Red and yellow forests grew in the hillside just beneath the old house. As the sun set behind the old chimney, its strange skyline figure resembled an old owl tilting her head to one side. Black crows were resting their wings on her curved back, only announcing their presence with occasional wriggling with their heads and tails and loud outbursts, as crows often do. The long path leading up the hill from the main road further down the valley was paved with flagstones, all of which were either cracked or quite decayed from years without maintenance. Weeds were dwelling on each side and the grass, surrounding the building, was high and unattended and covered with dandelions that were about to shut their yellow eye for the night.
Two eyes were there in the window, staring out into the dusk through brown irises. White hair and wrinkles surrounding them like the white of an egg protecting the yolk. The woman's neck was as thin as it was ancient and was framed by a narrow string of precious metal. A gilded necklace acting as a paradox by itself, as little else seemed precious about the old woman's appearance. Her left hand toyed with a lock of her hair, counting the strands over and over again. Hands covered in long, rough and sleepless memories.
"Few come this way these days," she mumbled, mostly to herself. A habit of hers, it seemed, or perhaps a gesture to keep the black and white photographs on the walls company. They all looked like honourable men and women; one wearing a top hat, another wearing expensive looking clothing. A woman was wearing a thin, gilded necklace - she was the last picture on the western wall.
Few indeed came that way these days. The people in the valley were busy with their own businesses. In the distance she could hear the noise from the sawmill down in the valley. She remembered when the sawmill settled down by the old road. People flocked to its gates with their hats in their skinny hands. Soon more buildings came where once trees grew, and then came the cars and the motorcycles and the crafting of railings to keep strangers on the other side of them. She seldom walked around the shopping area anymore, for all the houses there were like strangers to her now. They looked down at her like young men in suits, talking of nothing but stock prices and throwing devices and strange fruits in her direction. She didn't care much for those devices, or for the fruits for that matter.
Slowly the old woman turned away from the window, descending a small staircase and continuing in the direction of a desk and a chair. The small, dusty study was overrun with books and pencils and sheets of paper, all of them stories, plays and poems that were eagerly started, but never finished.
In the corner next to the dusty study stood a mirror; tall and oval and proud. The mirror was indeed a window of truth, gazing like a mangy dog into her heart. Carefully the old woman started undressing, putting all her clothes in a small pile on the wooden floor. Naked she gazed at her ancient figure and stroked her skin with her rough hands. A queen of an age long passed. A pair of lips with no memory of a mate. A pair of breasts that had never fed an infant. She sank into the dusty chair. She smelled her white hair and watched the old woman in the mirror do the same, the white hair that no child would ever blow in the wind.
And with her skinny fingers, she played the only tune she had ever known.
The crows resting on the roof of the old house were quiet now, and the horizon bled the sky in the west. When nightfall comes birds stop their singing, and even the crows fell silent. Only the sawmill down in the valley did not cease its toneless song, a song that had come to stay. Soon the leaves would fall from the trees and snow would cover the landscape. Then no one would see the weeds on the path in the garden, and the dandelions would shut their eyes forever.
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