Weekly Prompt Writing

From today's Skype meeting.

It was that gardener boy again. He dawdled around the kitchen, watching me scrub the pots. At last I couldn't bear it. "Don't you have something to be doing?" I said, wiping my hands on my apron. It was rather a process getting used to doing house work.

For a moment he just looked at me. Then he said, in a quiet voice, "Why are they all afraid of you?"

I was at a loss. "Who's afraid of me?"

He spread out his hands. "All of them. All the other girls. They all think you're...strange."

I couldn't exactly tell him that this was the least surprising thing anyone could ever say to me. Instead I handed him a wet pot and a clean rag. "Dry." He acquiesced, and I went back to scrubbing the breath out of my lungs. Would the doctor consider this strenuous work?

But he didn't appear to be finished talking. "I don't think you're strange. I think you're sad."

Dash it, was it that obvious?

"Are you afraid of me?" I asked, attempting to joke, but sounding more like a frightened five-year-old.

He shook his curly black head. "Not a bit. You're lonely. Loneliness is nothing to be afraid of."

I could tell he hadn't experienced loneliness the way I had. I couldn't think of anything more frightening.