Once Upon A Time, Time Stopped

Chapter 10; Tin box of cotton socks

It had arrived in the early hours of the morning, between dawn and the spring of an orange glow cast across the frost on these shallow fields; a manufactured, tin box of cotton socks, one an ocean blue and the other rose. There had been no letter to accompany the little tin box as you might expect from such an untimely gift - no markings on the box itself, nothing to indicate who the manufacturer was or the name of the product. It was just a tin box, more to it if one thought hard enough to make up reasons for it being here on this sharp morning. It wasn't long before the entire household approached the tin box, which had been laced at the foot of the dinning table on a silver platter. As with mail, or anything else brought in from the outside world. It had to be treated carefully, like a dentist with his patient's teeth, ''everything must be treated with precaution'' Mr. Wilfred's voice would be heard.

He had been a siamese cat in his previous life, for sure, he was an eccentric character. Stern but dandy depending on what time of day clients would visit him at the clinic, for he had been a plastic surgeon for three decades. After, or rather by ww2 cosmetic surgery had made great strides. Serving soldiers with a chance at life again after their service, Mr. Wilfred had not been drafted during the war because of his skills, he had been set up at the tents with the rest of the nurses and doctors patching up every wet dog that came in. It didn't suit his fancy though, he was confident that stitching was an art form and that the poor bastards that came in ought to have been drafted at birth, their brutish looks served them well. it was as though they had been bred for conflict.

His own son, Sirius was anything but, in his boyish years, you might've thought him a girl, he was far fairer than the girls at school, half shy and doe eyed with softer features than the fragile petals of red roses. A flower-boy. An aloof one at that, a passionate dreamer and most dangerously - a creative. Mrs.Wifred had always given quiet protest on the matter of his education, he had been homeschooled for fear of his feminine tendencies becoming the talk of the town. Though Mr Wilfred was prideful of his golden boy and this he showed off at every church service, dressed him like a Russian porcelain doll, and at every social gathering he had hosted Sirius played the fiddle to entertain guests, with upmost precision. By the age of fourteen he had already written his own sheets of music, and by seventeen his room was filled with hope - sculptures dominated political books, art supplies replaced cars and train replicas, Jane Austin novels, and Alfred Tennyson poetry collections took up all of the space on his nightstand.

His older siblings did not appreciate the favouritism their father showed Sirius, especially not when his elder brother Bennet had been drafted to the army and shot execution style for attempting to flee. The other children had been forbidden to speak of it, Mr Wilfred made sure that all anyone knew was that Bennet had been pardoned for extensive psychological trauma subjected by the nazis. It wasn't so, he had fallen in love with a nurse named Grace after being stationed in a base hospital in France, he had met Grace during his short stay there before being sent back to the trenches. Indeed, he suffered from great haemorrhage to his brain, he became disillusioned and in this state they found him. Hiding out in some farmers barn, he'd not been seen sneaking into it but he sure did sneak in. By the time his commander found him, Bennet had been praying to his darling Grace. That barn was his church and Grace the focus of his worship. There he took his last breath as a bullet to the back of the head finished him, there his soul remains slow dancing with his missing darling forever and beyond that.

Upon receiving news of his death after the war, after having been released from her duties, Grace spent some time in solitude; for fear of hysteria her family married her into wealth. She would go on to grow grey, at the silver age of eighty-four she also took her last breath, her sweetheart's name rolling off of her tongue for the last time. Leaving her family name to her two surviving children. The first born named after her first love, to honour whatever had remained of his sanity. The second, Elijah, both now grown men and each with their own family to carry on their name.