The Time Will Come

Two weeks in which to make the decision, and one more evening to imagine living in this spot and never having to go back.

The lake was so quiet and smooth among the protective hills, in the warm windless dusk, that settling here, perhaps with friends, without all the the corrosive pressures, felt like the world’s easiest decision.

But beyond those hills were the people who called him back. Family, Francis and the children, and everyone who’d grown out their lives with him. And life.The life he’d built that depended on itself for survival.

He drank the last of the red and resisted the temptation to shatter the lake with the empty bottle.

The faint cry of a night bird and the fresh start of a slender breeze pulled him up.

And money.

Could he bear to go back to working out his life like that, for the sake of other worlds?

He slept longer yet less restfully than he’d hoped. But he’d decided.  Somewhere between sleep and semi-consciousness he’d made a decision to leave the decision to fate.

Two weeks later, having invited the lot of them over to stay with him in his new home, he felt able to breath again. His hope, as the lake rose and spat on the razor-edge of the storm, was that they’d hate it.