Silly Pilly Girl who then wanted to Sell

I said I needed to trade something. Yes, it is of value. I need to trade my wounds. The broker with his yellow baseball cap and his broker's crooked smile said my wounds would be of no value to anyone else.

I put up a stall in a crowded market-place, I put up my wounds for sale. I looked on wearily, then vacantly as people laughed and snorted at me, smiled worriedly and wept for me, but no one came to trade.
The last to pack up in the evening, unhurriedly I folded my chair. A plump woman with hair silver as the stars I'd painted in my childhood, a slight dance in her step and a twinkle in the eyes appeared. "Oh my", she said, "I think the rumours were false". Sensing my unperturbed quiet, she went on. "You know, about some girl selling her wounds. What people won't say, just to say! Hah!"

"Rumours..", I murmured.

"Oh yes", chirped the old one. " I've seen so many fools selling their wounds in my day, when I heard this I had to rush over. I couldn't miss this sight. If you haven't closed yet, I'd like to buy what you're selling though." Strange as I'd thought she was, merry as one could look she looked, what she said made me think of serpents and quietly I wondered if she'd ever stop speaking.

"If you're as sharp as you seem to think you are, then you'd know you don't want to buy what I'm selling."

Startled, whether at my words or the fact that I actually had a voice, she missed a beat and said that of course she did.
I was getting tired of this. I wished the old woman would go away. She was making me uncomfortable with her wisdomy attitude.

"You don't know what you're selling; is that why you won't sell?"
Inspite of myself, I got agitated. I told her politely that she'd been eating the head of the fool she said she'd spent the evening searching for, and that perhaps she needed to rethink who the fool really was.

She stared straight at me, her gaze never leaving my eyes. Entranced, a flicker of a thought that I was looking into the eyes of the grandmother I'd never had passed through my head.
"But my child, you don't even know what you've put up for sale. I'd rather that buy it than anyone else - not that people are lining up." The twinkle had returned, the moment was past.

They don't care, I said.

They don't know, don't understand the value, she said. I'd buy your pride before you put it up in a stall some other day, someplace else.

But that's not even my commodity, I cried.
Is it not, she asked.
I'm selling my wounds.
Are you now?

I realised she hadn't even said those last words. I stared the longest I've stared at my hands. When I looked up, she was gone. Night had officially begun, and as I continued to look at the moon emerging from behind the meadow of clouds - it seemed by my will alone - I heard myself breathe out a ghost's whisper, a thank you mangled with sorrow, laced with gratitude. And with hope.

-Written a considerable period of time ago, not very long ago though:P
Posted now for a terrible lack of things to post and a huger, terribler, almost insanely pressing need to post.