Mix: Grisfleur The Wanderer

He walked for an age, walked away from the town down a long winding country road. He had always thought that he hated the country but whenever he forced himself to make the effort and notice the things which he wilfully ignored most of the time he was surprised at how beautiful he found everything. He didn’t know the names of any of the trees anymore and the wildlife was a mystery to him. Wasn’t there a time where he had gone out bird spotting and had known the Latin names of everything that he saw? Yes, more innocent times when the minutiae of everyday life did not have the power to force much more interesting information out of his head. He was walking along what he took to be an ancient right of way — a footpath that ran alongside a larger thoroughfare which he theorised might possibly be where the ancient settlers of this place had driven their sheep; he remembered reading somewhere that the oldest street in any town was usually something to do with the transporting of livestock.
After following the path to see where it would take him he decided that it was too much like follow rules and decided to walk off through the more overgrown part of the woods. He started seeing things that he suspected he would never have happened across if he had kept to the proscribed route. And then, as if someone were wilfully setting out to mess up the pattern of his day, a large barbed-wire topped fence loomed up out of nowhere and threatened to block further passage.
Any other day he would have just turned around and gone back the way he came, seeking an alternative route to the one he had originally desired to follow. Today was different: today Grisfleur was going to do whatever the hell he felt like. He felt taking a walk in this direction and there was no way that some stupid fence was going to get in the way of that. He took off his jacket and threw it over the barbed-wire as he had seen it done in some movie or other, then he hoisted himself up and over the fence.
Once he was on the other side he saw that someone had deigned to drop a golf course right in the middle of this wonderful beauty spot. The rolling green hills of some golfer’s wet dream were a soulless testament to landscaping in the name of a pointless pursuit. Was golf worth the destruction of the countryside? Did this place not constitute environmental terrorism? And then, worse than the location itself — he was being pursued by some angry golfer.
‘What are you doing on this golf course? Do you not realise that this is private property? Membership only?’
This guy was gesticulating with the club, which for some reason Grisfleur had no problem identifying as a nine-iron. Had he watched golf at some point and picked that up? Had he researched it for an article? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. All he cared about at this precise moment was getting away from this idiot golfer.
‘Harry, leave him alone — he could be dangerous. We’ll just call security and have them remove him.’
‘I can deal with this …’
‘Harry, why bother? Let’s just play on — we’re going to over-run the time we allowed ourselves, and I promised that I would be back in the office this afternoon to meet that new client.’
‘Okay, okay.
‘You should fuck off, my friend, before you get into real trouble. If it weren’t for John here I’d damned sure give you a good kicking.’
Grisfleur looked at the guy, flipped him the bird, and called him a cunt. The nine-iron came sailing at him through the air and thankfully made enough noise for him to avoid being hit in the head with it. He ran, ran as fast as he could — which was surprisingly fast given the condition that he was in. he barrelled straight through a crowd of waiting golfers and out of the entrance. Security suddenly seemed to have woken up t the fact that they had been harbouring an intruder but the fact that he was off the grounds meant that neither of them could be bothered to pursue him.
He ran for a bit longer until his chest burned and his legs were pumping nothing but acid. After walking for perhaps another twenty minutes in no direction in particular as long as it was away from the golf club, he decided that it was time to get something to drink. He could hear traffic so he made his way towards it — this small road that he was on leading to the motorway in no time at all. He stuck out his thumb and was surprised when someone actually pulled over to the side of the road and let him get in their car. He never usually had any luck with hitching and it surprised him further when he was that it was a woman driving. Women were less likely to pick someone up nowadays for fear of being raped.
He looked at the woman. He could see that she had some self-esteem issues — the way she dressed suggested that she wanted to disappear inside her clothes. In a quick glance he decided that she didn’t think she was worth the effort of making herself look nice. Sure, she would never be any kind of oil painting but there was something there nonetheless.
‘So, why did you pick me up?’ he asked her ‘Aren’t you afraid of picking up strange men by the side of the road?’
‘Should I be?’ she replied ‘look at me — I don’t think anyone is ever going to attack me for that reason, are they?’
‘Why not? What’s wrong with you? ‘
She sighed, the sound like a deflating tyre. She hated it when people tried to pretend that she looked other than way she knew she looked. Glamour was not for her and neither was vanity. She didn’t need the bullshit pleasantries of some stranger to make her feel better about herself — no, she just needed to change.
‘What’s you name?’ he asked, offering her his hand to shake.
She shook it. ‘Raefon.’
‘Nice name, fancy going for a drink?’
‘Sure, why not — I was only going in to work; no big deal.’
She was easy to get on with — a bit shy, but still able to talk about the kind of things which he had been forced to stop talking about because of the company he kept. He wrote and she wrote — they had something in common. He was in no way attracted to her but he was for some reason intrigued.
The bar was empty except for one other person — some guy who seemed to be having a heated conversation with the bartender. He got her the pint she wanted and ordered himself three triple whiskeys. The bartender had a strained expression on his face but he still served him. It was money at the end of the day. Who turned money down? Not this bartender. Starting drinking this early in the day was not good, but he had a companion so that made it socialising, so that was better, wasn’t it? He downed the whiskey and nodded his head. Yeah, it was better. He smiled at her and received back the first unguarded smile he had seen on her face.