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taizi · 2 years

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lit a fire with the love you left behind

@officiallyasl 2022 day 1; soulmates

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Luffy remembers the day he learned what the colorful little marks on his arms meant. He remembers chasing his brothers down the mountain, all of them shrieking like the barmy gibbons in the trees, and he remembers how he thought his heart was going to burst from all his laughter.

They came rambling out of the woods like a friendly pack of feral dogs, and Makino smiled widely from where she stood waiting outside Dadan’s hut. She tried to come visit at least once a week, to make sure their clothes still fit and they were getting enough to eat and other boring grown-up stuff.

Luffy ran right to her, with a billion new things to tell her about since the last time. Sabo picked his way behind him a little more slowly. Ace reluctantly brought up the rear, and stayed well out of arms’ reach. He always watched her hands very closely when they came near Luffy, like he was waiting for them to stop being gentle.

On this particular day, Makino made a soft, gasping noise, and grabbed Luffy’s arm carefully. Ace didn’t like that. He surged a step closer, all bristly like the jungle cats would get when a meal or a nap was interrupted, and said, “What’s your problem?”

“When did this happen?” she asked softly, turning Luffy’s arm over so the underside was facing the sky.

She must have meant the funny little mark that Sabo gave him, since it was the only thing there. Luffy explained that he didn’t know when it showed up, but it was probably around the same time that Ace’s mark did. When Makino just stared at him, he offered his other arm up as well, pleased to show it off.

They weren’t very big but they were bright and they curled like little licking flames. They were a perfect mirror of each other, in the same place on both of Luffy’s arms. Ace’s was a warm red-orange color, and Sabo’s was cool blue.

He knew, really really deep down, where you just knew things, that they belonged to his brothers. And he knew that Sabo had the red-orange mark on his right arm, but the one on the left was bold, sunny yellow—and that was Luffy’s! Luffy gave that little smudge to him!

Ace guarded his colors jealously, even from Garp and Dadan. In the hot summer months when he went without sleeves, Ace would wrap his arms up before they went into the kingdom or even the Gray Terminal. If people got nosy about the wrappings on his arms, he beat them to a pulp.

He didn’t mind Luffy or Sabo seeing them, but they were the usual exceptions to his fits of temper anyway.

Makino seemed bewildered by them in a way she usually wasn’t. She sat back on her heels and studied Luffy like he was something brand new and strange.

“These are soulmarks,” she told him. “They’re very special.”

“Of course they are,” Luffy said plainly. “They’re mine.”

Later on, he would learn that there was a lot of fables and fisherman’s tales about soulmates. People talked like they were fantastical things, right up there with merpeople and dragons. Makino did her best, as flustered as she was, to explain what made them so important, but Luffy had more pressing things to think about!

It was just so sunny and windy and perfect outside, and Ace promised they could go down to their secret part of the beach until it got dark, and they had cake waiting back at the treehouse—a fancy layer cake that Sabo stole from somewhere, with honey and cream and bananas! Luffy was so excited for all of it that he could barely sit still.

Every day is magical when you’re a child. Every hour you spend with your best friends is special and important. The moment the universe decided that Sabo and Ace and Luffy belonged to each other came and went without ceremony, slipping right past them like those tiny quicksilver fish that lived in the fast part of the river, there and gone in the blink of an eye.

“How stupid,” Ace grumbled on the way back up Mt Colubo that night. His olive skin was blotchy from all the sun, and his hair was salty and starched, and the necklace Luffy made for him, with a length of twine and a pointy spiral shell, swung against his collarbones with every step. He was still prickly about what Makino had said, even hours later. “Grown-ups are dumb enough to believe anything.”

“But it’s nice to think about, isn’t it?” Sabo interjected. “Some big cosmic force declaring we belong together?”

“We already belonged together,” Ace said harshly. “I don’t need a bunch of stars to tell me who my family is. You’d be my brother even if you never left a dumb blue thumbprint on my arm.”

