A Night in a Year: 30. Observed

Swiftly, she leaves the square, strides up the side of the church where Auntie’s Tea Shop sits, the chairs now piled up on the outdoor tables and cordoned off like that will protect them. Reminders of the people that aren’t filling them, of the lack of anyone around but the eyes that are piercing her back.

She exhales, thinking it is just her, a sudden tension born from inside that is manifesting in imaginary beings. The release is fleeting; the sense of a persistent stare is still present.

At King’s Parade, she looks up. King’s College chapel looms over her in the dark. And despite her unknown observer, she stops, takes a deep breath.

The sky is that dark shade of blue that sits beyond twilight but just this side of night time. Against it, the spires of the chapel are branches studded with wood knots, or gnarled pieces of fruit. Beautiful, frightening, out of reach. She swallows, and moves across the parade, heading for the low wall that blocks the front lawns of the College from tourists and the town. The huge, billowy horse chestnut on the lawn in front of the chapel itself undulates in the breeze. It is a large, woolly beast that could smother, or protect.

Breathing now juddering, she falls back onto the wall, sitting hunched over, eyes furtive and darting around her. Each little rustled paper grabs her eye, each scurrying leaf seems a threat. But there is no one there, in any direction. The street, often so busy during the day, is bizarrely empty except for her.

She inhales. And now, with the chapel and the chestnut at her back, and the realisation that she is really, in fact, not being followed, or watched, she sits up straight, and relaxes her grip on her shawl.

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Next: 31. Next Stage

Image found on flickr, by James Bowe, used under the Creative Commons License.

Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.