The sweet guitar melody drifted lazily up through the eaves to reach our ears on our third floor balcony in our hostel in Naples, Italy. We were practicing card tricks and cheats, laughing and drinking ouzo while waiting for Maria. She had gone shopping in the market, looking for some gifts for friends and picking up some bread for us. Up on the balcony we sat with our shoes off, letting our blistered feet rest. We had hiked all afternoon. It had been and continued to be a near perfect day. I sipped my ouzo and complimented Darryl on his Sleeve-slip trick.
Over the Cathedral I saw a hawk circling. Mid-circle he fell out of the air into a dive, swiftly plucking a pigeon from a rooftop who had been cooing. Surprisingly then the hawk rose once more pigeon in toe and released it. The pigeon did a series of flips which the hawk duplicated, then they each swooped out of the somersaults in opposite directions. It was amazing. It was an impromptu acrobatics show. I turned back to our table,"Did anyone else see that just now?"
"See what?" asked Darryl
"My flawless Ace-Queen swap?" pondered Roy
"Did you fall out of your chair? If so, sadly we missed it", said Sarah ever so sardonically
"Me sauntering up the avenue?", Maria asked from the doorway, a bag of fresh bread and pastries in her arms.
"Maria!", we all cried, excited to see her at last
"No to all of those, well except Maria, I spied you coming up the block looking quite fine. The other thing I spied was a hawk doing an acrobatics show with a pigeon above the cathedral. It was amazing."
"Sure Daniel, sure. I think hunger and imagination got the best of you again.", Maria said handing me a chunk of bread
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