Short stories for a rainy day

The Old Book Lover

She would sit by the window and watch the sky crying. Droplets falling down the windowpane, like tears down Mary's face. When she was sad she would stand up on her tiptoes and reach into a small box that had a home up on her wardrobe. Inside surrounded by colourful wrapping paper, small knickknacks and old letters, were her memories. They smelt of dust, jasmine and old paper. The old woman lived alone in a house on the hill and rarely had visitors. But for the most part she was a jolly person. Every day at five o' clock, she would sit down in her red rocking chair, with a cup of warm tea and a good book and immerse herself in the life of so many others. She never felt she actually grew old, she always just felt like herself, albeit with more wrinkles and backpain. In the world of her books, it did not bother her. She would leap from crumbling bridges and play away at the broken pianos, happy in the dark. Soft sunlight then felt like kisses, reminded her of the freckles on her beloved's nose. She remembered running through the country fields, her fingertips grazing the golden wheat. And he would giggle, the locket she gave him getting caught in her long hair. She loved his laugh. Like a thousand bells on the wind. Warm lazy days in the library and the smell of home and apple pie.The old book lover closed her book and smiled. The real and the memory and the imagined often overlapped. Still. What would life be without them.