A new key

“Why is it always so damn cold”, I wonder to myself as I walk down the road.  It’s always like this on this road.  Darker than midnight and damned cold. I pull my cloak around me tighter willing it to warm me.  There are few lights on the road, and those that are lit only provide a weak respite to the black ink that is the sky.  I can barely make out shapes in the distance, a tree here, some rocks there.  I know that the farther I walk there is an inn that I have stayed in before, but it is still a good distance away.  What the hell am I doing out here anyway? Then I see him…well think I do.  a ghede who seems to come toward me and then disappears. ” The hell”, I think.  I shake my head and keep walking.  I finally get to a light and see him reappear, so I stop.  Might as well have some sort of feeble attempt at light to decide what is really going on, right? The one in front of me stands there with a deer in the headlights look and holds out his hand.   I am confused, so stand and look at him.  Apparently this makes him more nervous, so he disappears again…all but his hand which is skeletal and holds a key.  Wait.  A key?  Yep..there it is, a key.  Silver with an ornate head, and at the bottom two slim tumblers.  “I wonder what that goes to”, I think to myself.  The key continues to hang suspended in air, if one can call it that, wrapped within a skeletal hand.  “Are you going to make him stand there all night or will you allow him to give you the key like he’s supposed to”? asks a voice from behind me.  I smile.  I know that voice well.  If I had not been so busy with my thoughts, I would have paid attention to the rum and cigar smoke, so missed his arrival.  “Why does he keep disappearing”? I ask.  There is a laugh, followed with a reply of “Because you frighten him Cher”.  Wait.  I frighten him?   I laugh.  “You know most people would either think he was their nightmare, or that they were having some sort of psychotic break if they saw him”, I say. “He reminds me of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland,” I laugh  He laughs.  “And yet, here he stands in front of the fierce Swamp Witch, doing his best to not fade completely away in order to give you what he is supposed to give you”.  Fierce?  The word makes me laugh.  I am nothing like that word  at all. He laughs.  “Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean others perception is the same”.  “Now, if you please, the one who had charge over the key is still waiting”.  OMG’s..the ghede.  I had forgotten he still stands half in, half out, holding the damn key.  So I hold out my hand and allow him to drop it into it.  Which he does quickly, and then the hand also disappear and I can feel the movement of a breeze as he moves away quickly. I look at the key and marvel that its weight is heavier than I first imagined.  “So what does this go to?” I ask.  He smiles.  “You know that you will have to find that out for yourself”, he said.  I shake my head.  “Yeah so much for things to be easy.” I laugh.  “Come have a drink with me”, he says.  Yeah…drinking with him is an adventure, but I do need to speak with him, so I agree and we set off for the tavern which seems to be closer than I first thought.  We find a table and the barkeep immediately brings us glasses and rum.  We sit and talk about several things that have been bothering me, and the other keys in my possession, what I have learned with them and the possibility of the new one doing(he would neither confirm nor deny my suppositions).  Soon it was time for me to leave.  I thanked my friend and made my way back home.  I have a lot of thinking to do and decisions to make concerning some things.  I’ve had good advice, and today a slight hangover. ~holds up keys~ “tell me little key, where do you belong?”