Why good sir. What brings you out, on such a dark eve?

A peaceful stroll by the lake, no less? Or is there more to your demeanour?

-

Why must you continue to hold your tongue and star mindlessly into the waters below?...

Well, I bid you good day sir or night as it may be.

-

Genevieve, be still, I implore of you and just watch…

-

And just below the surface

Swam what a child would call a fae

But one of little fantastical imagination would dismiss as a tadpole.

What chance and some say fate, to come across such a sight.

This good sir is honoured.

After what Genevieve considers an awkward silence she speaks.

-

Why good sir, I see nothing but a trifling tadpole.

A toad no doubt. Nasty things, oh I do hate them so.

-

Hate is a strong word, for a woman.

-

I have my freedoms Sir! And language is one of them.

-

I refer to the emotion held to such a word madam.

You are not a person who will ever know or understand the meaning…look there! Do you not see it?

-

I have no time for your games, a tadpole is a tadpole. Do you have reason for your grip, toward those of wart-ing nature?

-

Wart-ing, madam? Another freedom of your language?

-

Oh, I do sa-

You may leave Genevieve. Do not worry. You shall never see.

You shall never see, what you want to see.

-

What is the point of that? To see what one wants? That would be living a lie. Reality is my hold sir.

I worry as to what is yours.

-

My reality is no less or more than yours. But the same.

OH, I HARDLY-

Our difference lies within what we choose to see.

I see a creature of fantasical creation,

You see a tadpole, one of which u name with hate.

I have seen children sick and sore, scraping for an earning.

You see urchins and scoundrels, giving the cleanest only but pity.

I have seen a city, tired and corrupt.

You see money, family and pretty clothes.

And I see you fair Genevieve, a young lady blind to the tribulations of her homeland.

And, you, see me. The one truth to your reality.

-

Like many would, Genevieve did not take heed of what was said to her that eve.

She was angered by his humiliating accuracy,

And feared his way of words.

“The right hand man to Lucifer” she called him,

as she spoke of the encounter to the maid.

But she never forgot... That night.

-

Many years and eves later,

She married,

gave birth to a son then daughter,

encouraged her husband to build a mill

and lived happily “ blind” as the good sir called it.

And when Genevieve lay elderly

In her floral gown

within her floral bed.

Within her house covered in green creepers, On her last eve;

she begged her maids, Against their and her good children’s wishes to carry her to the lake.

“But I thought you hated this lake mother?”… “ yes, full of toads you would say!”

She was planted on the ground, and turned to lie on her chest

as she pulled her self to peered over the edge where the water should begin.

She did not see a toad, nor a tadpole

Nor a fae.

She saw nothing, but the mud.

-

The old mill has dried it all up.

Pity.