Giselle Maya

The Lord of Cloth

He is here, then gone.

Surreptitiously he brushes through the heart of the village, leaving a dark pollen. Some villagers ignore him, some have sold their houses to him at a profit.

In his absence all has an air of bucolic calm with a tinge of slow decay. The village is no longer innocent. He has bought a whole street, café, bakery and all. The spirits of the stone houses are trembling, there is a malaise in the vaulted houses he has had restored, then abandoned.

The chateau he bought is lit up at night for the pleasure of visitors and those who see it from afar. The lord of cloth hardly lives there as he has many other dwellings.

There is one village woman who seems to continue as before, feeding her cat and watering her flowers – friendly to one and all. And a white-haired artist from the North who continues his work of creating clay figures of animals and humans.

No one knows what will happen. Placed by ancestral hands in walls, houses and callades, shifting with the weather in miniscule movements, the ancient stones may know. For they will be here long after meddling humans have gone.

piercing
ears and bones
winter mistral