He wandered astray, like a ghost drifting afloat in every village that had forgotten his existence. He arrives and they ask his name, he leaves and be a fleeting stranger of their memories. He has no shadows to cast, no wind to perturb, no eyes to awaken. He is just a ghost denying to exist in the recesses of people's mind.
It is better that way, his reason.
"Good day, Vagrant!"
One day the merchant yelled as he walked past a busy street about to leave. The old merchant attempted to woo the man in purchasing his goods but instead, the act dissuaded him even more. The vagrant has an opaque mind adrift in hollow will. There is no words left to sway him off his feet, there is no allure in the world enough to charm his eyes.
However, what intrigued the vagrant was not the merchant's bargains but the old artifact displayed among his goods. It is not as beautiful but enough to attract the eyes of people who would favor something pretty.
"Good sir, how much does the crystal costs?"
Sweet as an ephemeral moment the young lady's voice was. She's caressing the crystal of antiquity with her fingertips with wonder on her gaze, seemingly holding the stars when it shines in the light. The glitters the crystal holds inside has no match to the beauty of the stars she holds in her eyes.
"You may sell your soul for a price and it is still not enough to buy this majestic crystal," the merchant said with hostility.
The vagrant who was awed with the woman had harbored distaste to the merchant's attitude. He gazed at the drastic change on the lady's smiling face. The woman spared him a glance but he can see in her eyes how she dismissed him on the back of her mind and ended up leaving with a sour expression and clenched fist.
His mind strayed away. In a moment he will leave the town. However, as the birds landed on a birch tree, his thoughts birched itself to the crystal. He was knowledgeable enough in his amateur times.
"The divination." He heard a whisper of realization. It was the same woman whom he saw at the busy street. Her eyes held determination peering at the crystal ball sitting among the merchant's relics.
The vagrant kept his eyes on her until he couldn't leave the town anymore the moment the sun bid its farewell for another dusk.
Days had passed when he found that the woman was a renowned doctor of the city. Well known for having immeasurable wisdom and skeptic curiosities.
"Lady Azalea," a man called. Her name was a common subject among passerby whenever he lurks into the shadows of the city, wearing no presence but only a cloak shadowing his face. The doctor's name manages to seep through the recesses and alleyways of the town. She has visited an ill owner of a tavern where the vagrant took shelter when a tempest lasted for a day.
She is known as a woman of etiquette and is always carrying herself with an eloquence of a pure swan in the pond of the mythical gods. She has unforgettable almond blonde curls that touches the tailbone of her spine. She was such a beauty to behold mingling among townsfolk. Nevertheless, Albeit beauty the young woman was noticeably a lone soul among the crowd.
Wandering alone in the woods at the foot of the mountain where wild azaleas bloom, a storm poured from the sky.
The cottage of no man's doorstep was the doctor's salvation to the raging tempest of the somber night. The weep of the storm whirled louder than a man's weep for a shelter. The drenched sole of her soiled boot left trails of the storm seeping on the wooden floor. The dark clouds swelling to strike the ground willed the earth to quiver underneath. She quivered with the soil, she breathed with the wind.
