A comfort in the morning.

There she sat, Metilda, feeding the chickens like she always did- when she had the time. Her other chores were to scrub kitchen pots, black with layers of filth, wash sheets and wipe down dust boards. In fact, she spent so much of her time doing the little things around the house that the grass in her yard was nearly overgrown, and bees had built huge, unmolested nests in every corner of her house.
She didn’t linger while feeding her chickens, but she certainly fed them quite often, so that most of the chickens were inordinately large, with eyes that bobbed with their heads, searching for food and squabbling when they discovered it.

Metilda stood up and ran back into the house. It was morning, but almost noon, and she had somewhere to be. “I wouldn’t mind a walk to the river,” she told herself. “I might need a few berries for the stew tonight.”  There was another reason she wanted to visit the creek that ran down the shady green hills about ten minutes’ walk from her house. She felt a peace there. It drifted through the woods and rested on her when she sat, moved with her when she walked and hardly left her until she’d returned home.  

She poured water into a freshly washed pot, measured in some beans and hauled it onto the stove. She tossed in some garlic gloves and flung herself through the doorway and escaped into the wild. 
A strange creature watched her disappear into the shadows of the forest. It was brown, with enormous eyes; they hardly looked natural in such a small head with such a small body. Little wings, like those of a sparrow carried it from branch to branch. It followed her, twitching its head back and forth, its eyes never leaving her path.