Sabo laughed. “Luffy, too?”

Luffy was nearly dead to the world by then, face pressed into the back of Sabo’s shoulder, arms looped around his neck. He tired out halfway up the mountain, and his brothers made a bunch of exasperated noises and called him names, but they picked him up and carried him anyway.

Even though the sun had gone down and the jungle loomed around them, dark and dangerous and wild, it never occurred to him to be afraid. He was still just awake enough to hear Ace scoff and mutter, “Yeah, I’m stuck with that little brat, too,” and it made him smile so big his cheeks hurt.

He kept smiling until the night-time noises and Sabo’s steady steps lulled him the rest of the way to sleep.

Luffy’s philosophy is essentially just the kinder parts of his brothers’ conflicting ideals smushed into one; he doesn’t need the stars telling him what to do, but it’s nice of them to think of him.

When he leaves Dawn Island, he has a red-orange mark on one arm, and an ash-gray mark on the other. Sabo’s color faded the day he died. Luffy misses it more than everything else he left behind put together—the treehouse, Makino’s bar, the funny gibbons he grew up with, everything. It’s strange that it’s been gray longer than it had a chance to be blue.

It hurts to look at sometimes, but only sometimes. Luffy isn’t a baby anymore. He wears the gray as proudly as he wears the orange, unflinching and unashamed, no matter how many sad or strange looks strangers may give him when they see.

Meeting Zoro is like meeting another part of himself that’s been wandering around a different part of the world this whole time. They understand each other, and they both have big, amazing dreams that other people call impossible, and they both have a soulmate who died.

When it’s just the two of them, in the dark of Merry’s belly with nakama snoring on all sides, or sprawled across on the sunny deck while everyone else is still in the galley, Zoro will talk about her sometimes. She was the person he wanted to beat, and the person he wanted to be, and one day he woke up and she just wasn’t in the world anymore. A hole was carved into his future and he had to learn to live around it.

Sanji leaves his soulmate on the Baratie, sailing away from his gruff adoptive father to chase All Blue. Miss Wednesday becomes Princess Vivi and when Nami shakes the life out of her for revealing the dangerous true identity of her ‘boss,’ color bursts onto both of their hands. Usopp hasn’t found his yet soulmate. Chopper doesn’t think he’ll ever get one, because animals don’t.

They meet Ace in Alabasta, and he’s a Devil’s Fruit user. He lights up, a tower of flame, and it makes Luffy bounce with every step, giddy and delighted—of course it’s fire. Sometimes the universe gets it right, after all.

His friends are excited to meet his big brother, and an order of magnitude more excited to meet his soulmate. The girls coo over the matching orange and yellow coils, and Chopper and Usopp demand the Story of When They Found Each Other, shrieking with dismay when Luffy and Ace both admit they really don’t remember the details. Everyone is very carefully not looking at the matching smoke-gray marks on their opposite arms.

Luffy doesn’t know why they do that. It’s not as though it’s a secret. It’s Sabo.

Before Ace leaves, he gives him a folded-up piece of paper, and says it will bring them together again. Luffy thinks his brother has been getting silly ideas from that crew he’s sailing with. They don’t need some paper telling them how to find each other anymore than they needed stars to do that. But he keeps it anyway, because he keeps everything his brothers give to him.

Robin and Franky leave color on each other’s hands in the middle of all the chaos on Enies Lobby. It’s easier to convince Franky to join them when Robin is smiling at him from the deck of his beautiful ship, the very soft and happy way she only recently learned how to smile.

Brook had three soulmarks before all of his skin fell off his bones. They were gray by the time I died, anyway, he’ll say, and then he’ll cackle, and it’ll sound insane.

Sometimes the universe gets it wrong.

The bandages on Luffy’s arms don’t come off right away. Even after the raw, angry wound on his chest no longer needs dressing, his arms remain covered. When Traffy changes them out, he makes Luffy look right at his face and nowhere else.

