Silver

That morning, the morning of Guy Fawkes night, the frost was as hard as iron and as white as swan feathers, but Old Fox had a wonderful breakfast with the Newcomer by his wagon - coffee so strong it made their whiskers curl and scrambled eggs and salty fried potatoes. They talked of the tides of the world and they talked of the village and of the coming firework display, and Old Fox talked of his friends, most particularly of the Doctor and of the Broker and of Wolf. The Newcomer nodded & listened very intently, as he always did to Old Fox, and as he warmed his paws by the fire, he saw flickering images form in the flames: he saw the Doctor cradling a dying friend in the trenches of Passchendaele as the shelling rose around them, first like the heavy rumbling of thunder, then a whistling, screaming, tearing flight of white stars, as beautiful as they were terrible, he saw the Broker holding his hands over his ears, rocking to and fro and to and fro, shaking and shivering, covered in the same thick Flanders mud, and he saw Wolf loping down the middle of a London street, not knowing where he was, not knowing where to go, flinching and whimpering at the raging noise of the traffic, at the horns and the angry shouting of an omnibus driver. So it came about that at 5 o'clock exactly that evening, a good two hours before the display, Wolf and Old Fox knocked on the Doctor's door and were led through to the garden by his Housekeeper. "Newcomer's all set up," she said, "he's right down by the cherry trees." They padded through the checkerboard hall and the baize door and the kitchen to the long oblong lawn, where chairs of all different sizes, each with its own blanket, were set out  in a row. The Broker was there and the Doctor, and the Housekeeper brought out a tray of ginger wine and some bars of milk chocolate, to keep out the cold. Suddenly, the Newcomer appeared in front of them, trailing ice and fir and smoke around him. "For your delight," he said, "a night show of fair fire flowers as quiet as a summer breeze." And he stamped a paw and whispered something to the keen air in a language unuttered below the snow-lands of the north. Everyone sat down in the striped deck chairs and the papier-mâchè wobblers and the sturdy Glastonbury oak thrones, and wrapped themselves in blankets and shawls, and, as hushed as though in a minster in the holiest of holidays, watched one of the most beautiful and stirring exhibitions they had ever seen, a symphony of silent fireworks glittering and blooming in the moth-haunted, velvet-black November night. There were glittering chaplets of roses and feathery Egyptian stars and fierce bronze firebirds and mumerations of golden starlings and blue-green Yokohama fountains and delicate white flowers which fell like drifting swan down, like the first snows of Christmastide. Afterwards, the Doctor drove Wolf and the Broker to a little pub in Abbotsbury for a treat, and they sat in the sweet peace of the snug, by the great medieval fireplace, and gently laughed and drank juniper ale and talked of art and books and the future, and let the noisy fearful bombast of their pasts quieten and recede for a long while, as the tide pulls away on a beach in the depths of winter.

💫 🔥For Bonfire Night, a new story on my patreon: "How Quiet the Flowers!" 🔥💫 patreon.com/annelouiseavery/…

There was great excitement in the village. The Newcomer had arrived overnight in his fine wagon, and had set up camp by the holly bush on the Green. There was a thin feather of blue smoke from his fire, and a lovely drift of roasted coffee and sugar and fried potatoes on the cold morning air. At the same time, a series of brightly painted posters had appeared on the blacksmith's great oak doors and the post office notice board and the Doctor's windows and the beech tree by the school. They read as follows: On this Fifth Night of November, A Rare Display of Fireflowers and Firesparks By a Master Conjurer of the North & a Fierce & Grand Bonefire, best in Dorset, On the Green at 7 o'clock.