Alliteration In F Major

Fear, failure, fatigue and fraud were all around. For many years, Wolff walked with weariness. In the councils of the mighty, he sniffed the taint and wondered why he was being party to the Potemkin pictures. He had always preferred the uncluttered simplicity of adrenalin, with its own responses in F.

And one day, after many more warpings of the truth, after one more admonition from the Magistratum to suppress the truth so as to boost the bottom line, he just snapped. "It is not dishonesty," his superior had insisted. "It's just that we do not want to say we have problems if there are no ways to solve them. Then it is pointless. Every year we would have to declare the same problem and our inability to solve it. What will people think of us?"

And Wolff, knowing full well that the simple art of blood-letting would have solved some problems, had always chosen to remain silent. That day, it was one silence too many. He sat at his desk, one of the last few scholar knights, with his head in his hands. If he looked up, the sword Perdurias, consecrated by Bishop William himself and mouldering in the corner, would look accusingly back. The stress was intolerable. And so it was.

The moment he found his freedom, he saw the flood. Someone else had started it first. Fright and flight were never options. The fight was on, but where the foe? And what (his single fear) if foe were friend? Forsooth.

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We rest on Thee,
Our Shield and our Defender;
We go not forth
Alone against the Foe.
Strong in Thy strength,
And in Thy keeping tender,
We rest on Thee,
And in Thy Name we go.

Edith Cherry, c.1895

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All men dream: but not equally.
Those who dream by night
In the dusty recesses of their minds
Awake to find that it was vanity;
But the dreamers of day are dangerous men,
For they may act their dream with open eyes
To make it possible.

T E Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1922