“I’ll remove your head from your body and let Shachi and Penguin play volleyball with it if you even think about moving,” he says shortly. He sounds like he means it. There’s a smudge of gray on one side of his forehead that’s shaped like a heart. The brim of his hat usually hides it, but he took his hat off for some reason, and now Luffy can see it.

Luffy looks at that faded gray heart and doesn’t look down at his arms until they’re wrapped again.

It’s not forever. Soon he’ll be able to look at Ace’s soulmark and it won’t feel like dying in Impel Down all over again. Soon he’ll be able to stomach the gray where his warm red-orange should be.

He remembers being seven years old, almost eight, and how it felt like the entire world was ending when they told him Sabo was dead. How he cried and cried like he’d never be able to stop. It took Ace making him an impossible promise, scolding and cajoling him in equal parts, to get him on his feet again.

Luffy’s not a baby anymore, and he’s fresh out of brothers to help him now, but he remembers what to do. You have to let it hurt while it hurts. You have to let it press you all the way down, right into the ground, because that’s how big it is, and there’s no way around that. And then the second you can stand up, you stand up. And the second you can take a step, you do that next. And that’s the rest of your life for the rest of your life.

He can do this. He’s done it before.

But when the bandages come off, there’s gray, and gray—and a splash of pure gold.

It’s a silly, swooping shape, playful and whimsical, and it looks like something different to every single one of them.

Franky thinks it looks like the sharp curve of a cant hook. Chopper giddily argues that it’s a banana, constantly patting the base of one of his antlers where the mark is visible through the velvety fuzz, as if to make sure it hasn’t run off. Sanji pointedly bakes buttery, flaky croissants to make his case.

Robin reads half a dozen books on semiotics and mythology. Usopp, as flushed and pleased as Chopper is about this development, makes up just as many legends of his own.

Even Brook bears the mark, right on his bone. He doesn’t seem to know how he feels about it, crying and laughing at the same time as he traces it with the tip of a phalange. He describes, to anyone who will listen, a traditional folk instrument he once played, a horn that looped almost into a perfect circle.

Nami is adamant that it’s a crescent moon, or a sun in partial eclipse. Zoro figures it out before any of the rest of them do. (It’s a smile.)

Luffy doesn’t care what the shape of it is. He loves it.

He loves that his friends love it, too. They each wear it in different places on their arms or shoulders or backs or legs, and they're stupidly pleased to wear it. And it doesn’t make any sense, and Robin has never heard of anything like this happening before. And it breaks all the rules of all those old fishermen’s tales that Makino used to tell him, when she’d use words like predetermined and destiny. And it’s the best thing in the whole world.

He carries his crew’s mark as proudly as he carries his brothers’.

Ace was right. Sabo was right. Luffy doesn’t need any old universe to tell him who he belongs to, but it’s nice to know someone’s been paying attention.

Someday, Luffy will meet a stranger in Dressrosa, and one of those phantom fires on his arms will erupt into painfully familiar blue, and a part of him he thought was dead will burn to brilliant life again.

#aslbrothersweek2022 #one piece #op #opfic #asl bros #monkey d luffy #portgas d ace #revolutionary sabo #my writing #(collapses in a heap on the floor) its 2am but i did it

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cactus-green-clay · 2 years

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It’s been like a month but I’m still salty that I woke up at the start of a dream where I was going on an (presumably) epic adventure with Etho.

Like it was literally one of the only times I’ve ever gotten context for a dream. It started with Etho saying something about finding somewhere interesting to build at. So we pass through a jungle like area and then into a snowy area that had elk and a really fluffy white cat for some reason. And there was a weird large tower, structure, thing made out a copper and dream me goes “is that the statue of liberty?”

And then I woke up.

And it was barely after midnight.

So I hadn’t even been asleep that long. And there was literally no reason to me to have woken up, there wasn’t a loud noise or anything. My brain just said wake up idiot for some reason.

