[ OT ] This Week 's Theme - Folklore & Fairytale

Once upon a time, there lived an old woman. She was as you'd expect an old woman to be in most respects, brittle and stooped as though whatever foundation still held her old bones up might break at any minute and cause the whole abode to come tumbling down. Her eyes were glazed like a bakers treats - what they'd come to call cataracts in years to come. Her joints were all swollen, such that her fingers were like poorly balanced, chubby spiders from a children's tale. But not all was as one thinks an old woman should be. 
 
 She was wise beyond sight. You could cross a field a mile away from her and her sightless eyes would track you across every inch. She had a gift for portent, and often told the local men when best to sew the crops and on which night a man ought to keep an especially close eye on his daughter. And as far as anyone living knew, she was the oldest woman alive. 
 
 I made up my mind to find out just how old, and so I asked the wyrven who lived in the well, `` Old wyrm, how many years does Titchy Gren have on the earth?'' 
 
 `` No one knows boy, not a soul.'' He told me, and I flustered and blustered - you only get to ask the wyrven one question, and he drives a hard bargain and asks a steep price. I would n't be so easily robbed. 
 
 `` Now, you listen here - it's not small secret I've told you, and I want a better answer! No one has even an idea?!'' 
 
 `` Titchy Gren said a blessing over your cradle when you were still on the teat. When you father chased your mother around the mulberry bush in her da's yard, Titchy Gren hooped with laughter. When your granda set the first stone in the foundation of the house you grew up in, Titchy Gren told him she liked the color of the stone and it was a shame he'd be burying it in the earth and not using it for the whole building. When Marcus St. Clair founded Dunsel Deep, Titchy Gren told him to keep off her land, and out from beneath the trees after dog. When the Elder Wood were still small enough around a man could hug them, Titchy Gren fed the squirrels that nested in them, and when the old gods planted the seeds that would grow into that Wood, Titchy Gren told them not to over water them. Or so they say, boy.''
