run, i'm a natural disaster
37. Archaic
A seven [and three quarter] year old girl writes in her diary:
"There's a man who lives alone in the flat two doors down from us. My dad says I'm not allowed to speak to him, but he's not really scary. My mum says that he's very old, and that he doesn't go out much- but that's not true! I've seen him. He just doesn't like grown-ups much, that's all. He gives us sweets and chocolate and tells the best stories. He gave me a story about a pair of brothers that were lost and alone even surrounded by people, when the older was the small one and the little brother was big. He told the story of a walking suit of armour that was really the younger brother and the seven evil villains the two brothers had to defeat to get to a princess that could save them. And the princess turned out to be the older brother, and she turned her brother into a real boy, and they all lived happily ever after, and then he gave me a toffee apple, ruffled my hair and left."
A seventeen – and nine month old teenager writes on her blog:
"I think he's crazy. I haven't seen him for years, the Storyteller, but I think he's crazy. I didn't know as a kid, but what sort of adult goes around telling stories and giving sweets to little children. And doesn't kidnap or rape them. He talks to himself, I can hear him when I walk past at night on my way home from partying. He thinks people answer him, he must do. The poor, poor, lonely guy."
A twenty-seven year old young woman with a nine month old baby tries to push her pram up the stairs to her flat.
"Need some help?" asks a cheerful and an oddly familiar voice. She looks up at the squinty eyes and gasps.
"Storyteller?" she asks, quietly. She drinks in the sight of him, ageless face with no lines, dark hair tied back in a ponytail and black clothes with a yellow jacket. He hasn't changed at all. "But-?"
"Sshh." He puts a finger to her lips, takes the baby out of the pram and easily lifts it up the stairs, dragging her after him. When they reach the top, she gazes at him in confusion.
"But how? You haven't aged a day? How is that possible?"
He gives a deceptive smile and starts a story of a prince and a deal with an immortal being.
It's only years later, when her son is telling her stories of the pretty golden-eyed lady with a silver arm that he can see on the balcony two flats away, she realises that maybe they aren't stories after all.
A.N: Post "partner in crime" and drabble #27
it's something like an evolved form of the deal that allowed Greed and Ling to be seperate but still joined