Running on empty - 4

And come they did. For a while.
Two office blocks had taken up almost a third of the available space that had been left since the demise of the furniture factories.

The small, age-old chair manufacturers had made this part their own. Wood was cut from the nearby hills and in the woods they turned out furniture. The original Bodgers.
Year upon year the factories had grown, merging and growing in stature, they became giant houses of brick to house the new machines that could take a piece of wood and shape it by lathe or drill to exact dimensions on a scale that befuddled the brain. They could produce more chairs than there are people to sit on them in next to no-time. Far faster than a man on a foot-powered lathe in the woods. Household names arose, International recognition. Then it became cheaper to produce the furniture in far off lands, whose forests they now plundered, and where there was space to put them and there is cheap labour.

She lowered herself down the rope another notch. Up here was a good view and she paused once more to look. What she saw was the railway and canal swapping aspects.

The canal continued straight through from left to right and disappeared behind the hills that rose to the west while the railway drove over the water then curled away east and then south, away across the town proper and on through the valley toward the big City. If she had hauled herself back up to the roof she now hung from, she would be able to see the northern end of the valley; the fields that stretched outward and the woods and copses that scattered the land. In the meantime another giant-sized vine-eye awaited a home.
The site below was a hive of activity. A workforce armed with hammers and picks and spades and forks worked the soil and drove in stakes and raked out pathways. Her chosen role was to tackle the wall.
A feature that had been ignored on the plans, but such a gigantic feature could not be left to simply become a mere backdrop. It needed more attention. So it was that a cunning plan had been hatched by the very person hanging from the roof - drilling holes and inserting plugs and screwing in eyelets from which she would later string wires.

Beyond all the frenetic activity at the site she still had odd feelings about it all. The whole thing was somewhat surreal. Used to more mundane things like survival, she had adapted with some shyness.
Adoption had not been on her agenda but that is what seemed to be happening. She had been adopted by the Church.
Something was needed that was for sure. How long could a life of debauchery go on? The overwhelming feeling that had been given was one of forgiveness for sins. Which was odd; It was true that sometimes she despised herself but she had never approached anything without a healthy degree of suspicion: But Sin? She wasn't sure about any of that.
So, in essence the Way of the Christian was as blind as that of the heathen – they both put faith into something outside themselves.
Simple when it is reduced to words. The academic treatise on the nature of Man.
But inside her soul, that very piece of her that these Christians wished to plunder, deep, deep in there she held out a respect for Anyone(thing) who could knowingly lay down a Life to the Greater (foreseen) Good. That was impressive.
The downside was how it made her feel inside. She did NOT want to confront those horrors thank you. The deeds she had done, sights seen and life lived gave pause for thought. They send a shudder through a frame that tries to withstand the pressures of living day to day and taking opportunity first. A world where Love is an alien concept but something that is sought after but remained unspoken as tho’ by agreement.
Inside of course she felt like sh*t!
Inside it was awful.
A sense of WORTH was being instilled where a sense of shame had previously reigned.
Not liking the contradiction that her own mind gave her she had begun to worry about things. Far more used to trying to bury memories and deeds she found difficulty in shaking off the strands of a chance to hand them over to some(one/thing) else. Awesome was not even close.
So the Word hit home and days were spent in close examination of faults and of possible repair.
Look inside to find the face.
Each day bringing new things, new people, new ideas. She began to absorb the fraternity. Began to experience the ‘joining of minds’ set aside for these disparate folk. Each of whom had a story to tell.
The mind was in turmoil. These lovely people had led lives of family and of care and love, they could not relate to a lowly, wretched slut such as her…

Being proved wrong can be a revelation...

...continued