Stepping on the cracks

Grafham Road; left into Cable Street.

The sun was sinking. The flow of people on the street ebbed as people sought warmth and the company of their families.

Tessa drifted onward, the sound of cracking pavement filling her head with every step she took. The battered pink plushy dangled, limp, from her slack fingers. She rounded the next corner and there it was. A blue plushy, dirty and discarded by the side of the cracked and broken street. Reaching down to pick it up, she put the pink toy down in its place and drifted on.

Right, then right, then second left, the world creaking and cracking under the strain of her presence, her tear-blurred vision tinged with purple. She rounded the next corner, the sunset glinting off the polished granite headstones. Her eyes automatically sought out the three newest ones, yellow, green and red highlights speaking of the true character of the fallen.

She looked at the toy in her hands: when did it become blue?

Grafham Road; left into Cable Street. Tessa crunched on.