She was extraordinary not only in her odd combination of grandmother's wrinkles and a child's hairstyle – that side twist on the ponytail that was our fashion in those times.

No, the most fascinating aspect of Miss Isobel Abbey was not her eclectic appearance or even her strength of character which was known to be capable of pulling up trees from their roots.
It was the way in which when one was face to face with the old woman they would feel inexplicably at one with the world and all its creatures. Although not one of her visitors in the previous century could tell you why; some would put it down to the copious cups of Rooibos tea one would manage to consume without being fully aware of it until the last cup, left unfinished as they exited because they simply could not drink any more tea.

Until one day when the skilled plumber Eric Elliot was leaving her house, holding onto his genitals for dear life for he needed to pee desperately after all the cups of tea she had brought him. Unfortunately he could not use the toilet as rather than fixing it he had dismantled all the pipes in the building in his distraction due to Miss Abbey's peculiar gift. 'Dear God' he said in consternation. 'That woman understands me like no other.'

My sister, on entering the house as Eric left, though she always claimed a certain dislike for the plumber, (possessing an unjustified distrust for anyone in the possession of two Christian names) realized in a moment of clarity how right he was.

The feeling of being completely understood stemmed from a certain narcissism on Eric's part, as with anyone else who came into contact with Miss Abbey.

Her gift was a simple one. As the scent of Indian incense and fried garlic infused ones brain on entering her home, her quiet presence in her dolls high chair, customized for her ever broadening figure as she sat by her fireside, legs dangling, would begin to make itself aware in your soul, then, as you began to speak to her of the reason for your visit, her eyes would begin to change to become a mirror of your own, her skin unwrinkled to become your own youthful glow, her soft nose would point to the sky in defiance if you were my sister, or downwards in a dejected manner if you happened to be Eric Elliot, and thus it became that in her strange and aging frame, one could see oneself.
Later, on hearing my sister repeat what Eric Elliot had said while exiting in such a hurried manner, holding on to his genitals, Aeron Sky was to say in a brief moment of lucidity– 'when one meets oneself he either falls in ever lasting love or is disgusted to the core of his being.'

During the very brief meeting of Aeron Sky and Miss Abbey, he himself was quite overcome with the unnerving feeling of watching himself speak and gesticulate without having any control over his movements. Of course she barely ever spoke unless one counts her murmurs to the kettle to tell it to hurry up and boil, come on now, hurry up and boil which she did often as a result of her unbreakable addiction to Rooibos Tea. She consumed at least twenty cups in half of a day. Aeron like many before him was entirely mesmerized.

In Miss Abbey's features he saw his past, present and future laid out like a beautiful tapestry glowing by the embers of the fire.
Though the action seemed extemporaneous to him in retrospect, her offer of a herbal cigarette was accepted without a hint of surprise and they sat and smoked in silence while he contemplated the paths of his life so far. He was most interested in the frazzled threads that stemmed like estuaries burned dry from the decisions that had defined who he was. His various break ups from Stella were littered with these and he wandered at what could have been. Nostalgically he reflected on the time during the plague when they had lain naked on her safe bubble of a bed. Close and sweaty as chaos resided outside the window. He had slithered his face down on to her belly and licked it. It was making sleepy sounds as it always did after sex and he was wandering what it was trying to say. On a whim he reached for the pen he kept pocketed in the side of his left sock – it was a matter of pride to him as an Englishman to always keep at least one sock if not both of them on while making love.
In a gross matter of chance that he interpreted as divine providence, the one time he had allowed them both to be removed was by a whore in Barcelona during his time of Spanish loves, and he was stung by a scorpion on the middle toe of his left foot.

Stella, with her own share of idiosyncrasies, ignored the obvious oddness of his insistence that they stay on and merely insisted that he wear a clean pair every day, and often gave him a new and interesting pair – green or yellow at the start of a week in case he had not had the time or inclination to wash the ones he had. She would say – 'if you must wear such unnecessary items, at least wear them with love and stay on God's side.'

Today he was wearing the gold pair she had bought him after the first time they had slept together, a hurried event that they had improved on since. They made his feet itch but he approved of the royal air he believed they gave him. The pen was gold too, and also a gift, given to him by his father when his own hands had become too ravaged by the grip of disease that had worried him since the Wars.

Aeron Sky held it reverently between his fingers for a moment, licked Stella's warbling belly again and began to draw on her smooth skin. At first the pen resisted the sweat that lay like a liquid veil over her ,but at his insistence and to her great amusement a story began to unfold.

Their chance meeting began at the sinking of her belly button, the plague raged at the curve of her breasts, his bewilderment at his Father's decline sunk into the hollow of her neck. As he shaded in his love for her into her armpits she was overcome with giggles. She cried at him to stop, sweeping her luminous hair into his face and trying to grab the pen away from him, but he was entranced by his own vision, his life entwined with hers breathing over her body at his fingertips. She gave up and rolled a cigarette, scattering tobacco over the bed covers as she suppressed her laughter. His unfulfillable role in the world of commerce squiggled its way down her arms, his sexual desires and secret longing to be a father unfurled at at the tips of her aristocratic fingers, her chipped nail polish mingling with the ink to become the most strange sort of beautiful. The dents of her hips became the mountains of the lands they had traveled together, her thighs his scared disappointment's at her infidelities. Her knees the dry sands of his search for his mother the year before the plague of which he had told no one. She blew smoke from her nostrils and he decorated her legs with the moths of his past. On her feet he drew the homes he wished for and her toes became their sexual exploits, dark and heeled with his appetite for the unusual. He wound his way back up to her vagina, wet from their recent appetite and shoved the pen in, surprised at his own irreverence, She burned the pillow with her burning cigarettes and clutched at his hair, a beautiful tattooed monster.

It wasn't until Miss Abbey poured him his ninth cup of tea that he became aware of an overwhelming desire to pee. Clutching at his groin he told her, 'thanks' and left.