#hermitcraft #ethoslab #granted whatever base we would’ve built would probably have gotten divided in half 3rd life style #after I comment on not being the biggest fan of bricks #or that I actually enjoy chopping down trees with an axe

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hiddendreamer67 · 5 years

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Dragged From The Depths (5)

Summary: Thomas isn’t dead, and he’s not sure why.

(Check my reblog for links to previous parts and the taglist!)

Shoutout to @oxygenandduchess for commissioning this chapter, as well as the last one! It was my pleasure to write these! :D

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Thomas was dead… right? He had to be dead. He should be dead.

He remembered that monster coming out of the water, so terrifyingly gigantic. He remembered feeling like the boat might just topple over, like a bath toy sunken by a teasing child. Thomas had been thrown about, desperately clinging to the railing, but the metal was slick with sea spray and Thomas had tumbled overboard into the waves.

Frantically Thomas had attempted to tread water. Where was the surface? He kept trying to push his legs up but after a while he didn’t know where ‘up’ was; it was an overbearing darkness, the currents dragging him down into the depths like a sunken prize.

Is this how I die? Thomas had thought to himself, floating further into the murky blackness. His lungs began to burn, desperate to take in air, and Thomas knew he couldn’t hold his breath much longer. Were Remy and Deceit next? Would they join him? Thomas’ eyes stung, straining to make out anything in the opaque waters. He could only see shadows, large ominous figures that appeared too impossibly big to be swimming this close to the surface.

All of a sudden, a massive embrace crushed around Thomas’ stomach. Against his will Thomas let out a gasp, and instantly water began to pour into his lungs.

NO! Thomas wanted to scream, thrashing wildly as his abdomen felt as though it was on fire. Thomas squirmed against the impossible grip, terrified as he renewed his desperate attempts to get to the surface. I DON’T WANNA DIE!

There were noises, horrible noises, muffled by the waves but still sounding like a mix of a jungle cat and the screech of nails on a chalkboard. Thomas’ shoulders shot up to his ears, intent on blocking out the sounds before a flash of pain racked across his chest and Thomas realized at least when he was dead in a moment he wouldn’t have to hear the awful wailings.

Thomas’ vision was spotty now, he could feel the strain on his eyes. The tears he released mixed with the salty waters all around him. Thomas tensed, feeling sharp claw nails pressing against his neck. A moment later a new sensation began. Where the creature’s palm touched against his skin, a burning icy fire began to spread, forcing Thomas’ chest to contract inwards on himself. If there was any air left in his lungs Thomas would have screamed, squeezing his eyes shut tight and wondering if his ribcage was just going to collapse in on itself like a dying star.

Yes, Thomas should be dead by now… but he wasn’t.

“I did it!” There was a voice, sounding right behind his ear. It had a strange accent to it, sounding overly bubbly. The feeling of strong limbs wrapped around his torso remained, but the constricting feeling of death seemed to have vanished. His lungs no longer burned, and Thomas could feel his heart pumping away normally as though it did not care about his near fatal departure.

...what?

Thomas opened his eyes, blinking in surprise. He was still underwater, yet he could see.It was as though someone adjusted the brightness of a laptop, and now Thomas could make out two huge expanses of midnight blue and scarlet red smooth skin.

Thomas gasped, and realized that when he did so that burning sensation did not return to his lungs. There was still a faint tingling sensation on his neck, left behind as though the creature still holding him in a vice grip had marked him. Thomas reached a hand up, tentatively touching his neck, and his skin felt cool beneath his touch. Slowly, Thomas looked up, trying to get a better look at his- captor? Savior?

“Aw, you’re welcome lil’ minnow!” An almost human face grinned down at him, but it was far too large with too many sharp teeth. Thomas gulped. Was this mer just going to eat him now? Maybe it saved him just because it wanted to hurt Thomas himself… but when it had spoken, it sounded so human, and even now Thomas noted a certain playfulness in the creature’s eyes. Hopefully it didn’t want to play with him like a cat plays with its prey.

