A beautiful woman with short, admittedly unkempt hair and bare feet entered the village one warm summer day, wearing only a simple tunic and carrying nothing with her. The villagers welcomed her, asked her how she had come to visit them, offered her food and shelter in exchange for some light labor. She accepted, not displaying the greatest of manners, but when she sang for them all the men seemed able to easily forgive her rudeness. Melody found Fred in mismatched clothes, struggling to eat a small bowl of stew in the dining area of the inn he called home. She came to stand next to him, and smiled brightly. "Hi there. What's your name, handsome?" Fred squinted up at her. As far as old men in their seventies went, his eyesight wasn't terrible, but his memory sure was. The combination led him to respond, without a trace of recognition or suspicion, "Fred. Who's there?" She sat down across from him. "I'm Melody." She looked into his wrinkled face, took in his sunken eyes, his rotten teeth, his ridiculous beard, and could hardly hold back laughter. "How have you been, Fred?" He appeared to have completely forgotten about his stew, as he leaned forward and brushed the top of it with his beard. "You're a pretty thing, you are." She smiled. "Thank you, Fred." As they talked, she didn't gather much solid information, but she found that he seemed very content, and totally out of it, unable to answer anything directly and often forgetting what he was saying midsentence. She pictured the strapping young knight who'd caught her in his snare... how many years before? She neither remembered nor cared to remember... and could not suppress several chuckles. Not that Fred was in the state to be questioning such things.
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10/7/2015 4:01:35 PM
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