Excerpt:

Silvestri was an old woman now, bent over toward the ground where once she had been tall, her frizzy brown hair now very mush white, although not the snowy color she had always admired on those persons lucky enough to have it when they got old. No, hers was just a plain, ordinary grey, on a woman bent and wrinkled with age, infirm of step and grip. Unfortunately, this lead many people to believe she was infirm of mind, even though it wasn't really true. Her mind was as sharp as ever. But as she had grown older, more and more people had begun treating her like a two year old, smiling and talking in a sweet voice the simplest things, and then were quite taken aback when *gasp* she actually spoke to them like a grown adult.