Sand Castles

In the middle of a sky so blue death came suddenly, sullenly. Schräge Musik to my ears, the sum of all fears in that late October sky of brilliant blue when I, one of the few, knew, too late, the fate of a lapsed moment in the foment of an aerial duel, the smell of hot cannon shell and aviation fuel assaulting the senses, lowering my defences and sending me spiralling seaward like a lame duck who's wing has been clipped by random shot, which this was not, no, this was cold, calculated hunting, shunting me down in an oil blown maelstrom of wind, blood and fire, flying by wire to a cataclysmic shattering, leaving just a smattering of my mortal remains, a few stains on that pristine strand, where once, as a boy, I built castles of sand.