March, the month where weather is decided based on the shaking of a giant cosmic fortune telling eight ball. Want good weather? Try again tomorrow.
Monday warm enough to break you out in a sweat and gloriously sunny. Tuesday sun remains, but the heat goes away. Today is actually warmer than yesterday but pouring down buckets of rain. Any guesses for tomorrow?
I think a writing prompt is a better bet then guessing, so let’s get to it.
I think Uncle Walter may be an interesting character to write. He has the potential to cause much destruction.
Wednesday, March 17th: I pretended to ignorance.
I pretended to ignorance. It seemed the safest bet. I shook my head in the negative, knowing my voice would betray me.
“You don’t know?” I was asked.
Again I shook my head in the negative.
“No idea?” she asked again.
Again I shook my head.
She looked over my head into the back yard. There in the middle of the yard where once our old broken down bird bath usually stood was a large fountain.
And not just any fountain.
A huge fountain.
The base was a bowl as big as three bathtubs placed together, maybe four and the central pillar rose straight into the air for another two levels. The small top bowl was only about the size of one bath tub. Water gushed and splashed down into the top basin, rolled over the side to fill the second before finally filling the third. I had watched in fascination as the bottom basin filled, wondering if it too would over flow and turn our back yard, or what little was left of it, into marsh. It didn’t once it reached the correct level the water more or less circulated. The bottom basin always stayed at the same level.
The central pillar was something to behold. It appeared to be a column but on the bottom level four men wearing nothing but leaves stood around the pillar, their legs buried to the knees in the water of the first basin and their hands seemingly holding up the second. On the second tier were carved four women standing in the second bowl and holding up the third. The small pillar rising from the top of the thid bowl was slender and topped with a finial that looked like gold.
It was, all told, an amazing sight.
Thus far the local bird population was too awed to actually approach the edifice. I wondered how long it would take them to return.
“So this just …appeared?” She asked when she finished taking in the watery structure taking up a large portion of our back yard.
I shrugged.
“I don’t suppose your Uncle Walter had anything to do with this?”
I tried for a confused look but I am certain I just looked pained. What could I say? Uncle Walter swore me to secrecy. He wanted to be the one to explain it. I don’t know if he thought she just wouldn’t notice the fountain until he had a chance to explain it but somehow I didn’t think that he would think it through. He usually didn’t. Uncle Walter and a team of experts arrived as soon as he deemed the coast was clear that morning and had only completed their task and vacated the premises an hour before.
Ten til Midnight 