It was late that night. I sat there, so close to what I had waited for through all those long years. Filled with excitement. Not excitement, exactly. More…anticipation. That was it. Nothing could possibly have gone wrong. I paced around in the tiny room, hands in my pockets. Then something red caught my eye. A dull, faded red kerchief. I picked it up, stared at it for just a moment, and threw it back to the floor and kicked it behind some boxes. I was on the brink of victory, mere hours away from conquering what had always, in my eyes, been rightfully mine. I was so close, yet here I was, worrying about a kerchief! I had planned and schemed and exploited and manipulated for twenty long years. All without revealing myself! It was something to be proud of. I slipped out of the room and descended the steps. I opened the door and felt the cool September air at my face. The scrap of cloth I’d found swam to the front of my mind, and I pushed it away, but it stubbornly came back. I shook my head, clearing the cobwebs. The moth-eaten kerchief had nothing to do with me.

How very wrong I was.