The Ageless

 Once upon a time an old woman was pretty certain she looked terribly old. And tired. Aged. She knew it in her mind, in the way things just slipped away from it from time to time. She felt it in her back when she got out of a chair and in her knees as she went for a walk.

    She saw it in the mirror. The wrinkles and bags, pockets of age staring back at her.

    That said, she never thought about it for very long. Mostly because she had a secret. 

    And the secret was that she believed, quite strongly, in enchanted forests. In fairies. In witches. In wonder.

    In magic.

    A belief which had a most curious effect.

    People would often stop and stare at her for a moment. This grew more often as her years increased. They would gaze for as long as propriety would allow - an instant, no more - at her star-laden eyes. At her impish grin. Her carefully tipped ears.

    They wondered. Could she be... Was it possible that she was... 

    To put it politely: did she belong to this world?

    They wondered other things, too. Could they come with her when she went back to her faerie lands? for example.

    No one said it out loud. No one gasped at her sudden loveliness when she grinned. That would have been pointed and embarrassing - as if stares were not. As if they couldn't help themselves.

    The old woman would shrug. It's a strange thing, aging, she'd think to herself. It did strange things, she'd think, to passersby.

    Funny, but not one of the passers ever thought about her age.

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