Seamus sat by the sill, waiting for the sparrows to flit past. Each evening, he saw the pair flying in tandem, twisting and turning in the air. They flirted in the air, filling up his life with happiness that had been missing for over a decade now.
A picture of his wife lay on a dusty desk, hidden partially by the numerous sheaves of paper pretending to be filled up with his notes. He loved flying. She hated it. Her fear of heights was strange, she preferred wheels to wings. Her love for exotic cars used to worry him. He wondered if she would forever depend on her father to fund this madness--the passion to hit the road with a vengeance, and keep the right foot plastered to the floor. Almost as if her life depended on it!
Seamus understood the passion for speed, but never comprehended the fear of getting off the ground. Personally, he preferred his staid Oldsmobile to the flashy ones she borrowed from her father and brothers. They indulged her too much!
Two decades of lusting for those magnificient machines culminated in five superbly fulfilling years as an ace pilot. Those were the happiest years. That was also the start of his relationship. They'd met at a railway station, where he had come to see off his mother, and she, to see off her brother A* who was slumming--having decided to travel to the far north to seek solitude. He used to love the railroads; after all, their family manufactured most of the steel that went into making these rails. A*'s was a passion this speed-happy couple never understood.
They were married within a week. He, in his aerial jousts of happiness at 800mph, and she in her perpetually wheelie-ing rounds of ecstacy, travelling at 120mph. They were destined to be the fastest couple in town!
She had never understood how he could come back so fresh from his sorties when every colleague of his would be bushed from the sheer effort of staying up there. His knees are made of steel, she'd say proudly to anyone who cared. Most people would add "So are his ears!", beyond her earshot, of course. She was impulsive, to the point of being dangerous. That Shelby Cobra sure wasn't a good idea. But there simply was no point in explaining that to her.
In hindsight, he thought, perhaps there was a need to have done that! Things had changed so much since the last night they spent together. He had just begun to appreciate the thrill in turning round a corner at 80 mph. Driving with the top down was just as enjoyable as doing a pirouette in the air!
He wondered if he should have allowed her to drive; after all, there wouldn't be any planes flying blind into you at a corner. "That's that", he thought. "No point living in the past." He looked at his feet, wondered how much more of his disability pension would need to be accumulated before he could get a snazzy electric wheelchair that could go at 20mph.
