Gouwe Ouwe

She sat on her chair again, like she had done many times before, tried to look up, but couldn’t. Her neck was to stiff today. Perhaps tomorrows she would have a final chance to look up to the sky and see a sentrin again. She hoped that one final time in her long life she would see one of those marvelous persons again. When she was young she would see them often. It had been a while since she had last saw one. She longed to look upon the sky and see one again flying, no, dancing through the sky. Today was not that day, perhaps tomorrow.

Her gaze lowered again and she looked upon the crowd that gathered before her. She loved to tell stories ,and the rest of the village loved to hear the stories of times gone by. She saw than almost everyone of the village had gathered, except little Johnny, but she knew he was in bed with a rather nasty cold. There were even some people she didn’t know.

“Strangers, I don’t know you, but you are welcome to hear me brattle about the things I remember from the time I was younger.” One tall man with bright eyes, perhaps even white, answered. With a smirk on his face he said: “I’d love to hear what tales you have for us.” “Well, young man, could you be so nice and pick up my walking stick. I’m afraid I’ve become too old to bend over and pick it up. Without it I can’t walk proper anymore and I love to sit on the bench in front of the tavern with the children gathered around me. He walked towards her and picked up her stick. It had fallen over some time during the day. He gave her her stick and offered his arm for her other arm as support. What a lovely young man he was, he even had the manners to help her without her having to ask for it.

She slowly walked to the next building, one hand on her walking stick, the other on the arm of the tall young man. When she arrived at the bench she saw Nelly, one of the children, had laid a cushion upon it. “Thank you dear, that will be a lovely place to rest my old bones upon.” “I thought you could use it,  Gouwe Ouwe, you don’t have the fat my mommy has. So she doesn’t need it now” Nelly chuckled. “Mommy would certainly not like me saying that.” “Well, I don’t think she heard dear, so nothing to worry about. Why don’t you come sit next to me, here on my right.” She thanked the young man that had walked her to the bench. He bowed his head a bit and took a few steps to stand with the rest of the adults.

“Well, what would you like hear this evening? Shall I tell you of the battle that took place next to our village? Or do you want to know more about sentrins? “ The adults said nothing, they knew that she would let the children decide. “The battle, the battle!” most of the boys said in choir. The girls were less decided, but most of them wanted to hear about the sentrins. “I hear you are divided on the subject. I will decide then. I think I will tell you more about the sentrins who lived here a long time ago. I just thought of how I would love to see one of them again. Most of the adults had heard he talk about it a dozen times, but they would stay. Anxious to hear her talk about them again, perhaps they would hear something she had forgotten the last time. Most of the children had never seen a sentrin before and they gathered closely around her, afraid to miss even a single word. She coughed and started to tell them the things she still remembered of the flying people.