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Sunny Side Up Saunders stirs, opens one eye. Dawn light outlines the curtained windows. He groans softly, rolls over. He doesn't have to get up yet, not this early, not today. No foxhole for a bed, but a soft couch, with four standing walls and a solid roof overhead. No, he'll get up when Caje wakes him at the end of his watch. Not one second before. But there's something.... Something has awakened him. Not dangerous, just... out of place. He rolls over again, listening -- someone's in the kitchen. He can hear soft shuffling -- no booted GI feet these -- the cupboards opening, closing, the soft clunk of something set down on a table, and he smiles. Familiar, nostalgic, comforting... he doesn't quite know how to categorize what he feels, but for a moment, he's home again, listening to his mother fixing an early breakfast. He tosses aside the blanket and swings his legs over the edge of the couch, barely missing Kirby. Carefully, he steps over the sleeping BAR man, tiptoes between the other men, and pads on bare feet to the kitchen doorway. The farmhouse owner stands with her back to him. She lifts brown eggs from a basket on the table, cracks them into a bowl beside her. He leans against the door jamb, watching. The wood is cold against his bare arm, but he doesn't return to the couch for his shirt. She pauses to count the eggs in the bowl, then tilts her head back and counts softly in French again. Saunders guesses then: she's mentally tallying the soldiers staying in her house, making sure she has enough to feed them all. Nodding to herself, she adds two more eggs to her large bowl then sets the basket aside. She checks the heat of the stove, adds two more pieces of kindling to the firebox, all the time moving quietly and stealthily to keep noise to a minimum, clearly not wanting to wake her guests. Not until breakfast is ready, anyway. When she reaches into a cupboard and struggles with a large pan, Saunders straightens and steps toward her. She looks up, eyes wide. His hand closes around the cast iron frying pan with which she was struggling, and lifts it easily. He holds a finger to his lips, then points out toward the room where the rest of the squad slumbers. She smiles at him then, and he smiles back and sets the pan gently, quietly on the stove. He starts to return to the doorway, but she hands him a wooden spoon and the bowl of unbeaten eggs and shoos him back toward the stove. Grinning, he wonders how to scramble them without making noise. |