“Ah!” Thomas gave a small cry, shocked to hear his own voice as he was all but crushed once again against the mer’s chest. He struggled, trying to make sense of what the heck was going on. Why could he all of a sudden breathe underwater? What had this creature done to him?

Thomas flinched, hearing those strange noises again rumbling through the waves. He turned, spotting the two intimidating figures a little way off. They were so massive that crushed in this grip Thomas could only make out part of their tails, never mind their faces. Were they…talking to each other? But why couldn’t Thomas understand them? He had definitely heard the light blue one using him as a teddy bear talk.

“W-what…” Thomas croaked, testing his voice out under the water. It felt wrong, letting salt water fill his throat but feeling no burning need for air. “What’s happening?”

“EEEE!” The shriek the mer gave was not unlike a dolphin, but it was so high-pitched right near Thomas’ ear that the human desperately wished he could cover them. Alas, his hands were still strapped firmly to his sides by the unrelenting grip. The mer didn’t answer his question, instead turning excitedly to the larger giants. “Logan, he can talk!”

This time Thomas expected the rumbling that came in response, and even in mer-language Thomas recognized that parental tone of ‘yes yes, very nice’ when an adult was off-handedly praising a child.

“I- why do you know English?” Thomas said blearily, so many questions floating around his waterlogged brain.

The mer tilted his head, looking into Thomas’ eyes with a questioning gaze. His sapphire eyes felt like they might peer into Thomas’ soul. “…English? What’s English?”

“It’s…what we’re speaking?” Thomas frowned, slowing his struggles as he got a little more wiggle room, the mer having loosened his grip to let Thomas lean back. “Like, the language. I mean, we are, aren’t we? Why else could I understand you?”

“Why, your mark silly.” The mer giggled, tapping that spot on Thomas’ neck he had touched before.

Thomas felt a jolt tingle through his veins, his body reacting intensely to the mer’s touch. To Patton’s touch. Patton, the Oceanic whitetip reef mer, second youngest of the clan.

Wait, why on Earth did he know that?

Patton seemed surprised by the interaction as well, peering down at the human curiously. “Thomas.” Patton said his name, and Thomas nearly shivered as a cool wave of energy washed over him. “Aww, what a cute name, it suits you!”

“Thank … you?” Thomas felt his nose scrunching up. “And you’re, uh, Patton, right?”

“You said my name!” Patton shrieked again, eagerly cutting off Thomas and once again Thomas wished he could protect his ears. “Do it again!”

“Patton!” Thomas said it in a rush, eyes widening in horror. He hadn’t tried to say that. It was as though the words had been ripped from his lungs, the human having no choice in the matter.

Was this magic? Is that what was happening? Thomas felt himself growing uncomfortably tingly, too many unanswered questions giving him anxiety. He wished he could run his fingers along his neck, if only to try and figure out what exactly Patton had done to him. Was there a bruise? A glowing circle? Did he have gills? Considering he was breathing underwater and talking to a merman, Thomas would believe it.

“What’s happening?” Thomas asked again, beginning to feel lightheaded. His eyes darted around, trying to find answers in the unyielding murky depths. Even with his newly enhanced underwater vision, only shadows loomed in the distance. “Where am I? What’s going to happen to me?”

“Oh, Thomas, shhh.” Patton shushed him, pressing the human’s head to his shoulder. His slightly webbed hand began to brush Thomas’ hair, making Thomas shudder. It was such a familiar action and yet so foreign. The hand was too large, the form he was pressed against too unfamiliar. It was like one half of Thomas’ brain fought against this, and the other half wanted to submit into the embrace of his mer.

…his mer?

“Just sleep, mini minnow.” Patton giggled. At the sound of his command, Thomas’ eyelids drooped, and the world went dark.

