[Night of Broken Glass] - Perspectives (Pi dArtois)

[Pi dArtois]

Agatha Fribble felt the cold in her bones.

They were old bones to be sure, and they’d seen a few things, these bones of hers. They’d travelled, they’d loved, they’d come back home to the town she’d grown up in and laid down deep roots. She’d raised her children here, given them a solid foundation away from the hustle of the world, where they could be children in the best meaning of the word, before their travels took them off to see what adventures they could live.

Her dear Harold’s bones were sitting on her mantle in a decorative urn waiting for her to join him, dust and bone. That’s what it all becomes eventually, dust and bone. But she wasn’t quite ready yet to shake off this mortal coil. Her bones had some living left to do. Even if she did creak around the streets with her cane, her bones popping at odd moments with each awkward foot fall.

No, Agatha Fribble had seen many things, and had managed to live through all of them. She was a good sort, but good in the way the patina of age painted on a person’s life. She didn’t suffer ********, cause she only had a precious few minutes left and they weren’t to be wasted on stupidity. The lens with which she viewed the world, was thick with experience, myopic in some places, but crystal in others that were important.

After a while, a life well lived came with a cache into an empathic understanding and she was walking today because staying at home meant she had to field calls from nosey neighbours who were as old as she and hadn’t had the good sense to die and leave her in peace. The nosey bastards all wanted to know if Georgie was still in Paris, she wasn’t, she was in London now, but Aggie was sick of the morbid crows circling her, as if her tenuous connection to that far off land was adequate reason for heightened mourning for the tragedy. They asked if Harry Junior was still safe in Australia, he was, and Aggie was glad of it, cause she wasn’t sure her worrying heart could stretch to include her oldest boy. Worrying about Georgie was hard enough. London, was too damn close to France.

So Aggie walked instead, even if her bones weren’t keen on the creeping cold of coming winter. Even if her cane slipped on the rain slick streets. But she didn’t want to be inside, she didn’t want to worry anymore, and didn’t want to pretend not to worry when people called, cause that was as annoying as the first.

Aggie saw the men, or she thought they were men, how the hell she was meant to know for sure when they wore balaclava’s over their faces. Eyes wide she stopped in the middle of the footpath, her eyes darting at the men, then down the street as if shifting her gaze would make the scene make more sense.

She felt her body become rigid with fear. Adrenalin pounded through blue veins, a wave of cold sweat sweeping across her skin. What would terrorists want in Harper Rock. But really, she thought to herself, how can you know the minds of any person who felt killing others for religious freedom was any freedom at all.

Setting her cane firmly into the street she strode forward, righteous indignation giving her wobbly legs strength. “STOP!! TERRORIST! HE HAS A GUN!” she yelled as she wobbled forward, charging into danger and rather thinking she might be joining Harold on the mantle a bit earlier than she thought.