(№3.3)

What the girl didn't foresee or really cared about before, on the first day, was that the whole village would be everywhere on the streets, sharing their food with everyone and everybody, prying and carefully leaving nothing behind for her to steal as she normally did.

Dacai was a very fruitful land with several fruit trees for her to collect and bushes offering savoury, lush berries, but she decided it was time for her to learn how to hunt, missing the fleshy, full taste sating one numerous hours evoked only by meat. She turned her back resolutely on the overbearing, nerve-wracking and annoyingly-sonorous celebrations for the "mireasă" and "mire", while she collected some stark, bendable spray and commenced with the instructions on how to craft a bow and arrows.

It was factually very challenging, for the imaginings with restrained instructions were barely any help, until she frustratingly belted, grumbling in defeated contempt, and letting her poor, crooked weapon tumble downstream the current she had sat on to peacefully in order to prevent animal and villager alike to hear her muffled profanities and outburst of fleeting rage, for splinters went lose from the conifer wood nicking her hands and the soft arch of the bow she had seen by the utensils of conversant hunters was uneven and slovenly crafted.

The fury of defeat ate on her fraying pride, but confessing to her miserable failing animated her at last to sneak clandestinely to the dwellings where the hunters' families lodged, where forest and untamed nature touched the widening grounds of urbanisations, there on a once smug clearing, where humans had brutally hacked away on trees and chartreuse thicket, expelling the animals and wildlife endemic and the primal pioneers to claim their territory, to be shot and seasoned and thrown to the fire by those same hypocritical humans. Luckily, the entire population was already much too wasted and jaded by bewitching beverages and the dazzling newly-wed pair to remind that foes might loitering between their ranks when least expected. She could descend no further than to grab anything other than the gleaning, polished, perfectly curved bow she sought out, making it two, just in case one was to cleave in the midst of battle and discovered an entire stack of metal tips, flawlessly forged to taper at the end in a lethal peak for the arrows she still would do herself with middling straight twigs, for some she had spared the gruesome fate to be washed and drenched away and keep for that entire purpose. Her ego couldn't only stoop down so far, before stomaching the embarrassment went out of hand.

Her strutting went languid and tumbling, struggling even to overpass the thinnest of roots without colliding head first. Her body and mind craved sleep, peaceful slumber and if it had to, her brain would force it upon her to nod off during the chase. With clumsy, weary fingers, she managed to glue the tips of shining metal with some spruce pitch, picking it up with leaves from the conifer she had struck with her knife to gather the sticky blood, coming in of much use now.

Warm, rose-red hues alit ablaze the immortal horizon, perennial and incredibly honest, colouring the shimmering, sprawling, wild sea alike so no man could guess where glinting, fervidly searing waves, burning fire ended and maroon sky began with the upcoming orb of the sun radiating hotter and brighter than any star alike, to tint the earth in the yellow-golden rays of daylight. She dug her head deep in the cushions and sheets prepared and laid out in her tree house, especially planted to confer comfort when she had no willing fibre of intent to return home, submitting to her harshly abraded father, blinking of shades with eyes already decaying and long-gone, in unison seven years after the love of his life had perished, understatement dawning he was never to see her lovely face again, hug her dainty shoulders and plunging his nose deep into her long, fragrant hair, scented with crushed rose petals she had fostered into her own garden.

The girl no longer thought about the things that pained her or the tales that smarted beautifully, only pressing her cheek into itching wool and watching morrow unfold, through squinted eyes, marvelling at the vibrant intensity of a sunup, dawn mouthed foully by poets, slagged and loathed, appalling in comparison to dusk, the hot orb, the centre of the universe dipping above the sea level, radiating its beams across planes of darkness.

She closed her eyes and thought to herself it was perfect right now, that moment. Timid, frightened hooves of does dashing through dry leaves, crispy only ever so slightly, for prey was always cautious central to the den of predators, squalling wind blowing warmed air from the coast, gently pushing her long hair from her back and the faint laughter and snicker of simple town's people, still feasting and drinking in the name of the union of two families, after so long behind beheld of celebrations. She dazed off, even though morning had broken.

On this day, when she woke with noon, refreshed and charged with deed and act, motivated by her grumbling stomach, she shouldered the scrolled bow and wrapped a couple of dried arrows in a folded sheet, gently manoeuvring the sharp darts in her belt, for she wasn't keen on having a metallic tip tinged with the hint of rust protruding out of her hip.

Out of curiosity, she harnessed an arrow to get a grip on the pressure put on her shoulder, acquainted at least somewhat with the technique, since she had in-depth and plenty of times observed the hunters firing and slaying an animal in a raining cascade, an imperial arc of elegance it truly embodied, of dawning, glittering arrows, the air hissing in retreat when they would cut straight through it. Error and trial taught her to always aim a bit lower than she originally wanted to strike, the arrow carried flying by an uplifted bow.

