The Kite.

We were stood in front of our mother wearing our Sunday best, not that you would have known, mind, since droplets of mud were slowly drip-dripping on the marble in the foyer. With each splatter came a small twitch in our mother’s left eyelid just below her brow, appearing only at my brother’s tomfoolery and my being dragged into it. She was staring at us angrily and yet utterly speechless with her hands on her hips and her lips the thinnest that I had seen in a long time.

“Up. Up the stairs the pair of you and stay there.”, she finally announced before turning on her heel and hastily making her way down the corridor towards our father’s office.

George looked at me with eyebrows raised and a small smirk playing on his mouth, “Well at least we didn’t get a hiding?”, he said and we both left towards the stairs.

“Not yet, anyway.”, I said gloomily as I took off my once-white hat that adorned a beautiful once-white ribbon; unrecognisable now covered in mulch and mud and sticky green stuff that I had no idea came from where.

“It’s only mud, it can be cleaned off. She’d be very theatrical if she thought it warranted a beating off father.”, George said.

“It’s not the mud, George, it’s the principle that we’re filthy, we have cousin Mary’s wedding midday and this is all your fault.”, I replied. I hated being in trouble.

We had been in the garden, fully dressed and waiting for our parents when a very big and very blue kite billowed through our yard. George being George followed it almost instantly like a herding sheepdog, with me following in haste knowing that if he left the grounds, that it would be I who would be in trouble as “George is a wanderer and you know this.”.

So I jumped over fallen trees and ran through bushes calling angrily to George whose eyes were on the kite above us. He was not paying attention to me whatsoever.

Despite his attention on the kite, he did not miss a beat in his footwork. That was until we had reached the edge of a deep ditch that had a large puddle of murky water swilling at the bottom of it. He ran on thin air before falling, me following as I’d had no time to stop. We both landed in squelching mud, temporarily blinded by the dirty water before George got up quickly and darted after the kite again. “George! Stop!”, I called, but he was quick out of my sight like a fox hunting a chicken.

By the time I’d caught up to him, he had managed to catch the kite and was looking at it with love.

“Isn’t it beautiful!”, George cooed when he saw me. Out of breath, muddy and extremely annoyed, I ignored George and headed back home. He could explain it to mother himself. Perhaps he should be called Collie?