A DIAMOND AMONGST THE COAL

Strangers in a bar, exchanging glances.

He orders, she serves.

Later they engage in idle conversation. She is travelling, one day she hopes to travel to

Mongolia, to finish her geology degree.

'Geology? That's a new one here. I did geology at school. Not sure I remember much

though about Mongolia. The Gobi Altay mountain ranges? Perhaps one day we can go digging

for gold up there together.'

She smiles, 'Perhaps we can .. one day.

At the end of the evening she clears and cleans the bar, then leaves, waving goodbye,

possibly never to return. She does not offer, 'See you tomorrow.'
 He leaves too, but no longer to despair, for the colour of the world has changed; he stops

and looks up at the stars, no longer to look at the darkness between the stars, to stare at the

blackness, at the destruction, and death, of parents, friends, lovers and children in his recently

remembered past, always seemingly terminally present, but he looks at the stars, at the twinkling

sparkles, the pinpricks of light in the enveloping blanket. He stops for a moment, reflecting.

The next day he returns.

She is gone. A shadow falls.

The barman asks, knowing, 'What did you think?'

'An angel.'

He agrees.

'Do they always fly away?'

He shrugs. 'Seem to. They come, they go.'

Where do they fly to?

He tilts his head upwards, 'The sky?'

The fire dims in the corner. The barman asks, 'Hey mate, do us a favour - put some more

coal on.'

He walks to the coal bucket. A reflected glint from the moonlight catches his eye. He

examines a black lump, separates it from the amorphous mass. 'Hey! Guess what?! - there's a

diamond here amongst the coal!'

The barman replies, disbelieving. 'Yeah right. You'd better keep it then.'

He reflects. Last night the stars. Had it been any other day he would have missed it, but

the light caught the diamond on this day. He puts the lump in his pocket. He turns to the barman.

'You know, I think I'll go to Mongolia.'

'Yeah? Right.'

He makes to leave, leaving his drink.

 See you tomorrow, mate.' calls the barman.

'No, I think I will go to Mongolia. They have diamonds in the coalfields there.'

'Yeah? Right.' The barman shrugs, disbelieving. Diamonds in the coalfields of Mongolia?

Maybe not. What a nutter! The guy picks up a lump of coal and then says he's going to Mongolia.

Pissed as a newt as usual. You certainly get them in here!

But the man never returns. He has turned away from his past to face his glittering future.

As they say, he thinks, mistakenly - the future is a foreign country.