She squandered up a scrawny tree she deemed perfect for her poised purpose, suffering a bit with her limbs tangled up in the dense boscage of thin branches prohibiting passage. At last she throned above the world with arrows at the ready and eagerly willing a doe or deer to come by. Feral boars overawed her still.

The most boring part of hunting perhaps was the only thing she could not have anticipated; waiting and waiting and waiting, expecting, hoping, flinching, hearing the cracking of branches and dried autumn leaves from past years, small animals crawling under your feet to be ready to shoot, but then nothing, no glimpse of fur or putting on pinched ears lingering in the midst of bushes.

The girl yawned and felt her stomach almost eating her insides after five hours of frustrating slump. Only patiently pausing of course and whimpering in hisses how the string crucially would cut in her pristine flesh, the rash as striking and brilliant as the sunrise she witnessed earlier that day.

And starving. That of all the nasty aches coming together.

She couldn't believe her eyes, when a small young bunny just appeared right under her nose, only two metres away, pinching its nose and waving its fluffy tail right under the tree she sat in. She tautened the string of her bow without second guessing, reflexes taking over rather rational thought and directly dislodged it in the stomach.

Beginner's luck.

Shocked, she let the accurst bow fall down to the ground, jumped down next to the cute, pure animal, healthy and sound heartbeats ago, now injured beyond healing, to retrieve it trembling and paining in her hand, eyes widened in fright and shock, blood gushing out beneath the brown fur. She wished she had met the throat to end its suffering now or missing it altogether.

Her hands were covered in red. As she had just committed murder, the worst possible treason fathomable. She was about to, for killing it now would be blissful mercy. The girl stroked it soothingly, that twisting form, brought her hands to its neck and looked the other way. The crunch was maddening, the small bundle of soft fleecing going limp all of the sudden.

She wanted to scream, to sob, to curse profanities to the world of having to slay something so precious, that such vileness could be produced by her hands. Mindless regret would result yet in nothing. Her dress and stockings were caked in bunny blood, the animal hung numb in her lap and nothing could be changed to alter the incident. Immersed by quiver and quaver, she hurried with hands holding on dear life to the animal and bloody clothes to a nearby creek in order to clean and fillet the rabbit, as told and religiously mentioned in her books should be done short after the death of the animal, to thwart fouling process and flies preempting the meal for themselves. Carrion was inedible for humans anyway.

She readied her blade.

It was such a traumatic experience, the girl shamed herself simultaneously of both being disgusted by what she'd done and being the same so judgmental, all though the men in her village would do it without so much as blinking, laughing and swinging the dislodged neck of the coney 'round. For killing animals and eating their meat was what had preserved the human species, what rendered them to last this long, and still an act of this natural magnitude disgusted her beyond bounds. Meanwhile struggling with her honour, to accept the disgrace, resenting her success of catching something on the first lay, linger for animals.

The evening, she sat quietly at a fire she amounted at her cliff, far where villagers could quest for her, the salted wood curiously burning green and blue, drenched and coated generously with the sea sprawling grains of salt, the fire of the underworld, the flames of the dead lighting how she slowly chewed on the delicious, tender meat of her prey, sucking at the bones where scrapes of filling grease would sit, until there was nothing to suck at, feeding the mortal remains to her ghostly bonfire, what further existed as proof of what she had done, somewhat used as a sacrifice for a god, if one should hover over her. Perhaps the next time he could release her from the gnawing, painful guilt. She extinguished the fire at last and ran through the dark, smouldered of any light and hope akin her heart felt, as dropped into a bottomless pit and swallowed by a darkness she could not escape from. She crawled into her bed into the village, near where her father was snoring, the singing tang of wine in the air and inviting the tears to come only now, breaking through her composed, calm surface of being lonely, alone and now a killer of adorable creatures to add to that long list of sins, shining black bunny eyes locating her in the saturnine night, glaring at her quickening form for as long as the night lasted.

It shouldn't obviously be the last death that should occur to the small town, as just a little of a decade since their last visit had passed, the Skeleton Crew on its way to punish the villagers once again and add more souls on their long, gone-ruthless conscience, far more undeterred killers. But the village knew yet not about the tribute paid to them in future. 