#dragged from the depths #giant!mers #mer!patton #mer sides #sanders sides #g/t #thomas #near death experience #near drowning #drowning mention #part 5 #magic #ooooh

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seafoamchild · 6 years

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june 23, 2018

just got back from a weekend on Cat Ba Island with Sam. it was hot and tropical and i’m glad we went. the bus ride was long and extremely uncomfortable and the heat was borderline unbearable on the flat sandy shores of the island. but the whole place was so jungle-y and green and teeming with life. thick, lush forests covering the limestone peaks, ants crawling everywhere, the air pulsing with the deafening songs of cicadas. we had coffee at a cafe with a view of ha long bay, and it was so beautiful even though we were dripping with sweat the whole time.

we went to the beach that evening after the sun went down, and it was ridiculously crowded with vietnamese tourists but we didn’t care. we jumped into the crashing waves and along with everyone else we yelled with glee whenever there was a big wave coming. it was exhausting and exhilarating and it made me feel connected to everyone at the beach.

the next day we went on an adventure tour that only cost us $18 each, and a vietnamese guide named Hieu took us hiking through the jungle. we were absolutely drenched in sweat by the time we made it up the hill, and then we went abseiling down a limestone cliff. it was fun but i banged my elbow and started bleeding. we went ziplining, kayaking, and swimming. it was so fucking hot outside. but we had so much fun in those peaceful, secluded places. no one else was there. we swam in the salty water surrounded by lush vegetation and limestone peaks. the surface of the water was hot but the deeper we swam, the cooler it got. we saw baby asian carp. they leaped out of the water and scared the fucking shit out of me. some even jumped into my kayak and jumped up my shorts and i almost lost it.

we went to a secluded cave. there was no one around except hundreds of bats flitting past us in the darkness. it was amazing to watch them. it made me think of halloween and scary stories. i loved watching the flying bats. we also saw glimmering crystals everywhere. i’d never been in such a cool cave before with no one else there. it felt like our little secret.

then we visited a floating fishing village. it looked lovely in the mid-afternoon light. hundreds of colorful floating houses, against the limestone peaks. we stopped for beer and disgusting melon-flavored ice cream and saw how the people keep their fish in underwater compartments. prawns, grouper, cuttlefish. we saw the cuttlefish glowing in the dark, which i had no idea they could do! i loved looking at the fish. i ate a dried fish and it was disgusting. it tasted like fish-flavored leather.

all too soon it was time to go back to hanoi, the city of dirt and noise.

#journal

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primonizuto · 7 years

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We don't want to do this. We are all afraid. But if you stayed behind you would be alone. Your friends are going; you go too. You're not a person anymore. You don't have to be who you are anymore. You're part of an attack, one green object in a line of green objects, running toward a breach in the Citadel wall, running through hard noise and bursting metal, running, running, running...you don't look back. The air is being torn. The deck shifts beneath your feet. The asphalt sucks at your feet like sand on the beach. You feel like you could run around the world. Now the asphalt is a trampoline and you are fast and graceful, a green jungle cat. Your Boy Scout shit is wet with sweat. Salty sweat wiggles into your eyes and onto your lips. Your right index finger is on the trigger of your M-16. Here I come, you say to yourself, here I come with a gun full of bullets. How many rounds left in this magazine? How many days left to my rotation date? Am I carrying too much gear? Where are they? And where the hell are my feet? A face. The face moves. Your weapon sights in. Your M-16 automatic rifle vibrates. The face is gone. Keep moving.

Gustav Hasford, The Short Timers

#'here i come‚ you say to yourself‚ here i come with a gun full of bullets'#im shooke?#idk whamt to tag this #full metal jacket #gustav hasford

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guiliaslifestory · 7 years

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Genova, City of contrasts. A beginning.

I have few clear memories of my early childhood, and none of my birth mother besides the stories I was told.

My step-mother can probably be said to have 'tried her best' to take care of us, but I don't remember overt affection or love being part of that care.

I do remember her moods and in hindsight I think she was depressed and possibly alcoholic; at the time it only seemed she was angry with us a lot of the time.

