"Metronome" (WWI-Era), July 2020 Monthly Prompt

[gardnerhill]

Title: Metronome
Author: gardnerhill
Form/Wordcount: 200
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: G
Warnings/Content: None
Summary: There's something about this rhythm.
Author’s Notes: For the Holmes Minor July 2020 prompt: Punctuate.



There is a new rhythm to our lives, and I cannot say I am sorry for it despite its origin.

John's footsteps around the house, in the garden and along the cliff are now punctuated with the steady tap or crunch or thump of his white cane.

John's office resounds with the rhythmic clunking sound of his Braille writer turning out more of his romantic fiction.

In the parlour, John finally has the time and inclination to settle in front of our piano and send simple scales and tunes into the air, learning by ear what he could never read from sheet-music when he still had his sight. The music itself is unremarkable; the beat it carries is soothing beyond words.

I don't know if he is deliberately doing this, or if it is done subconsciously.

But after two years of stillness in this cottage, two years of panic attacks at the thought of what he was facing in France, two years of terror that this silence would remain forever?

Every incidental sound John makes now is an echo of the same glorious rhythm that pillows my head and punctuates my sleep every night: the steady beat of his heart.

Comments

[smallhobbit]

This is a lovely picture.

[gardnerhill]

Thank you.

[scfrankles]

That's such a beautiful interpretation of the prompt ^^ I love your vivid use of description to bring all the sounds to life. I particularly love:

...the steady tap or crunch or thump of his white cane.

...the rhythmic clunking sound of his Braille writer...

Every incidental sound John makes now is an echo of the same glorious rhythm that pillows my head and punctuates my sleep every night: the steady beat of his heart.

[gardnerhill]

Thanks! Onomatopoeia is useful stuff for setting scenes. On solid wood and carpeting a cane's sound is *tap*, the gravel around the garden is *crunch* and the dirt path along the cliff is *thump*. I've used a Braille typewriter, and it does have a heavy clunking sound to it.

One of the most memorable lines in a book about reading to kids is how much kids love poetry, because the very first sound a baby is aware of is the steady beat of mother's heart.