A Story Short (well, shorter than the last one at least)

[This started out as an experiment to see if I could write something without dialogue.  In direct opposition to my previous post which is nothing but!

Thus I release my hold on my latest monster into the wild interworld to rampage as it pleases]

The man who was a rock

He had only known love a short time when he was in the care of the man who called him son and that was a lie for they were not related by any sort of blood but it was a lie that they were able to live with. But forces stronger than either of them conspired and amongst the various homes that he would enter with high hopes, only to be returned when something inevitably went wrong, he learnt that the rightful place for his heart was behind a stronghold of stone and iron.  This was the way that he grew to manhood and within him the fortress grew deep and mighty

Still, every so often, he gazed out from his parapits at the happenings of those who wore their hearts on their sleaves, those who gave it away freely, saw it returned in the faces of their loved ones and even as he turned away in disugust he would feel a tiny piece of his fortress crumble.

But crumbling brickwork or not his fortress remained strong and he walked the earth an abberation for he was quite unable to feel love, nor greed, nor desire for they live in the heart itself. Many times he told himself that he was happy and some days he believed it while other days he did not.

One night love came for him, not attempting to storm his gates but rather slipping in quietly between the cracks that he didn't even realise were there.

The night theatre finally closed its doors and spilled its audience out into the street.  It was never a medium that had given him any pleasure.  Grown men and women prancing about and declaring love or even plotting murder in extravagant musical numbers.  You didn't need to be any sort of police mastermind to figure out that the uncle who just sang about wanting his nephew out of the way might have had something to do with his nephew suddenly "going off to see the world and seek his fortune"

This night out hadn't been his idea but their business was courting his business and such things usually greased the wheels of commerce, usually.

That the Berlin markets were never closed was something that he often told himself he should approve of, everyone needed money and the people that were willing to make the effort ended up with it all.

It was a parting of the crowd that gave him the first glimpse of her. That merest chance, half a second later and he would have walked by without knowing she was there. Indeed had she not turned to meet his eyes he would have done just that.

Unlike her brothers who ran about the place heedless of any that might be watching she stayed quietly in the small square of artificial moonlight as was provided by the streetlight.

His acquaintances moved on down the street. If they had noticed, or cared, that he was no longer with them they didn't bother to say anything. But they didn't matter now.

A few hesitant steps took him out of the foot traffic and he told himself that he was being foolish even as he opened the door with more force than strictly necessary

Around his heart his walls came down and for the first time since boyhood he was able to feel something other than a lump of iron in his chest.

“Darf ich helfen?” The tired looking clerk had three piercings in her eyebrow and a long purple mohawk. At almost any other time in his life he would have disaproved but on this night none of that mattered as he reached into his meagre repetoire of German

“Ja, ja du kannst. Wie viel ist das Hündchen im Fenster?”