When the first notes scaffolded over the village a fortnight later in sweet temptation and promises spiced with ancient lies of deceitful temptation and the pervading, tangible scent of desires spiking, the villagers sighed and bowed their heads to stop the lusting drug from doing anymore damage it had done the last time they had been baited to reaction, hiding deep in their cabins, not daring to see the slightest glimpse of the blue light protruding from slitted windows, the sleek bow and the snitched mast, not even daring to think about them, as the consequences of the last time had taught them more than enough to stay away, erring effective even for ruffled lout folk. Lamentation and moaning soon would seep through the streets like a mighty incantation, barely impossible to withhold the mocking siren's song of demons and grinning at the desperate wrench, carousing in mutinied attacks to their crumbling resistance. If they really wanted to, they could compel to move the awkward, scrawny limbs of humans like the strings of a denounced puppet, yet rather they had them hungering and smarting, capable in choice, for being offered something you did not want to do, yet you still did, proved to be much more tragic and entertaining, making the misery all the more enjoyable.

The little girl, no longer as diminutive as she used to be, had in opposition no one advised to caution, should the Skeleton Crew berth afresh on their gaping cliffs and tropical-kissed beach with sand as flimsy as air and gentle like powder, moonlit their paths on the silver, crystallised water, carved away for their addictive pieces, so by even the faintest tones aroused from the waterline and neighbouring towns groaning in affiliated woe, she rushed away from her tree house where she doused, attempting to scrape the blood of the doe she had slain today dried under her fingernails and hurried to the cliffs to see the beautiful blue ship, charged with a fulfilling electricity of elation she seldom carried, over-welcoming the change of sentiments.

She stopped dead in her tracks with arrows in her belts and bow slumped over the shoulder, observing how the ship made an elegant turn, driving now alike parallel to the cliffs and the girl.

A rare smile crept over her face timidly, the motion hurting somewhat out of disuse, her blue eyes shining in moonlight like fluent ardent, feeling like being catapulted into a foreign landscape and an even stranger imagination manifesting in her mind, freed of the godforsaken town at her back. As a dream had mangled with her brain and won, teleporting her to a place she could have only dreamt arriving.

She lived a confined life separated, yet barely could deny the beatings and spanking done to the other women, nothing more than what slaves must endure, the girls matched to that picture of depravity and horror, raped in alleyways day and night, everyone facing the other way and those glorious feasts of drinking and swilling till scarcely able to move one's limb by the men, bedazzled by booze and nectar, those brutes exploiting what the spine of the colonisation had spent countless hours on. Of course, she could always run, but where would she go? What if only worse evil lurked a corner tugged away, residing in another city where her path would lead her, malice that perhaps might be enabled to claim also her freedom.

Better stay here where people would keep their distance, where she was apt to conquer. Better to face the devil known, than the devil strange.

Now she knew the answer to her ravishing, longing strides unhappy with the bare existence the villagers deemed enough, she had suffered all along for this price only; she had waited all along for this special concert to be played for her, a ball, a feast, a song only primed for her to listen to and find a surface of resonation, awakening. Some part of her startlingly alive, heart responding and relishing, freed in its desperate cravings and sound. To relax, to breathe just for the change. Than to turn around assuming one's behind to stab you in the back.

It took her quite an amount after recovering from that first hit to a stomach that was vivace revelation, to realise, that these must be the outrageous, righteous devils taking her mother from her, murdering her along with every woman in town and her smile shrieked a little to a grim line. Yet she stayed nonetheless and applauded after each song, feeling appreciation in the notes, as the Crew would be flattered for someone to actually like their music, even after everything they had done and so much still of that anguish waiting to be distributed, patiently.

Perhaps it was better her mother had died, every woman along pruned from the possessive claws of their husbands and brothers and son, unrelenting, vicious, bombarding with unjust labour and sitting idly by while they almost succumbed to death. Their places might be renewed, tightly stuffed with new victims, perceiving on first hand the deeply-running corruption of blood and bone, a price to be paid by a squandered woman.

She wanted to figure out these potential omniscient demons dropping with slick smugness and cruel confidence, belting out in their ballads and decipherable from the stance of the ship, ever-glowing azure. Wondering whilst ever listening, what enticed them to do ill all around the Black Coast and beyond the bay of her ancestors, killing and maiming, prevailing with a fist more iron than even the emperor of Byzantium. Certainly, her village deserved the pain and plight it had meant, but they were surely not as much in sorrow as they could be. Forgotten the agony once menacing to drown them, so perhaps the Skeleton Crew had returned to remind them.

That was when the girl had an idea, that might just change the world as we know it forever.

With a quick glance, begging the ship not to disappear once her eyes were untrained of its sleek figure, she ran through the forest to get something, her things carelessly leaving, laying at the cliff.

At her tree house, she searched her ink bottle, a sheet of paper she carelessly ripped from only a half-way filled notebook, skipping back to the rock faster than a breath of wind rushed through the tricky, hidden paths of her forest.

It was still there, thankfully, but on its way to disappear on the horizon and probably not returning back for a very long time.

