Vague Hymns

Alas, his coat did not contain the warmth necessary to walk the distance. He was too tall and wiry to hold any heat himself; indeed, his mother always had accused him of being colder than the rooms in their abode as a young man. Not as a child, for he did remain quite plump until adolescence. It was on his thirteenth birthday that his grandmother realized how much he was beginning to look like his father. They had brought out the albums, showing him and telling stories about the man he had never known. The Great War had taken him, along with his brothers and led them to meet their maker, but everyone agreed that it was for the best. They did have to work harder, but this boy would grow up tall and maybe become a professional and never have to fight in a dreadful war like that.


But if he was to continue to make it to his classes, he would need a warmer coat. Perhaps something with down; that had always created the necessary effect when he slept through the cold nights of his youth. The comforter that he received on that birthday was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen: all white of course, for it was the finest cloth they could afford (the prices of dyes from Arabia really were quite outlandish) and it must have been half a dozen inches tall, stuffed with the soft feathers from uncountable geese, created as the absolute perfect complement to his thin bony frame which lost heat like the cabin they lived in.