Addendum to The Peasant's Wise Daughter
And for all the love that she was shown there was always the lingering question of how any of it might stay if she stopped with the stories and the jokes and the cleverness and when it started slipping away, when the wit started to crumble and the desperate grasping at quips and chimes became ever more embarrassing and the people stopped even pretending to be impressed, that was when she started wondering if she’d be missed a month after she went, or if she’d just be swallowed up in the endless wash of people passing by and be replaced as easily as houses replace houses. And all the trite advice swore up and down it was the fault of Modern Living and just The Place The World Has Come To, Rest Its Soul and she couldn’t find a way to make them see that this was every part of life, it’s every part of life, and when you’ve carved yourself into the person that they want and they don’t want you then what are you left with, just the armchair that their aunt helped you carry to your flat before they sat you down and told you they’ve decided you’re not worth it, just the yarn they gave you once upon a time. And so they would remember her as clever, bright and brave, she sidled quietly away and never was she seen no more. So the tale flickers out and so the tale’s done.
