Holding Court

Leesa frequented the Food Court every day. The mission at hand was to record the stories of the people she saw, like the middle aged lady who talked to an empty chair. Leesa also observed the teenage boy who wore an Eisernes Kreuz on his tattered camo jacket, his head bent, surrounded by multiple black composition books and a pencil box. He wrote many, many words before he'd shift his twitchy, restlessness from the left leg to the right. She watched her flame glide by sporting a new hairpiece every few days. Leesa called him Gary the Faery (not to his face) for the lithe, silent way in which he traversed the mall with a shy little smile and the occasional side-eye. The game? The gist of it was to pretend one had not noticed the other. Leesa and Gary always managed to look up or over at the same time anyway, eyeballs colliding as Leesa would snort-cough and act all "I'm too consumed with my work" as she quickly engaged in a steely stare down with her Acer Chromebook. Gary just kept on rollin' while his shy smile transformed into a smirk.

 

Leesa's courtiers would move through their lives to eventually die and their stories would be remembered by no one. She tapped at her keyboard, writing down the scenes of the unseen.