So, when ever I show off my lovely fan art "The Girl Who Danced on My Feet" by Reynaile, people want to read the story. Since I don't want my closest friends to know what a HUGE, perverted nerd I am, I wrote this and will change the names of all the main characters before they read it.
Also, people seemed to keep wanting more 1940s Arthur. JGL needs to do a WW2 movie. NOW!
But, till he does, since I'm the writer, I'm making an extended story about 1940's A&A. This has always been a fun story to write. I hope it's a fun story to read.
~ This is NOT a dream. ~
It will tell the story of before A&A met until the end of the war. I will keep a lot of the more iconic parts that people liked and add more detail.
I am NOT a historian or WW2 expert!
All I know about WW2 is what I can find on the internet and what older people have told me.
Please enjoy and review!
The Girl who Danced on my Feet
~ France, Summer of 1940 ~
~ It was such an odd day for evacuation. Such fine, clear skies. Peaceful, warm weather. Nothing scary at all. Ariadne and her cousin Phillip had left that morning on their bicycles as his parents finished packing the car with the family silver, furs and other irreplaceable things that they didn't want the Nazis to get.
Madam Durand had gathered her large family around the radio the night before and they listened to the far away news that the impossible had happened. Germany had invaded French soil. Monsieur Durand felt that surely, Paris would not fall to the invaders. The family estate was a short drive from the city and the entire threat felt very far away.
His wife, a haughty woman of well breading disagreed.
"No, it will be best if the family went to stay at my sister, till we know what is what." She had said. That had been the end of the discussion. Bags were packed that evening, no arguments.
~ Ariadne was still naive enough to think that evacuation would be exciting. Since she had completed school and started at University, she had been aching for something to finally happen with this war. For ages it had been nothing but men talking and listening to the radio late at night.
She had been rudely shocked into the reality of war one night as the bombing started. No one in the family knew precisely what to do and left lights burning as they fled into the shelter in the basement. That first night of bombing had been exciting, but it grew old fast. Only the children in the rural neighborhood seemed to think the whole thing was an adventure. The threat of war making little boys and girls run wild in the streets.
~ It had been late in the morning before Ariadne and her teenage cousin Phillip had been able to finally leave the house on their bikes. The entire family in an uproar over what to take and what to leave behind.
The two oldest children of the house felt oddly free to be allowed to peddle ahead.
"Look at that." Phillip said nudging her. Ariadne stopped her bicycle and followed his gaze.
The road they were attempting to get on was congested with cars, all of them inching forward at a maddeningly slow pace. On the shoulder and in ditches, large black cars were stalled either out of fuel or overheated.
"Maybe we should go back home." Ariadne said to her cousin.
Phillip was 16 already and the man of the house when his father was away. A job he took most seriously. He often used his position to bully his older cousin who had come from Canada after her parents had died of influenza. But the threat of war had made him act better lately and they had called a truce to their bickering.
"No, Mama wants us to go to Aunt Lucy's house. It's only ten more miles." He said. "We should get there before nightfall. She'll have something for us to eat."
"What if they try and take our bikes away?" Ariadne asked wishing she had thought to bring more water. It was summer and almost noon. This grand adventure of riding their bikes to Aunt Lucy's was starting to seem like a bad idea.
"We'll stay away from them." Phillip said. "Just stay close to me."
Ariadne nodded and peddled after her cousin. Although only 16, Phillip was tall, and almost looked like a man. By contrast, she was small for a girl of 20. Her petite body aggravating Madam Durand, who herself had grown fat from having so many children.
Since Ariadne had come to the Durand family, 10 years ago, she had been like some kind of family, who was not really family. She was given a small room and clothes that were no longer used by them. She was treated well enough, although never with any kind of love or affection as she would have liked. Her Aunt ruled the house and didn't like her husband's niece coming to live with them. Still, she had never been especially ill treated by the family that wasn't hers.
She had no family left.
She followed Phillip as the pair quickly peddled past the cars and pedestrians carrying suitcases and wearing their best traveling clothes. Many of them shouting for them to stop. After almost an hour of riding, they were able to leave the line of clogged traffic.
"That was scary." Ariadne said as she and Phillip pulled their bikes to a clean looking little stream and stopping for a well deserved rest. Her legs hurt and she was still too hot and thirsty. She and Phillip drank from the stream and refilled the green, glass water bottle for the rest of the journey.
"Yes." Phillip agreed as they rested.
~ They had fallen asleep from the heat, their ride and too much excitement. When they woke up, it was evening. A merciful coolness had fallen on them and they could hear people shouting. People were still on the road and it scared her. She wasn't used to seeing so many people on this seldom used road.
"I'm starving." Phillip announced.
Ariadne nodded. They hadn't brought a food pail with them. The ride to Aunt Lucy's was so short, they didn't think they would need it.
The shouting grew louder and it brought them back to what was happening.
"We need to go." Phillip said as the took their bikes out of the tall weeds they had hidden them in.
Avoiding the panicked people and cars, they rode in the weak light of car headlights and the moon.
~"The power's out." Ariadne said when they rode into the small village where their Aunt Lucy lived.
