True Story

"Once upon a time," old Mrs. Critchens began, "I used to be your age too."

Molly and Freddy began to laugh and giggle, but then got more serious as the woman continued.

"Certainly, it was a long time ago." The cracks at the corners of her ancient lips angled up and down, as if each was fixed at the center with a pivot point that shifted the crack 'round like the movable diameter of a circle.

"Back then things were different. We had different kinds of toys to play with, different kinds of rules we needed to follow; hell, we had a whole different way of living in the world when I was your age."

As the old woman let the curse word fall coarsely from her mouth, the young children perked the tiniest bit, but the old woman didn't notice. For a trillionth of a moment, Freddy's eye darted towards Molly's face, but hardly got an eighth of the way before returning its gaze to the leathery, petrified skin that shifted left and right, up and down, like a Native American doing one of his dances that prays for rain across the fertile, deathlike prairie.

"I'm sure you don't know what it was like back then."

Molly wore an expression that subtly suggested that the old busybody was right - that she had had no idea what it was like back then. Scarcely the tiniest bit of an idea, indeed.

The old fossil of a woman froze as her papery lips began to form the first sound of the first syllable of the next word that she was going to say, but she fell silent. All three pairs of eyes shifted over to the floorboards by the window.

A beautiful Asian butterfly was floating towards the floor, bringing nectar back to feed its young.