(Credit: ny-image3.etsy.com)
She smelt of oranges and cloves all year round. She had a closet filled with hats and never wore the same one for more than three hours. For long trips out of the house she brought a large hat bag and sometimes I was allowed to pick some from the closet for her.
We went to the zoo and flapped our arms at the penguins and with sticky liquorice in our hands we walked through the forest without using the paths, but never losing our way. In the forest, she told me about bog monsters and trolls and the kind of fairies that pull you off to another world to be a pet.
‘Don’t ever believe that Tinkerbell is a real fairy,’ she told me as the liquorice cloyed my tongue.
After a long time without walks, I went to church with my parents and shortly after they sold all her hats except a brown bowler which I took. When I ran off to hide it, I got lost in the woods and when I sat down and held the bowler over my nose, it only smelt of dust.
debzywebzy
/ March 26, 2014Reblogged this on Parallel Universe and commented:
I like all his stories. This one is just right.
seanbidd
/ April 18, 2014How time passes to fade what zest brings released upon a clove, stories shed in histories to each scent we remember, each a tale in our minds’ hands, tangible to breathe. A brilliant tale positioned in time, W.R.
W. R. Woolf
/ April 23, 2014You weave words brilliantly, and I thank you for the compliment.