Incomplete – Everything Is Better With Dragons

I don’t know where this came from, I used to have a bit of an obsession with the Peninsula War, so probably that influenced this story nugget.

An Incident in the Peninsular War Napoleon Entering a City - Robert ...

The men appeared out of the mist, early summer sun colouring it blood red. Like their jackets. The sun glinted on fixed bayonets and shako badges, the colours lost somewhere above them.

The red coated men marched in line towards us. How many were there hiding in the mist? We heard their orders shouted from one end to the other. Above us all, on the ridge that hemmed in the valley and herded the mists that sat over us, was their General. He sat on his horse, beneath a tree, surrounded by his commanders. They watched us, and their men. I don’t know what they saw that we didn’t, but it made me nervous.

We waited for orders. I looked round for my commander. Would they send in the cuirassiers first? Those heavy horsemen would chop the British to shreds. Even the river wouldn’t slow their charge. They’d have no time to form square, and if they did? My gunners would have slaughtered them where they stood.

The enemy marched towards us, crossing the shallow river that ran through the centre of the valley. That was foolish, there river was a good defensive line. This close I could see them clearly, their flags finally out of the mist.

They weren’t interested in taking a position and defending it. They came on.

Finally, a runner arrived, with orders.

FIRE!

There’s a weather theme with the current crop of prompts. I was going to write something else entirely, but then I realised I was thinking of tornadoes not hurricanes and had a rewrite. So this is only a part of a story. I do sketch out at the end where it goes though, I just haven’t written the rest of it yet.

Description Shutters Locked in Preparation for Gustav New Orleans.jpg

“Don’t mess with those.” Florence snapped at her niece, Jenna.

“They’re only shutters.”

“They’re hurricane shutters, and very hard to find here. Don’t mess with them. I need your dad to put them up for me.”

Jenna rolled her eyes at her great aunt but stepped away from the pile of wrapped, wooden shutters.

“We don’t have hurricanes here, Auntie Flo.”

“There have been.” Florence shoved a coffee table across the carpet, positioning it in the centre of the room. She bent to check for scratches.

“No, there aren’t ever any hurricanes. Hurricanes happen in hot, wet places; we did it at school.”

“They taught you wrong then, or your teachers aren’t very old. There was a hurricane just before I left to live in the Caribbean.”

“Auntie that was thirty years ago. And a freak too. You’ve lived abroad for too long.” Jenna’s dad, Sean, laughed as he walked into the living room of the sheltered housing complex bungalow Florence had rented when she returned from her years in the Caribbean. Sean was carrying a box of hardback books, acquired in the months Florence had stayed with his family since her return.

“Where do you want these, auntie?”

“On the kitchen table. No, not there. There. And don’t scuff the table.”

Sean shifted the box a few inches, turning back to his daughter and aunt when he was finished.

“It’s survived thirty years in the Caribbean, a long trip back and six months in storage, I’m sure it’ll cope with a box of books.”

“You don’t know that it hasn’t been damaged.”

Sean sighed. It was going to be one of those days.

The story continues with a house warming, and Sean being nagged into putting up the hurricane shutters. During the party a freak storm blows up and the shutters come in handy after all.