This is the fourth installment of what is becoming a series. I like these character, Milo and Darling. I'm curious what will happen to them.
Milo Wonders
Milo sat at his drafting table, work lamp off, magnifying loupe put away in its case. Evening was coming and Darling wasn’t home. He wasn’t worried, not just yet. A loving marriage that had earned his trust. Repenting. Forgiving. Never enemies. Trust. Their marriage in this thirty years war had survived.
Survived her travel, twenty-five thousand, forty-thousand miles, he’d lost count. Survived illness, and bitterness ongoing. Seasick, airsick Fear. Survived apartment fires. Survived dangerous mobs and riots in the streets.
And through it all she was keeping the record, writing the report through the regular rhythms of bitter conflict and escalating violence – in the city and the nation beyond. The assaults, black and blue, and unlucky blows.
He checked his watch and went to the kitchen. He’d start the potatoes and wait.
“My thoughts have been and will be formed and pass away. I know the dust and dwelling place. I know the frailty of this flesh. Every tombstone. And there are times and there are places – still dwelling, being, living now. Thoughts going. Thoughts drift. I wonder. My struggles before, blood, trouble, and trials of love, and strength, and sorrow when the world comes to an end. My thoughts to the very last will be written.”
Now the sky was dark and blackout conditions in force. Curtains drawn and lamps down low. Dinner dishes for one cleaned and put away. Her portion waiting in the fridge. He checked his watch.
“I am a man, well pleased. I am a man of conscience, unashamed. But I’m having a hard time finding my thoughts. My mind. Do you think it strange? Do I love and serve? Am I distracted?”
He imagined not murderers and thieves, but busybodies and gossips. There was the danger. Evildoers. Purloined letters. The private correspondence of critics. Damaging interoffice memos circulated, copied, and passed on by Darling to her handlers. Undermining the State Press – writing the free press, underground. He imagined fiery hell burning away. The fiery judgment of a living hell. The godly and the free suffer persecution. But fire and water purify.
He checked his watch. “Fire can save us, yeah? Purify? I hope.”
Hours later, one in the morning, she came through the door. Returning home, she fell into his arms, burning with fever. Ill. One hundred degrees. One hundred one. He rushed her to bed.
“Can we live a thousand years like this, Darling?”
1 - Everything’s Back to Normal
2 - One Life and One More
3 - Milo Remembers
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