Morning all. Is it me or is this week just flying by? As fast as it is going I have to admit, I have had a really productive week. so fast or not, it has been good. Well two days in a row were good. I’m hoping for a streak. So let’s break out the timers and see what the prompt of the day brings.
Oh I like Agnes. She seems like she would be fun to write a story around.
Wednesday, November 8th: The berries were just coming ripe.
The berries were just coming ripe. Agnes could tell from the one blackberry bush she planted in the clearing of her back yard. It was a devil to keep trimmed as it kept wanting to launch out suckers and spread to create a huge black berry hedge, but her efforts were worth it. It was the harbinger of the fruit season. Once the first of it’s berries darkened to deep ripe plumpness, the ones in the woods would start to come in.
That morning she round the first of her blackberries. It was plump with juices, black an night and sweet as sin. She plopped it into her mouth without hesitation and bit down even as she turned to get her berry basket from the bottom shelf of the pantry. With birds and other wildlife abounding there was always stiff competition for the berries. She knew that no matter how overflowing her basket, there would always be more for the birds further in. She confined her foraging to the edges of the woods on land that was still officially her property according to the boundary markers fired in the city offices.
Agnes knew these woods though and wasn’t about to push it. She knew that there were things besides birds and natural beasties running around out there. But they confined themselves to the deep woods, just as she stuck to the edges.
‘To each their own,’ she thought. Agness took a moment to tug on an old cardigan before setting out. While it was sunny and out in her yard, she knew that the temperatures would soon plummet the deeper into the wood she went. It was actually a sign, or at least she took it as one. As soon as she started to feel a chill Agnes knew it was time to turn right around and go home. A slight chill meant she was at the very edge of where she considered it acceptable to go. She knew others who pushed their foraging deeper. People like Lucinda Moppet for one. Agnes snorted as she gathered her cardigan close, basket over her arm and feet firmly on the path. That was another thing Agnes always remembered. She stayed on the path. She only harvested the berries that grew along the sides of the path, her feet never leaving it. She there were more berries off the path and a few steps closer would nearly double her take.
‘Those are for the birds,’ she told herself. She was being responsible and leaving food for the wild life. It wasn’t fear that kept her feet to the path as some people like Lucinda claimed. She wasn’t scared of the deep woods, she just knew she had no business being there.
‘I can think of plenty of places I have no business being,’ Agnes decided. ‘It doesn’t mean I am scared of them, just that I know I shouldn’t be there.’ She took a few steps down the path. “Like an air traffic control tower,” she decided. “I have no business being there so I wouldn’t go. Or leading a police investigation,” Agnes faltered. At the moment Agnes had her doubts about the Ferrisburg police running an investigation. Six bodies in three weeks was a bit unusual for their little town and the sheriff and his men were not quite up to the job, at least in Agnes’ opinion.
Ten til Midnight 