My father was the more affectionate parent, but his job as a lorry driver meant he was not always there to provide that buffer for us.

My memories of my father are coloured by time and distance, but the main thing that always springs to mind is his hair. No matter the age I recall him at, I always picture him with thick, black, curling hair, glossy with hair cream and sweet smelling oils. I remember him boasting once that he had never washed nor intentionally wet his hair, and saying proudly that the secret to its health and shine was regular oiling.

In general my childhood is a blur of general impressions of Genova. My memories are clearer of my teens, although at such a distance they are still mostly just impressions, with brief moments of clear recollection.

I loved the funicular railway that ran to the top of the foothills that surrounded the city, and the amazing views over the port and beyond from the summit. I remember visiting the zoo that perched on the terraced slope of a park and was in rapid decline even then. The small iron cages housed animals that were far too large for them, but to a young girl it was wonderfully romantic to walk among the botanical gardens with their overhanging vines and hidden nooks, and see jungle cats and howling monkeys looking back at you.

I remember the smell of diesel fumes in the tunnel under the park as I walked through late at night, and I remember feeling safer in the steep, tight, dark alleys between the tenements than I probably should have done.

Genova is a city of contrasts, even more so now than it was in my childhood; but even before WW2 the sudden change from narrow alley between looming, tight packed buildings, to bright open plaza or thoroughfare with magnificent fountains or stunning church facades was remarkable.

My home as a child was a small apartment in one of those tightly packed tenements near the docks. Three rooms with small narrow windows, a larder, a bathroom shared with the rest of the floor, and the several flights of stone stairs on the outside of the building providing the only access. The walls where bare, cool plaster, but the heat could still be stifling in the summer. The floors were tile covered board and the kitchen a tiny area in the main room allowing for the use of one pan and the rinsing of dishes. There was very little light or air as the alley between that building and the next was barely 6 feet wide. public urinals on the ground floor in almost every alley kept a constant bitter scent in the air and conversation and city sounds echoed between buildings day and night. The cliche of washing lines strung between the buildings, a swathe of sheets and shirts billowing in salty sea breezes and city fumes was all too real.

Large parts of the city were built in this maze like, meandering way. The wider alleys leading toward the dock and narrow passages linking them. The bright plazas of churches providing the only breaks in the perpetual dusk of the alleys. The ground floor of buildings that faced the plazas were filled with small shops and cafes, bars and barbers.

Almost no one had the means to cook bread or meat at home, so almost every plaza had a panificio (small bakery) with the delicious smells of oil rich focaccia and common libretto, and a butcher supplying cooked and cured meats and sometimes access to an oven or rotisserie for cooking small joints of meat.

The wives, mothers and older ladies in the building could often be found on the roof or landings laying out fresh pasta to dry in any patch of sun light they could find. I'm sure I wasted more than a few hours watching nimble fingers curl, pinch and roll shapes that no machine could ever duplicate.

One of my few clear memories of my childhood is of an incident which earned the wrath of my step mother and a memorable beating. I had been sent out to buy groceries from a local shop and looking back I can appreciate that we were poor and couldn't afford to waste food or in this case milk, but at the time I was just a child sent out on an errand. In my childish haste to be done with chores I ran, and tripped and spilt the milk and eggs I had been sent out for. It wasn't intentional misbehavior, but it was thoroughly punished, and meals were meager at best for the following few days.

I imagine the rhythms of any Italian city in the 1930's where much the same as Genova's, Church bells rang out over the shouts of tradesmen and children, motor traffic was becoming more common and engine noise echoed from the wider roads in to the alleys and passages. The chatter of women making pasta, sewing and tending children drifted down from the apartments above. It was rarely quiet even though we had no radio or gramophone to entertain us.

Despite my step mothers tempers and my fathers travels, my recollections are of being generally content in my day to day life and childish adventures with friends in the alleys and plazas, until war arrived and changed everything.

#history #biography #life stories #reality #ww2 #italian history

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