2014.03.25 - Mist of the Past

It's late afternoon. Worst time for someone who is wanted to be on the street, and so Robyn did what she had become good in - hide out of sight. Sitting on a folding chair, a thin wooden shaft aligned her left arm, maybe 30 inches in length. The right hand held a razor blade, carefully scratching over the surface with it, peeling off not more than a thin dust of timber to even the facing. In a few hours the hazel tiller in her hand would become an arrow, but yet it was just a piece of lumber without bark and too thick and little flexible.

At an other place and in an other time, Robyn had been in a similar position. Sitting on a treestump, a dried hazel sapling on her arm and a dagger in her left, cutting it into one of her first arrows. Surprisingly, the situation had been not too different - just that her persecutors at that time where armed with swords and bows and not batons and shotguns. And that she had been the most prime target then, not just one of several wanted ones.

Robyn's hands placed the razor on the table next to her, the right hand brushing along the smooth wood to find bumps and ridges, only to find smoothness all along it. A slight tappering towards the tip and end. Whoever said an arrow would be just straight never had needed a heavier arrow to pierce through what seemed to be gauge 16 steel manufactured into breastplates. On the other hand the application in New York would be to shoot through a car door. Fletching and tip were still missing, as was the nock. Taking up the rasp she started to grind away some of the material in the end, creating the gap to ride on the string.

What would the future bring? Robyn had no idea, but she would need to do what an arrow does - flex to avoid breaking, going a curve to strike true and have a sharp tip.