The parting shot challenge is now closed.

This week's prompt is bells and whistles.

Bells and whistles

It’s dented in a couple places, the back fender striped with rust. The black paint gives way to dull gray primer on the driver’s side door. The backseat’s upholstery is held together with duct tape in two places.

“Give it a try?” her father says, handing over a pair of keys on a simple ring.

She slides in, turns the key. The engine rumbles to life with a satisfying growl, runs smooth.

“No bells and whistles.” Her father is looking at his shoes.

She puts a hand on the dash, smiles. The steady vibration hums through her. “Doesn’t need any.”

His new command. The navy was trusting him with a ship again, despite the fact that his last one now lay lost and broken, scattered across the bottom of the sea. He supposed getting all but four of his crewmen off alive before she sank made up for the loss of her, at least in Uncle Sam's eyes. The faces of the four lingered behind his own, though.

He stepped out of the car, squared his shoulders, stepped up to the gangplank. The bell on deck rang the hour, and as he reached the ship's rail they piped him aboard.

::whistles appreciatively at the first two belles::

The Sinking Ship

Ting-a-ling, rang the bells on his hat.

Tootly-toot, blew the wiley whistle.

He pirouetted down the lane, colors a-flashing, legs a-scampering.

Come out to play, sang the pipe; it is a fine day. Come see the river, the bank, the water. Don't let's bide inside, come out, come out, come out to play!

Ting-tong rang the bells of the church.

Woe-whoo blew the pipes of the organ.

They went to play that fine day. Their eyes did sparkle as they followed his way. They followed the whistle, the bells while they swayed. Down to the river and there they stayed.

Question for the writerly hivemind:

In my alternative history, the initial change in the timeline occurs in the Year X, when a historical figure dies prematurely. I address this in a prologue. The story itself starts in the Year X+25, when the dead guy's absence makes itself felt in Big, Obvious ways, but there were small changes in the interim that I hint at.

My question: Am I being sloppy and cheating if I base what changes and what remains the same as much on storytelling expediency as what I think actually would've happened? E.g. I haven't changed my protagonist's pre-story career much, even though I think my timeline changes might well have altered it, because it's convenient to use his real achievements as a measurement of his abilities and accomplishments when we first meet him in Ch. 1. Granted, maybe 1% of my readership at most will know the character's real backstory, but it still seems simpler to use the real events and let people maybe look them up on wikipedia and learn something, than to make up something completely new, but designed to show the same strengths and weaknesses. And on the other side, I really, REALLY want to alter the timeline to get my protagonist's brother home from a diplomatic posting several months ahead of schedule just so I can have them working together at a critical plot juncture. I don't have to. They had other brothers*, or I could use a friend. But they've got this beautiful edgy sibling rivalry going on that apparently didn't exist with their other brothers and obviously wouldn't be there with a friend. "Of course I'll help you. We're brothers," just doesn't have the same drama as, "Of all the harebrained schemes! Mother was right about you all along! Is this how you reward me for all the trouble I've taken on your behalf?"

So. If you were reading such a story and found out what I'd changed and left alone, would you be all, "She cheated. There's no way those events would've played out the exact same way given the other changes in the timeline, and why the heck would Little Big Brother have gone home six months early?" Or am I way overthinking this?

*Almost all the real people I'm using in this story came from annoyingly large families, annoying because every time I send them off on adventures I have to remember they have elderly mothers and scads of aunts or legions of brothers or whatever. And I'm like, "People! Didn't your parents every hear of 'an heir and a spare'?"

In my personal reading experience I have found real history to be mixed liberally with fictional history. In my opinion it isn't cheating at all to use the facts as they fit your story and disregard those that don't.

This is alternate history, not factual history, nor pure fiction.

It's Tuesday, you know the drill.

Endings Are Beginnings

As a child, my grandmother used to tell me that whistling girls and crowing hens always came to some bad ends. It never stopped me.

At some point, I realized my grandmother's homily was directed at my mother, not me, for she had taught me to whistle. It was a condemnation of mother's character. She didn't have the social standing grandmother deemed worthy of her only son. Nyet kulturni as the Russians would say. My mother, who could whistle Tchaikovsky's Second Concerto, Katchiturian's Sabre Dance, Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and the Pachelbel Canon.

Those are the things I whistle today.

Lullaby

She'd never asked for bells and whistles.

When she'd left home, it had been in silence after all the shouting and recriminations. Her parents slept while she packed, a couple of net beach bags absorbing her clothes like sponges. In just her socks, she'd padded down to the kitchen for a quick foray into the cookie jar. A pause there, she took them all. The door closed behind her, the merest click still echoed. In like a lion, out like a lamb.

Today, the stillness of the room is loud in her ears as she listens to her baby nursing.

Thanks, Laura! Every once in awhile I need to be reminded that I'm actually telling a story here, and not just engaging in an elaborate intellectual exercise for my own geeky amusement. I'll get the brother home early, because when in doubt, conflict has to win.

Sail, while the first one made me raise a virtual fist in cheer, that last one teared me up.