Dame Lydia

Setting: ?
Genre: ? Vignette?
Summary: Dame Lydia is just an eccentric old lady.
Notes/warnings: mention of violent death and undiligent lawkeepers
Words: 286

Dame Lydia walked with a cane. She walked slowly, but the cane may have been an affectation regardless. Maybe she just walked slowly to see more. She watched people, and few people who watched her back could help feeling she judged people, too. Her eyes half closed, her lips half smiling, she often looked like she had a joke on her mind that she kept to herself because nobody else would have the wit to understand it.

People agreed that for a woman her age, taking walks not only in broad daylight, but also after sunset, was a bit odd. What they could not agree on was what age she was, exactly, or even to the decade. Some people agreed that this fact was odd, too, but if a conversation tilted that way, the general consensus in the end was that Dame Lydia was odd, entirely and altogether, period.

As to her walks, some kind neighbour even broached the subject to her, after a string of muggings, to which she said, “I trust that the riffraff knows what is good for them, and sticks to the other side of the rails.”

She continued her evening walks.

Her neighbour worried more when the paper reported a group of young men found beaten to death, but stopped it entirely when within the week it came to light that these young men seemed to have been behind the robberies, some of the stolen items having been found in their flats.

After that, nobody important thought it a priority to find out what had befallen them.

As to Dame Lydia, she kept up her walks, accompanied by the tapping of her cane, and unbothered either by riffraff or worried neighbours.