The pit in his stomach was immense, like some abyss, some blackhole that nothing could escape from - not love, not hate, not despair - nothing. It just kept growing, burgeoning ever darker, and devouring all thoughts save one. The one that he hadn't been able to escape for weeks now - she's really leaving.  It repeated itself in his dreams, at the darkest hours, but he would awake, sweat covered, and the more horrible realization was that it was real, as real as the bed he slept in. 

 It reminded him of when his father left, and how night after night he would dream his father was there next to him, or that he just ran out for a minute, that he'd gone to find work, but never did he dream that he actually left - not once.  He'd wake, often to the sound of his mother's soft cries in the other room, the cries she saved for when she was alone, and he knew yet again that his father was never coming back.  Those were the worst moments, when the shaky remnants of a dream were still with him, like a shadow, before reality came cascading back.  It was like that now, yet again.

 "But you're an American girl," he pleaded with her, "Why go to Germany? You know they say war is coming.  That Hitler isn't content with just Germany."

 "Baby, I've told you a million times," she whispered, with that pitying look in her eye - how he hated that look, "He's a great man, he's brought Germany back from poverty, he's going to make it a great nation again."

 "Yeah, but…" he said, lamely.

 "But nothing," she snapped, "Everyone keeps saying there's going to be a war, but you know what, nobody wants that, Germany doesn’t want that, they've just barely recovered from the last one.  You think my parents would go back if they thought war was coming?? That's why they left the first time.  Everyone is sick of war. No more talk of it, alright?"

 "Ok, sorry," he said meekly - why was he always so meek with her, "I know they wouldn't, I just don't want you to go."

 "I know baby. I know."

             That's all she ever said when he brought up the subject - I know.  You know what? He wanted to demand.  What?  But he never demanded it, never forced the issue.  He pretended like it didn't matter, but really he didn't want to know the answer.  Actually, he knew the answer, he just didn't want to hear it from her, didn't want to hear that these ideals were more important than him, more important than them.

             It stormed that night, the night before she left on the train, bound for a new life.  He awoke, that night, to a sharp crack and flash of light as if an orb, filled to the brim with all the candles the world has ever known, was utterly and carelessly smashed.  The sound was pure fury, like the sky splitting, like an angry god pouring wrath, distilling it, and sending it down into one concentrated spot.  Vehemently, the wind struggled against his house, seeking entry, seeking to announce itself terribly unbidden.  The rain fell like the sea from the sky, its sound cascading deep in the darkness.  Another flash, another boom… He'd like to have thought it was the storm that kept him awake, but he knew that was a lie.  He'd barely fallen asleep as it was his thoughts on her, always on her.

             The storm that night was brutal, as if the sky was building towards some terrible release, some great defining moment.  By morning it was all but gone, nothing left but cotton candy clouds and interspersed the sun rose brilliantly, and he remembered the smell of the damp earth.  The sweet smell, it reminded him of Lily.

             He met her later that morning, her and her parents, all packed up, all that they were stuffed into a few trunks.  They were boarding a train that afternoon, bound for New York, from there a ship for the long Atlantic crossing.  He thought he would ask her to stay one more time, give it one more valiant effort, but in the end he didn't.  He couldn't stand the idea of her telling him no yet again.  Instead they exchanged small talk, the weather, the storm the night before, how beautiful the day had become.  It's funny how beauty always seems to follow the darkness, how, despite feeling as if the world was coming to an end, in the end beauty rules out.  And she was so beautiful that morning, as a goddess, as Athena.  It wasn't until much later that he would find out how close he was with that analogy, Athena - goddess of heroic endeavor. 

             He sighed, snapped back to the present by the sound of a yipping dog.  He still hated dogs, left over from his time in the war. 

 'Why all the circumspection," he thought to himself as he put a kettle on to boil some tea - another war habit.  This one from his time in London, among all those stoned faces, when a bit of tea was about all the luxury they could muster, that and a keen sense of humor.  The veracity of the human spirit always surprised him, even in the face of constant tragedy and death - humor survived. 

             He didn't have an answer, maybe it was because he was alone, finally alone.  It was at once his greatest fear and his greatest asset, because, if nothing else, the war taught him how to be alone.  It taught him the how very dark the human soul could become, the depths of depravity, the sheer terror man could inflict on one another. How in the end, we are all alone. 

 The shrill whistle of the kettle at once brought him back, almost a mirror of the sound of the ships whistle that night - a distance whistle, warning of U-boats in their midst.  Always the wolves, the damnable Germans, coming to stalk and prey, under the dark shroud of night.