Who: Baba Yaga and Open! When: Wednesday morning, 7:30 am. Where: On the corner of Centre and Leonard, outside of the Manhattan Criminal Court Building. Rating: PG.
A city draped in fog greeted the morning commute. Rushing to and fro, souls milled about as if in some choreographed dance, somehow never managing to run one another down in their mad rush to work, or school, or to the nearest street corner. Right outside the court house, where inside the daily proceedings were about to unfold, a little hut had taken shape on the corner of Leonard St. Moist cardboard was haphazardly bound together with hemp-rope and chicken bone stitching. The little cardboard box home had not been there the previous evening, or the evening before that. Beneath the dawning, obscure sun, it had materialized, and only trained eyes would have noticed the difference. Most eyes were not attuned to what detritus lingered in society's periphery vision.
Thin arms that skin no longer sought to cling to fully stretched over her head as she sat up and gathered up her skirts and layers of shawls. She crawled out of her little home, wavering to a stand. Squinting, she looked up at the sky, mumbling, "Muggy summers, muggy minds, everywhere..." Baba Yaga snatched up her little mortar bowl, and willed herself to hunch over, look about ten years older than she already appeared, and jutted her lower jaw to imitate a horrid under bite. With a tilt of her head and a twist of her lips over slightly pointed teeth, she smiled and hobbled toward the courthouse steps, vision partially obscured by a shawl and her own white-golden hair.
"Pennies? Pennies!" She paused, eyes catching on a little girl scampering next to her high-heeled mother, trying to keep up. Mommy-Dearest was yapping something crude on the cell phone to some client a thousand miles away, not noticing the haggard bag-lady's attention on the little girl. Her expression softened, and for a moment, the little girl might see Beatrice Yvette as kind, yielding. "Penny for a sweet treat, little girl?"