She had not touched a pen in months. Curling her fingers as they closed in on the pen cup and she recoiled, staring at the inanimate pieces just sitting there, idle, boring, blue red and black.

Clickety-clack went the beaded curtain and she turned in the breeze, fragrant with what it had passed. She could taste apple groves and orange-rinds in that cider she had tasted while recovering in Desdichado. And then, there were the piles of clothes she never would have bought, garish, luxurious....and atrocious. Nothing was awful in its cut, in its colour, each piece was demure, elegant and often, like the old skin, devastatingly feminine. However memory made pregnant their material, gave it a weight only her hands could feel. She shut the case and sighed, looking around.

What was she to do with such a place? Artistry had left her, but for her knitting.


Clutching the suitcase close she scurried outside, dark tendrils of hair flying like cat-o-nine tails about her shoulders and neck. She ran for the river. To submerge the final scene of her other life, where she was not of this cast, this colour. She sobbed as she ran, quietly until she came to the waters edge and with a pensive look threw the luggage within the murk.

Begone demons, begone.