The Statue

I'm really liking the writing prompt blog http://magpietales.blogspot.com/ .  Willow's photos are interesting and I love the challenge of coming up with a short story for each one. So plan on seeing these "short shorts" every week or so, at least through the summer months (while I have a break from teaching.) ;o) Enjoy the one below!
________________________________________________________________________________

She couldn’t believe she’d found it. The chipped marble statue sat in the dusty corner of an old shop in Rome, selling odds and ends. Natalie had found the store by accident. She’d made a wrong turn and then another while following her map to Trevi Fountain, only to look up into the windows of a second-hand shop. Curious, she entered and meandered around the narrow store, picking up old books, peering around kitchen items and antiques.


Then she saw the statue, a boy with his mouth open in song, in a corner under the windows; a statue that once stood in a fountain. Now it stood alone, leaning against a wall. In shock Natalie walked closer and knelt down in front of it, touching the cheeks. She ran her hands over the forehead and hair, marveling, wondering how it came to be here.


From her small backpack she pulled out a black and white photo of her grandfather taken during World War II. He’d served as an Army Engineer and had spent most of the war in Italy and France. One of the pictures he’d sent home to her grandmother was a picture of himself in a small piazza somewhere in Italy. In it he was standing next to a marble fountain, the center statue of a boy with his mouth open in song.


Photo credit: Willow @ http://magpietales.blogspot.com/