Sophie & Paddy, Chapter 2

Chapter 2

It was still dark when Sophie awoke. She was still lying in the same position she had drifted of in while her daddy had been reading to her, his last sentence still hanging in her ears. She opened her eyes to see he had gone, and her book lay closed on the sideboard once more, a tasseled bookmark poking it’s head out from between it’s pages.

The house slept around her in silence. Not so much as a breath of air to make the curtains sigh came through the small open window into Sophies’ room, or to rustle the dry leaves of the ivy that clung beneath the window sill outside. Bathed in moonlight, the curtains patterned blue light across the floor to where Sophie lay watching one pinprick of starlight through the chink in curtains where they met. Paddy snorted loudly in his sleep behind her, mumbling something into his arm. She gave him a little nudge with the point of her elbow.

“Gerroff” he grumbled to himself, waving a paw in her general direction refusing to be woken from his woodland dream.

In his dream, Paddy sat perched on the high warm limb of a tree, basking in the flickering sunlight that sparkled through the leaves above him. He was leaning against the trunk, dropping acorns onto the heads other woodland animals as they passed below, ducking back against the tree whenever one made contact, before the victim looked up angrily as he hid, chuckling behind his paw. The ducks were his favourite. The hullaballo they made when a well aimed nut bounced of a beak! All feathers and fuss, them ducks he was thinking, as Sophie nudged him once more, causing him to loose his balance and begin to fall from his perch. He woke with a jerk, just as a great Malard duck spotted him tumbling from the tree.

“Wha!” he exclaimed with a sudden jolt.

“Hiya” said Sophie.

“Oh, blimey” he said under his breath as he sank back into his pillow.

“Are you awake?” Said Sophie.

“No”

“Yes you are!” Sophie grinned sleepily

“Prove it” muttered Paddy.

Sophie gave him another nudge with her elbow, accompanied with a pinch to his forepaw.

“Owww! Alright, alright I’m awake” he submitted. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, replied Sophie sweetly. “Just wanted to see if you were awake. Cos I am”

“Wonderful” said Paddy, just as the room grew dark and Paddy’s face disappeared momentarily as something blocked out the moon light outside the bedroom window. Just as suddenly as it had descended, the shadow rose once more to show Paddy and Sophie’s surprised faces staring at the curtains.

“Wha..What was that?” whispered Paddy nervously into Sophies’arm, which he was now clutching, a brown bear eye peeping over her shoulder.

“I don’t know” Sophie whispered back, still staring at the curtain.

“Perhaps you should go and look.” Suggested Paddy bravely after a moment had passed.

“Me? Why me? Your the big brave bear!”

“Your…Your closer!”, stammered Paddy, straightening his back and looking as thoughtful as he could imagine, trying to back up his idea. “Yes, your definitely closer”, he nodded.

Sophie huffed as she swung her legs out of the bed.

“Scaredy cat”

“Don’t….Don’t be ridiculous” whispered Paddy, cowering behind his pillow.

“It’ll just have been a bird, or an Owl or something. Yeah! and Owl in the garden. Cool” said Sophie, as she picked her way to the window in the moonlight, careful not to tred on her toys that lay scattered about the floor. At the window she bent and maneuvered her Lego box into position to serve as a step. Giving her pajama bottoms a little determined hike, and pursing her lips, she clambered upon it and stuck her head between the curtains.

The night sky was still a full dark pool of twinkling stars. A half moon glowed, lonely, above the hills. In the distance she could see the orange glow between the hills that gave away the town where her Daddy worked. Small specks of orange light dotted the motorway that ducked in and out of the foothills and gathered together into a solid line as the road dipped towards the town. Below this, the hedgerows of her front garden trimmed the moonlight into a jagged shadow, severing it’s watery glow and framing the garden in black against the night sky. Sophie followed the line of the hedge to her right, until the dark border stopped, far sooner than she had expected. Rather then continuing on to meet the wall that ran the length of the garden to the rear, it now rose smoothly, bending slightly back on itself before curving back in an arc that climbed far above the height of the house even. Sophie had to lift her head a little just to see where it reached the top of it’s arc, and gently fell back down to the hedge top, forming a dark shape like an upside down tear drop that blocked out the stars. It looked like someone had put a rubber patch on the sky to seal a puncture, like her Daddy had done to her bicycle wheel last summer when it had gone flat.

“Has the sky got a puncture?”, she was thinking to herself, just as the bright jet of flame leapt into the air beneath the shape with an accompanying Whoosh! Making her jump, almost losing her footing on the Lego box. She could feel Paddy’s paw press gently against her back just in time. As suddenly it had appeared, the orange and blue flame ficked out, rendering the garden black and invisible for a moment as Sophie’s eyes reacquainted themselves with the darkness. In that brief second, though, Sophie had caught the image of a large brown basket sitting on her lawn, just below the flame. The tip of the flame was blurred by the gapping hole of a white and red balloon that hung taunt above the basket. Inside the basket, she thought she saw a figure, dressed in a uniform, gazing up into the balloons belly. The figure reminded Sophie of the Guards she had seen outside Buckingham Palace with her cousin Cian just last week. Only shorter, she thought.

“It’s a Balloooon!!” she whispered to herself with excitement.

“A what?!” Paddy’s voice piped up from behind her. He was standing by the box, still holding his paw against her back in support. .. “A balloon! You know, a big hot air balloon. Like the one in my book, only HUGH-ER!”