It's Still Life

Part 9: Brigid’s Diary, The Market at Vienne

To Bear Witness

We stepped off the boat at Vienne, and the town met us with a quiet menace — uneven stones slick with thaw, my hems dragging through muck, Felreil’s boots slipping as if the ground itself had learned mistrust.

Saturday market pulled us by the nose: horse dung steaming in cold air, fresh bread sweet enough to dull the stink of drains, while a woman and a baker argued the price of bread and grain with elbows and curses sharper than hunger.

I paid quickly for camomile, arnica, lavender, and Felreil took my arm before the foreign curl in our tongue became a red flag; the crowd thickening toward something wanting to be a riot.

We escaped through forgotten gates and found shelter among jasmine vines in the Roman ruins, where an old man with hardship crusted into him said, “I’m mad — they all say so,” and showed me the sores on his hand and leg while muttering that the old ways were dying.

Felreil looked at the buried stones and said, “Buried, but not dead,” and the man answered, “…dead man walking,” and I pulled Felreil aside to whisper, “Seer—some eyes look straight through time,” — an unsettling prophecy from a stranger’s gaze.

If this diary is found, let it be said plainly: we ran before the law could name our faces, and that was not for guilt — but arithmetic.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “flag”.  Some images created with Midjourney; all writing is authentically my own original work. ©Misky 2006-2026.