The Sky

It's a quiet little town. Sure, you might've seen it in the guide books. A tourist town with plenty of people passing through, but underneath the veneer of foot traffic it's just a small town, you can walk around it in an hour or so, which has been Mr Little’s habit in the mornings since he arrived a day or two ago. 

It's a remote small town, with cold air blowing off the snow on the mountains behind it. And hot water bubbling up from under the rock beneath it. The remoteness is probably why he chose it. A perfect place to get away from it all, to shelter from what he knew was about to happen. Not that he knew how it would happen, that's why he chose to go somewhere out of the way, in case things were slow and chaotic and not the quick and final that he suspected.

He wasn't scared. He knew that he had a reputation for being scared but he felt the reputation was not wholly warranted. Sure things scared him from time to time, but no more than anyone else. It was just that they always pointed out when he got scared, especially if it turned out in the end to be unnecessary. They called him chicken, he wasn’t, he was just sensible. And if they thought that made him a chicken then that was their problem, not his. But that was behind him now, he wasn’t scared and he'd come to this little town for some peace and quiet. No one knew him here and no one was going to tease him or call him chicken if he was scared. Which he certainly wasn't. 

It was after a late lunch when he noticed. He was heading back to his hotel and saw a strange sky. Nothing you'd particularly perceive to be a danger, not unless you were constantly scanning sky for a sign that it would all come falling down. He knew now that the time had come. He didn't even bother going back to his room. The hotel sprawled in two wings over flat and tidily kept lawns, he headed straight for the wing that housed the bar. It was a beautiful old building, but while it obviously received a lot of maintenance attention it still couldn't shake the aura of faded glory that it appeared have picked up some time in the last thirty years. 

On the ground floor of the eastern wing of his grand old hotel was a bar and restaurant which faced out towards the gardens. At the end of the room was a large fireplace that put out a comforting heat. He took a large cosy seat close to the fire and ordered himself a drink. The waiter was distracted as he came back with the drink. People were gathering near the window and talking in hushed, panicked tones. The waiter almost tripped as he approached "your champagne Mister Little. Shall I charge it to your room?"

"Yes, thank you" there'd be not need to settle this particular account. 

As the waiter scurried back to the bar he thought he heard Mr Little say something, he was too panicked by what was going on outside to stop and go back. But he's sure he heard him say, "I told you all, this would happen".