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Blame Ford and Miz Av’ry.

While others have, in the past, contributed more than one Six Sentence Story to our weekly gathering, this year I’m caught up in the metaphor of the Six Sentence Cafe and Bistro.

So, this morning, I’m finishing my reading/commenting at Denise’s bloghop and, at the end of the thumbnails, I come upon two new contributions from the above pair. (I’ll spare all the memory-painting of my own version of the aforementioned bistro/bar and simply say, “Damn! guys, what was that?!”)*

So, while more in the category of (a) back-of-the-envelope variation on a theme, we offer:

The acolyte, the youngest ever admitted to the Order, struggled to seat the soup cauldron in the wooden cart; once his concentration resolved, as the iron pot weighed nearly as much as he, his face relaxed into what his young mind insisted was a neutral expression.

The early morning was still gathering light, like a rag collector harvesting the increasing voids in the fog that swaddled the cobblestone alleys and decorated the brick walls of Whitechapel.

The Order of Lilith demanded study and work from those who felt the calling, but Seth, whose name did not escape the cruel attention of the older boys in his class, had promised himself he would not cling, like a baby clutching a worn, mother-scented blanket, to the images and thoughts of the small handful of Christmas mornings passed.

The peals of St. Paul’s bell tower, surely a first-year rector working out his nerves before one of the most important of Masses, crowded the boy’s thoughts with memories of home, and, his eyes with tears that he brushed aside as he heard the scullery door open.

“All is ready, Brother Abbott,” turning his head away in a hasty effort to evaporate any sign of what the very young or the very old mistakenly consider weakness, Seth grappled with the pull bar that was almost shoulder level.

“I was older than you when I joined the Order,” Brother Abbott held the door as the boy struggled to pulled the cart out onto Thrawl Street, “Yet it took me years to realize that Christmas is a season of the heart and not the purse,” smiling the bearded man continued, “While you are surely missing your family and a tree rooted in brightly wrapped presents, consider that on this morning you are bringing gifts more fair than any you have received: food to the hungry and companionship to the lonely; this will be remembered well past the Yule-time.”

* thanks to Denise for hosting to all the Sixarians for contributing to an atmosphere and environment so conducive to the writing thing

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