This story! I'd lost it for the longest time and now I've found it, I think I want to do something with it.

I started this one years ago - years and years ago!

Here it is... in parts (sorry, I don't want to overwhelm you).

Pictures from Google

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Verdigris

She followed him unthinking, unquestioning and uncurious. She watched his shoulders as his gait took him, and therefore her, farther away from - actually, now that she thought about it - from what?

Suddenly, just as though a cover had been lifted from her mind, she at once thought to herself, ‘What am I doing here?’ And as though they had been waiting for one to be asked first, as though none wished to be the first, the rest of the questions came in a flood. No, not just a mere flood, a tidal wave of questions, demanding to be given voice, to be spoken and heard - and answered. They swamped her head with their wanting to be asked and needing to be answered. She could hardly think for the cacophony of all those questions.

Such questions as:

Where am I?

Where am I going?

Who am I following and to where?

How did I get here?

And suddenly, the most important:

How did this man know that I would be here to be fetched?

Which led on to:

How did I know to follow him without being told?

and:

Why does he look familiar to me yet I know that I have never met him?

Finally, she stopped walking. Without turning around, her guide also stopped. He stood waiting with his back adamantly toward her. His head ducked down and forward as she assailed his ears with her cursing.

“Just what the hell is going on here?” she asked out loud, one question had broken free of the confines of her head and she was having difficulty in holding the rest of them back from bursting out of her mouth.

She realised that once she lost control of the questions, they would overwhelm her and she would stand there babbling them in such a jumble that they would never be answered to anyone’s satisfaction.

She had not noticed that she had made him cringe and even if she had, she would probably not have realised that it was her use of the word ‘hell’ that had induced such a reaction.

“I am taking you to Verdigris,” he said.

She thought for a moment before selecting one of the clamouring questions and asked it.

“Is Verdigris a place or a person?”

He nodded his head and at last turned to face her. He was smiling and she finally realised who he was.

Tears sprang to her eyes immediately and she felt like a little girl of four again. She ran to the man who was younger than when she had last seen him, as well as being a damn sight healthier. The salt-water drops spilled down her cheeks freely and copiously as she flung herself into his welcoming arms and snuggled her head close against his chest, feeling his head nestling on the top of hers as she said, “Grandad.”

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Worth going on? Let me know in the comments