Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. Cyrillic 2. rogue 3. perish 4. Paris 5. parish 

and/or: 1. a foolish waste of time 2. overcome 3. reading secret messages 4. new orders

 and/or: a movie clip of musicians playing the theme from Mission Impossible.

Here is my story:

Studying the curriculum for the upcoming year, my father exploded, “what is this?” as he read out loud, “Selective exotic language.” I told him that the new orders for schools wanted each of us to choose an uncommon language and learn it. Since World War Five was imminent (or at least quite possibly going to happen), we might have the chance of being Government spies, sending, reading and decoding secret messages. We could help our country, like Mum did.” 

“A foolish waste of time,” he snorted, tossing the paper back at me. “You’d do better to study engineering, learn to build the machines and weapons we’ll need to overcome the enemy!”

“I am already studying engineering,” I told him. “I began two years ago, and the course is ongoing until graduation in three years time.” “I don’t see it on the paper,” he said, taking it back from me. “It’s listed this year as ‘Machinery’, some people feeding information to spies might think it is just woodworking,” I said. “Well alright then,” he said. “What about this ‘exotic’ language, what will you choose?” “Cyrillic,” I told him. This earned me a wide-eyed look of astonishment. “That’s very clever,” he said. “No one has used that since World War Three and even then it was a specialised knowledge. The only spy known to the world who used it back then perished of food poisoning in a tiny parish in Paris. Some say it was deliberate but nothing was ever proven.” “I read about that,” I said, “that’s why I’ve chosen it, also because it looks so pretty.”

“Pretty?” he said. I handed him a printed sheet with the Cyrillic alphabet. 

“It is nice to look at,” he said. “But in order to send messages, there needs to be a spy in another country, if you don’t have a counterpart, this whole scheme becomes Mission Impossible.” “I know that Daddy,” I said, “But Roland from our class is originally from Germany and when school is finished he will go back there. He has said he will study the Cyrillic with me and we will keep in touch from the first day he leaves, that way anyone keeping an eye out will think we are just penfriends.”

“That’s excellent thinking Rosa, does your mother know all this?” “I’m going to the hospital later to tell her, but I will have to use her secret code words because this week she is suspicious of all the cleaners as well as the nurses and doctors. Her paranoia grows worse each week.” “She never should have done that rogue mission,” he said. “It was unsanctioned and the capture and torture sent her over the edge.” “At least she still knows who we are,” I said.