On a cold day in an empty park, Liliane walked. She was dawdling really, too many things on her mind to chart a safe course through the gathering drifts of fallen leaves dotted here and about.

A thought occurred and she stopped. And then it was gone. It hadn’t been a thought exactly, more of a prodding, a tapping too indistinct to have had any substance. A feint glint caught her eye. Something stood proud of the the edge of the soil by the bare rose bushes. You would normally hesitate for moment then move on. There was a vague notion to the thing. Liliane stooped toward the object, the only thing glinting in a sea of brown after all.

It was a handle in a deep colour, ebony perhaps or a deep blue. Having come this far, tantalised by what it might be she reached out and grasped it. The handle was cool to her touch, almost cold, colder than it should be on such a temperate, Autumn day. Drawing it out from its light covering of leaves the object revealed itself to be a brush, a hair brush, very old.

Most old, discarded things feel just as the owner who threw them away felt. They feel used up. They feel as if whatever worth they once had had left like the soul of a fish on display in a market.

This brush did not feel that way. This brush had a life about it, not a power quite but a longing not yet satisfied. Liliane felt the handle warm to her touch. She removed the odd pieces of broken leaves clinging to the bristles and stood in the sharpening wind, regarding it as you would a small piece of art in some backstreet gallery. It wasn’t beautiful but it didn’t need to be. It was something that needed to be given a home away from the slow decay a life beneath a bush would provide.

Liliane laid it with care in her wisteria-coloured messenger bag with the pale, yellow, hand-painted wattle flowers, nestled upon the cardigan she really needed to be putting on as the night air brought the temperature quickly down. If she hurried, the brush could rest on its bed and she would be home in minutes.

~ ^-^ ~

This little idea that came, warm and forming into my mind is already niggling at me to find what lies inside it. A few ideas are bubbling away even as I write this. More later on this I am certain. There’s a lush mystery that belongs to this brush. ^-^