The cobbles are crimson with dusk
when a hooded maiden steps
on wary biding toes
over silence.
Cloak hem, skirts,
and a black market catch
all held in one small nervous hand.
She creeps along an empty winding road
of cracks and worn out patches
in the earthy stones,
lowered eyes.
There is something
very restless in the shadows of
the little houses ringed with wash-lines.
And suddenly! she's gone.
She ducks into a hungry alleyway whose
crooked walls are hung
with weak strung
up lanterns.
They flicker in her
wake, indignantly, and sway
in their glass cages, the toadstool flames.
It's not as simply strange as it seems, though
because lots of things do love to
gather here in the brief
narrow confines.
The ashy soot that lies
over the moss of the mildewy rock
softens every footstep and so softens every soul.
And suddenly! theres another.
He extends a papery shivering hand, pale but
knotted with twenty or some odd
fractures and sprains
and scars.
Luminescent spotted
orbs watch her take it kindly, with
tasteless indifference they shift to meet her relieved gaze.
They watch her lips part in a sigh and smile wearily
watch her rest a basket on the counter
between them and
sift through it.
They blink once when
she produces a fragile bottle of thin glass
filled with slipping, sparkling chimes and clear high songs.
And suddenly! he has it.
He turns it over and over and over and over and over
with frenzied fingers, spinning it with
a marveling pondering
franticness.
He tilts his head
from beneath the shadow
of his animal's hide hood that rustles
in the excitement of this odd exciting turn of events.
His voice is the very first one to echo on the hollow walls
in a very very very long time and it is as
