A Breach In Berlin

Nine - Neun - Waltz's and Worries

5:15pm December 23rd 2014, Berlin

If Anna wanted all attention on her, she was doing everything right to receive it. We were in Zoologischergarten, shopping for an appropriate dress for my baby cousin to wear for her first night out on the old fashioned town. But hope was fading as she began to waltz her way round the shop, her eyes closed as she drifted lightly through clothes racks and shelves. I held three different dresses over my forearm as I patiently waited for her to finish her little show. Customers and passers by clearly thought something was wrong with her, I would gladly second that thought if she wasn't my closest relative.

Thankfully for me, not so much for the shop we were in, Anna's dance abruptly ended when he twirled face first into a shoe shelf, sending heels and boots flying over her as she too collapsed to the floor under impact. I stifled a laugh as I hurried over to her, rolling my eyes. Always had to make a scene didn't she?

"No man will want to dance with you tonight if you go round knocking things over." I mused when I reached her, removing a few pairs of shoes as the shop assistant came over, "Sorry about this, I'll put them back." I reassured the scared looking assistant before she hurried off again.

"I'll just tell them I can't dance very well," She mumbled as she removed a shoe that lay across her face.

"In what language, you don't speak German Einstein." I laughed, remembering Anna's last attempt at the language.

"You're right, so who can I dance with?" She frowned.

I had an idea, but instead I raised my index finger to my nose and tapped it twice. Wait until tonight young one. Anna rolled her eyes at my secrecy before putting the last fallen shoe back on the shelf and straitening up. Anna couldn't even dance in jeans, so how she would cope in a long floor length dress I was unsure. Coordination had always been something she lacked. I just hoped the man she met tonight was more than capable of dancing, so he could teach her a thing or two. I handed over the three long dresses we had selected in the department store to my cousin and directed her, with my assistance, to the changing rooms. If it was 2040 and we were to go back to World War Two, finding a suitable dress for dancing would have been so much easier. Midi skirts were re-entering the fashion world, unlike maxi dresses.

Both of us stood a few inches over the average height for a woman, Five foot three inches, Anna at five foot six and myself five foot nine inches. So maxi dresses weren't so long we were unable to wear them, but we weren't too tall to not suit the long shapeless designs.

When Anna stepped out in the final dress we had found, she looked like she belonged in a movie. Her bust was held tightly in the gown, and the dress kept a fitted style until it reached her hips where the skirt naturally fell and swayed as she walked. It was a beautiful midnight blue, with delicate gold patterning over the bodice in a criss cross manner. It was a thick warm velvet material and the sleeves reached her elbows. All I could say, to the least, was she looked beautiful. I smiled knowingly, this was the one and she was grinning back at me, agreeing.

"Is this what it's like when you find the perfect wedding dress?" She asked from behind the curtain as she changed back, ready to purchase it.

"I guess so," I smiled, thinking back to when I finally found my own wedding dress.

"You guess? What about you know?"

"Yeah," I frowned at myself, "that's what I meant, that is the feeling, I know it."

Anna let out a small chuckled at my confusion but let the moment pass over as she re-appeared with the dress hung over her arm, fishing out her purse.