Alfred's Birthday
Alfred Jones watched the sky in awe as the fireworks shot up, cascading and illuminating the rocky bluff behind them. Each explosion lent a different shadow to the already brightly colored rocks on the face of the wall, and the colors drifted lazily across each rock independently. Most of the fireworks were unbelievably large; covering a third of the visible sky when one looked straight above him, and when he looked only at the horizon, covered nearly the whole view. There was the occasional tck of a finished explosion that had just recently magnificently adorned the night sky and was now falling to rest on peacefully on the earth. No two fireworks were the same, and each carried with it a new experience, a new set of colors, a new way the ring of light expanded. Some of the fireworks shot out in many colors. Others came out with a fizzling sound, sending out smaller fizzles along with each line the flying pieces of elemental mixture were already drawing. Others still made a colored band, which then got enveloped by a yellow, plain fizzling ring, which then sputtered away with a few flashes of bright white illumination. Alfred leaned against a lamp post, whose flickering light seemed rather dreary and unimpressive compared to the profound beauty that lit up everything around it. He took a small confetti cannon out of his pocket, and pulled the string on the end, the small pop inaudible as the loud clap of another firework had its way with the silence of the night. He watched as the multicolored pieces of tissue paper floated down slowly to the ground below, to join their fallen ancestors that had been shot all day long. Such a fantastic birthday celebration… except that it was never quite treated like a birthday celebration. It was mostly treated as an excuse to party, or another memorial holiday. Nobody baked a birthday cake for the United States of America. He looked back up at the fireworks, which still appeared to be in the middle of the display. He smiled slightly, going back to watching the elaborate mechanics of the shadows on the bluff, dancing wildly between the crevices and rocks. He soon had to step out of the way of two children, a boy and a girl, running by him, each with a lit sparkler in their hands. He had never been much a fan of sparklers—they always reminded him too much of matchlock rifle lighting sticks—but the children ran about in such an innocent fashion that he couldn't help but grin. The small girl looked up at him as she passed by, and stopped for a moment. "Happy Fourth of July, Alfred!" He smiled and tussled her hair a bit. "You too, Emily. Be safe with those sparklers; ya don't want anyone hurt." She smiled and nodded, and ran off after the boy, waving the sparkler all the way. He looked up just in time to see the final piece of the fireworks display. The finale came with a noise like the Mighty Mo firing off all her guns simultaneously with a deafening roar, the reverberations of which being placed in the Grand Canyon, then redirected through a very large megaphone. The ground quaked and the sky was lit as though either day had taken it back suddenly or the lighting off of the guns of the aforementioned battleship had cast their bright, visible echoes over the canvas of the invisible stars, taking their place in a larger scale, each explosion appearing as though the star had come much closer and spread out individual arms to grasp the one beside it, until one thought that one's ears would fall off from either the vibration or the sound, one could never be sure which would happen first, as the blasts become more and more often, the old line from the national anthem about bursting bombs becoming all too real to the watcher. But then it was quiet. Dead silent. The light faded, and the only thing left was the whir in the viewer's own skull. The only thing that should not be enviable about the whole event would be the terrible headache that a watcher might find himself with a few minutes after the explosions had stopped. As it was, Alfred turned, a thin ringing in his ears like the ringing of a forgotten bell that resounded in a forgotten hall. He walked over to a man selling drinks, and he smiled at him. "A Coke please, John." The addressed man reached into his cooler, handed Al a glass bottle of genuine Coca-Cola, and took the two dollars that Alfred handed to him. "I wonder what it was like, fighting for the independence of our country in that great revolution so long ago… knowing that they were establishing a new form of government…" Alfred looked at him, a little sadly it seemed, "Well… I bet it wasn't particularly uplifting. If I were one of them, I should be glad the whole ordeal was over and done, honestly… it certainly couldn't have been as nice as fireworks."
This is my nice, short, one paragraph one-shot. I'm sorry for not updating NITH for a while, but I've been a tiny bit writer's blocked with that, and I'm also on a journey back home now from Illinois. I live in Renton, Washington. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my random little pairingless story, and I will go back to NITH soon. I hope you had a terrific Fourth, everyone. :) Happy birthday, Alfred.