"German's must have cut the electricity." Phillip said as they rode past the people who were scatted around the village. All of them wanting food, lodging and above all, water and fuel.
The Durand family had lived in the country about 30 miles outside of Paris and thought that they had gotten a jump on the inevitable evacuations. But the crowds of people swarming the inns and homes told them otherwise.
"Do you think the Germans are that far in?" She whispered as they watched the eerie sight of people sitting at an outdoor cafe in the dark of evening. Looking out of place in the normally quite streets.
"I don't know." Phillip whispered back.
They found Aunt Lucy's house and while Ariadne was knocking on the front door and looking in widows, Phillip went around the property and quickly came back.
"The car is gone." He grumbled.
"Do you think they all left? Do you think your parents left without us?" She asked feeling panicked.
"You saw the cars. They way they were on the road." Phillip said bracingly. He stood straighter as he was obviously trying to remain calm. "No, I doubt that Mama and Papa even made it past that." He said. "They had the car loaded down with the children and all their things."
With ease, Phillip opened the back door and they stole inside the dark house. The most immediate task was to search for food. Aunt Lucy had always kept the larder in the kitchen stocked, but the family had taken most of that with them.
Ariadne and Phillip found some canned fruit and cheese. They had a filling, but odd meal from the dregs of Aunt Lucy's kitchen. Afraid of lighting a candle, afraid the light might cause the hungry evacuees to break in, the two of them sat in the dark under the dinning room table. This way, no one could see them moving around in the house from the windows.
"Your parents said to come here." Ariadne whispered.
"I know." he hissed back. His normally youthful face lined with worry.
"What do we do now?" She asked feeling scared. The war was no longer romantic or exiting. The war was frighting and too real. Her body hurt from their long ride in the summer heat. Her head ached from being outside in the sun all day.
"I don't know." He whispered.
"We can't stay here." She hissed.
"I know." He said obviously frustrated.
~ In the bright morning, Ariadne and Phillip were back on the road again. They were following the line of people still fleeing. Trusting the horde knew where it were going. From Aunt Lucy's house, they loaded the back racks of their bicycles with what little food the house had left. Jams mostly. Ariadne had left her small amount of clothing with her Aunt to be packed in the car. She and Phillip had no changes of clothes and all she had in the world now was a simple brown dress that was too big, and a bag containing her most precious possessions. Things she had brought with her from her first home. Trinkets now safely stowed in a school satchel that she had crossed over her body.
They rode in silence among the slow and dead traffic. The heat coming back under a cloudless sky. Ariadne already felt dizzy and sick from the warm weather as they rode past more stalled cars. More people walking and shouting. More cars hopeless abandoned on the road as people walked to whatever salvation they hoped waited for them.
~ Eventually, they found themselves in company with a group of students from the university who shared a small meal with them. Phillip and Ariadne were happy to share their store of jams if it meant they could have bread.
"We heard the Germans will be in Paris in less then a week." One boy said as he smoked a hand rolled cigarette.
"I heard they were there already." Another boy said as his girlfriend looked worried.
They watched the progression of slow traffic from their spot in a field. The young people silent and scared as they sat on a quilt Ariadne had thought to get from Aunt Lucy's home.
"So, where are you going?" Phillip asked them.
"Great Britain, of course." Yet another young man said. He had an English accent. "Your welcome to join us, I was told that our boys are evacuating as well."
"Well, who's going to stay and fight the Nazi?" Ariadne asked the group in general. All of them looked at each other and remained silent.
As night rolled back around again, Ariadne and Phillip stayed with the students.
"Ari-bell?" He whispered in the darkness as they all laid out on the quilt. The clear night sky as their cover and nature their room. He used the nickname she had always hated because, upon her arrival with the family, he insisted her name was not French enough. Now, she was glad something from her old life still lingered.
"Are you scared?" he asked.
"Are you?" She asked back.
"I'm worried my parents didn't make it out." He whispered. "I think I should go back and find out."
"We need to stay together!" She hissed.
"They might need me. They have the little ones with them."
"I need you." She almost cried as the students they had decided to travel with, slept on.
~ In the morning, Phillip took half of the food and told her to write to the house if she got to England. She watched in self pitting horror as her only family vanished in the opposite direction. The crowds of slow moving cars and people swallowing him up.
~ It was at a train station that she was glad she had stayed with the students. One of the boys argued passionately for all of them to get on. They all had to abandon their bikes and pack themselves in tightly into a passenger car. Ariadne clutching tightly her school satchel. Her food supplies long gone.
Even though her feet hurt and her body was sore for her riding, she was not able to sit down. The train was already too crowded. Instead, she had to keep her balance as the train lurched onward.
~ For a while, she thought that the train might take them all the way out of France. One of the students explaining to the group in hushed whispers about where they would go once the train let them off.
"We'll need money." He told them. "We might have to buy our way out of the country."
Money wasn't an issue for Ariadne. She had none. Her Aunt was not found of giving her pocket money and she wondered what she would do if she couldn't get out.
If she was left behind in the claws of the encroaching enemy.
