Spinning threads

The weathered woman sat at the old wheel, wood and bones creaked from age as she settled into her comfy chair and placed her foot on the worn wheel peddle. She was blind; grey glazed eyes glanced at gnarled fingers for a moment before she reached out tentatively for the silken threads. She’s done this so many times she no longer needed to see, but the brief flashes she got while weaving were still comforting to remind her that she wasn’t completely gone from the world outside.

She stroked the winding pattern of the last night’s work, strange lives were lived these days; more lives were being intertwined than ever. She knew she could keep track however, eternity was such a long time to spend weaving compared to those short human lives. For the first time in a long while she actually laughed; she talked about other people’s lives as if she was not one of them anymore. It had taken longer than expected but she was starting to think herself more than human... Her finger plucked a string lightly and the image of that moment shone in her mind; a mother holding her child and laughing in joy. Perhaps... perhaps she actually thought herself less than human.
Still, be gone these weary woman thoughts for she had a job to do; it was a job of a life time, a job of a million life times. Now where did she leave off? She was grateful that her touch was still attached to her body, without it she would be lost in the dark; soon she found the join with the wheel and the strands spreading out into the weave around her. Her foot began to work automatically, the smooth grove in the wooden panel fitting perfectly with her hardened heels; she remembered those calluses and corns from the first few months. She hadn’t been able to walk away from the wheel, but then again her clumsy hands back then had meant she’d needed to re-twine the threads again and again. Her hands were moving without her prompting them to even as she thought of the past; talking of time she concentrated on the pattern.

Images flashed threw her mind’s eye as the almost liquid streams of time passed beneath her fingers; lives and loves flashed into her brain as her skilled fingers twisted the thin wires around each other and criss-crossed them in a massive pattern where lives met. It was so difficult these days, her hands were skilled but humans had found so many interesting ways to stay in contact at the most inconvenient moment. A birth was usually a joyous occasion for the withered woman, a wry smile crossing her lips but these days a frown came to her brow in concentration as she wormed the different lives into each other. Damn phones, a letter could take weeks to arrive but twenty lives could be brought together in an hour because of those damn shrill things. As she intertwined the lives of several people getting on a bus she went back to her inner thoughts; she was watching the way lives followed the pattern every few decades. She wondered what the tapestry looked like by now, it must be beautiful but chaotic, at least if it mirrored lif-. Another thread had suddenly joined those on a bus and several of those on the bus had been cut short.

Damn; she stopped the wheel and it clattered into silence, concentrating again she felt the pattern there, it had been an accident and several people had been ended so quickly. She paused for a moment, staring with her sightless eyes at the pattern around her. A lifetime watching other people’s lives start and snuff out so quickly... Sometimes she got so attached to a person she cried when they disappeared from the planet; sighing to herself she straightened her back with another deep groan. She had to do what she had to do though... With a small rattle of time being woven together the old woman began to go back to work again, sitting there for eternity and watching life from the outside. It was lonely... but someone had to keep time going in a straight line.