The old lady thought about the notary public, his long clean shaven face. He had a tidy appearance and comely hands, levigated by disuse – that was her sardonic sense of things. She then looked at her fingers, stained by the ink of the newspaper. A nonpareil feeling mounted as she came upon a page where a photograph, prone to desaturation in such publications, nearly leaped out of its confines. The face to the extreme right was of someone she recognized, yet seen in a different context, identification was troublesome and proffered only effete assurances. The search of her memory seemed to her like a painful jarring of a mechanized shutter, locking in to different locations with the surfeit of a clouded lens. Only the sight of a tropicbird refocused her mind, and she decided to take a walk in the garden under the protean clouds.
nasturtium
trumpet
limestone
air plant
wild flower
nasturtium
protean clouds
Astrophytum asterias
