Author: MonkeyBard
Rating: G
Summary: A walk through old haunts.
Date: 3 July 2015
JWP#3: Picuture Prompt
I've walked these streets more times than I can count. The cobbles under my feet are as familiar as the shoes in which I tread them. It's late October. Decades have passed since my first autumn here. The city and I have changed, yet it still feels familiar.
A dry leaf blows across my path. Brown and asymmetrical. Half of it is torn. It sticks for a moment to the grey stones and I think I see a dead face leering up at me before another breeze gusts it away.
I limp on. When first I lived here, I was young. I did not believe in ghosts. Time and life have taught me that ghosts are of our own making and may take many forms.
Uncanny fog rolls in off the firth. Its icy tendrils swirl about my head, trying to confuse and disorient me. They tug at my sleeves, my scarf, the laces of my boots. A thin face looms suddenly in the milky whiteness and I stop short. Like the leaf, it seems to grin at me before it drifts off, once more only a bit of mist.
The fog, too, carries my ghosts with it.
I shiver and it is not merely the damp and chill. I wrap my scarf tightly and continue on, silently counting my blessings.