"I feel ancient."A lone figure walked upon tattered sandals down the sidewalk of a busy street. She wore a stained grey, hooded jacked with the red letters HBS stitched to the front. Below the letters, there was embroidered a guide for the acronymically challenged: Harvard Business School. A black backpack was strapped to her shoulders. A small key dangled from one zipper.
"I feel fatigued beyond my years. I am young, yet even my hands have aged." She looked down at her entwined fingers, barely peeking out of her tattered, grey sleeves.
"You don't moisturize as often as you need to, my lady," her invisible companion quipped, respectful title tacked to the end of his sentence to avoid retribution.
"That wasn't the point," she responded, pulling the long sleeves over her dry, wrinkled-looking hands, as if to hide her shame. "Some say that I am mad. I sometimes think that they are more correct than they really think they are. I feel that I am far too old to be in this young body--irrationally. That thought can only have been procured by an addled mind, surely." She re-adjusted the straps of her pack, shifting the load.
"Your majesty, that must be it!"
"Shut up, Skeezix." But, of course the command did not quell the fiend. It rarely did.
"You are an addled fool who dreams of importance midst a kingdom of refuse and debris: a mere mortal who claims to be more to others and to herself!" He was really getting fired up, now. "You are not a genius: you are an overprivileged, lazy girl who expects the cosmos to align to her whims because she thinks herself important!"
"And you are a product of her imagination, Skeezix."
He silenced. The more Skeezix insulted her, the more he insulted himself. Yet all he said was true, in part, and sent a pang through her heart. Always.
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