running girl

 It is still dark, daybreak is a bit later today, the year is moving on. As steadily as it has done for the last sixty five years of personal experience. Put on the clothes, why not, and the shoes too. Make a cup of coffee, read all about the usual information on lost and found pets in facebook. All the people for whom it is of central importance to reunite unhappy owners with their lost animals, or to find owners for those animals deliberately lost.

Instagram, no news either, and the news updates in the mail will only arrive later.

When the coffee is finished, take two of the bruised apples and cut them into slices. Make sure that they are not in any way mouldy, these apples are for the flightless birds in the park, the Rheas, the ones with the long eyelashes and the snappy beaks. Put them in a plastic bag and this into a pocket of the blue linen jacket.

Walking past the sculpture museum be overtaken by a young girl in black tights and a red t-shirt, and running shoes. She is out for a morning run. She lopes past easily on her long legs, her hair flapping behind her in a huge ponytail.

Climb the well-know slope all the way up, without a single break. This would have been impossible a year ago, it just goes to show that regular exercise makes sense. 

The climb still takes ten minutes, and there is the running girl with the black and the red and the long hair again, running along the path in the distance that leads to the castle. She is still running easily, that is all so enviable.

The rheas like apple. They are fast and greedy, snatching pieces out of each others mouths if they cannot swallow them fast enough. They cannot chew, they have no teeth. They are all five at the fence, their long necks like serpents as they snap for the small morsels. They are not careful now about fingers, they are just plain madly greedy.

Walking down the hill to town, down the path in the hollow, the alarm sounds. It is the mobile 'phone, and it is now seven in the morning.

Turn off the alarm, and walk down to town. Cross the river and walk along the bank. There are children on their way to school everywhere, on bicycles, walking and running. Entering town by the main gate meet the running girl again. Only now she is not running, she is riding an electrically assisted bicycle on her way to school.