Craggy Annie was how she was known, as she roamed the streets of Edinburgh as a local oddity.
All city’s tend to have one, a character that drifts on the outskirts of everything that makes sense, but she was there all the same, and was a comfort even, like an anchor to all that knew her name.
Sometimes they would ask questions, but only in their heads, like where and from whom, did she come from? And what happened to them and to her, that made her as she was? Things must of been very different for Craggy Annie.
She was scornfully marked by time, and spoke in the strangest tongue, sometimes in rhyme, and although ragged and riddled with a scramble of mind, she was in good company, all the while, by a companion that lived in her jacket.
His wide, wired eyes looked as mad as Annie’s did, and his long, silken ears were always pricked upright. His protruding front teeth made him seem more friendly than he was, and if anyone mistook him for a rabbit, he would fight. You can win worldly goods on the Scottish streets when you have a rabid hare on your side, as street boxing became a way to feed their bellies.
“You’re acting brainless! You mad, march Hare!”
“That’s below the belt, that isn’t fair!”
“None of this is!” Annie interjected and then got distracted by a moth, as the hare spoke up.
“Brainless aye! But not mindless mind you, now that would be a problem, but not for I so then whooo?!” declared the hare after he boxed a punter in the nose, and hopped back into his worn leather cocoon.
They conferred between themselves for a moment, and then Annie lifted her head from the musty world inside her jacket, and said “It’s time to go now, so pay up! We’ve got business to attend to, in another wretched pub..” she looked at the punters expectantly and held out her grubbied hand.
The brawling men looked at each other but knew better than to take the micky, so a regular scallywag gave her the coins from a wide berth. She counted the coins meticulously and then smiled at them, ever so sickly, before nodding goodbye to the moth at the hearth. And then she stuffed the coins into her pocket with some old trinkets and cash to spare, before going about her business, with her dear friend, the Mad, March Hare.
Fin.