that the world hasn’t just stopped and that things, presumably, are still happening somewhere.
And yet.
( Read more... )
Title: Between the Mountains and the Plains
Fandom: Giovanni Guareschi's The Little World of Don Camillo stories
Genre: Humour/drama
Rating: PG
Summary: We only ever get hints in the books and films of what Don Camillo's and Peppone's clandestine activities were during the German occupation. Here's my take on the idea.
Chapter: 5. One night can last a long time when a man’s life hangs in the balance.Quand la vie ne tient qu’à un fil, c’est fou le prix du fil !
(When life hangs by a thread, you won’t believe the price of the thread.)
Daniel Pennac, La Petite Marchande de prose (Write to Kill)
Vigil
August 1944
In the heart of summer, heat is no laughing matter in the Lowlands. Whoever decides to go out on the roads in the dead hour, between one and three in the afternoon, when the air trembles above the ground and you can burn your fingers just picking up a pebble, needs at the very least the protection of a hat if they don’t want to keel over from sunstroke. Going from the cooler houses out into the sun too quickly feels like being on the receiving end of the hottest, most powerful slap in the face you can imagine.
When the sun is at its zenith, everything is painted white: the sky, the roads, and even the grass on the dykes. Thin shiny threads of stagnant water stretch in the bottom of canals whose proportions then look completely excessive to an outsider. Lizards and grass snakes loll on hot stones, birds hide in trees or in the cool of hedges. Everything slows down, everybody waits for the worst to pass. The searing heat makes it hard for anyone to believe that the world hasn’t just stopped and that things, presumably, are still happening somewhere.
And yet.
( Read more... )
Taking a canon detail and developing it being one of my favourite pastimes, I couldn't let it lie. But boy, did it take me time to do it, because as always, I'm terrified of writing maudlin material. Hope I didn't.