She took her improvised quill, dipped it lightly in her self-made ink of finny gore and wrote a message on the paper in a foreign language, letters and punctuation hastily dripping and leaning on dear life against each other, as standing alone unattached, they all would have hopelessly shattered to the ground. The girl weened in her favour, the creatures on the ship to understand it, as over their music they could transmit a story without words, only the tongue of music and decipher words by mere imagination, so they might as well comprehend her sloppy handwriting in foreign alphabet.

She took an arrow, pierced it through the paper until midway, slowly rising and stretched the bow, carefully navigating the path the arrow would follow with squinted eyes, for the light was sparse and clouds populating the night sky made the ordeal only less easier, breathing in, before releasing (and hopefully aiming right), breathing out.

She loosened her grip and tried to figure out where her arrow landed, if she met the bull's eye or lost one of her precious, paltry arrows forever in sea foam and kelp.

It was impossible to tell now, as the ship was gone. She huffed in awe, sinking her arms down a smirk playing around her lips and heart satisfyingly jolting with bristling adventure. They had simply vanished. She bat an eye, and gone they were. Elusively, with her own eyes still strained on her target. She gathered the utensils of the dusty rock, pocketed in her dress and laggardly moved to attain to her tree house, thoughts inexorably circling around her recently-discovered fascination. Wind gently whipped her dump hair, the scent of resin and bleeding pitch ventilated among.

The benevolent Skeleton Crew, tonight seemingly performing for only her.

They never leave without a party gift though, a gesture sneering respect.

Concerning the next morning, their message was clear, they considered the punishment still insufficient:

Bees and wasps, hornets, ladybugs, beetles. To and fro a scarab beetle. Bugs. Simply everywhere. Nothing much unusual here, only that they seemed to have multiplied by the factor of a million in a couple impressive hours.

Laying on every inch of house and finery fountains, infiltrating the water and their food supplies, and insects on human bodies, how most of them discovered at dawn, by waking up. Stinging and biting and sucking blood, a glorified chaos, humiliating and humbling.

The girl, shocked to wake on her cliff – certain she had sheltered last night in her treehouse, yet quickly stomped out her ridiculing confusion, when she saw her arrow laying innocently in front of her nose, quietly attending to her interest for god-knows-how-long, but definitely too long.

The one she shot after the parting Skeleton Crew.

Quickly and with an excitement only comparable when it was Christmas morning, where usually no gifts waited warped for her in stockings, but rather the bustling, content, frosty air of winter electrified and animated her little to exhilaration, she took her arrow and opened the parchment – oddly seeming like the exact one she'd shoot. The same shape, the same beige-yellow paleness moreover tinted at the edges.

The only difference harboured in her message being gone and replaced by something else. Like erased from the paper as it never touched it. A red correspondence, written in crimson blood. Of course in blood.

"Next time, aim better", read the paper, almost scolding her, copying her exact lettering, exact scornful writing-style, a mask of shock gliding in place where nerve-splintering anticipation mingled before. The sentence looked as if she had written it, which of course, she couldn't have.

Then again, the arrow lay in front of her, which it couldn't have, shouldn't...

The girl looked in the azure morning sky, her heart beating desperately in her chest, not believing how this message could have possibly ended up with her, boiling scared and meticulous in her veins at the facts of how she fell asleep in her tree house and woke at the beach with a freshly-penned paper pinned to her feet, reeking of gore and iron as the cut had been made recent, blotted drops falling and crafted into words she could read, words copying her scripture.

And whilst the town would suffer the entire forth-week with oozing invasions of plaguing bugs and terribly pinching stings, she was safe from the antagonising wrath in her woods, steering clear of the village, hunting and foraging as nothing had ever been amiss.

Worry still frowned her brows whenever she glanced at the paper she hid in her favourite cover of fictional stories, retrieving it multiple times every day to diligently touch it, render homage, as if to harvest wiring energy from mere fibre. Chills would run down her spine and she'd put it back, avoiding her gazes to brush until she couldn't contain herself for the round of intently reading again, the next day.

Yet, she was absolutely happy about it and as the mysterious writer stated it clearly, utilising the word "next", it wouldn't be the end of this exciting story, and they'd come back to her, the thrilling bards not yet done with the symphony about a girl venturing farer out than she should have, probably.

The ship was soon to return in autumn, the girl almost zealously waiting for her personal orchestra to return, punishing lowly villagers in the process functioning only as further bonus, stealing things, placing it in other people's homes to sow envy and suspicion, tautening the string of her loyal bow each time the blue bow clambered into view shooting once anew a message to the Skeleton Crew. A regular ritual unfolded, like the passing of seasons, the interaction of day and night, the trek of the stars.

It was a dangerous, taunting game. Or maybe it wasn't. She wouldn't know if the disheartening experience she owned in many matters. And still she did it, for the thrill was intoxicating.

Perhaps the Crew found it refreshing to correspond with a mortal about banal things, who had the slightest grasp of being shunned and regarded as a wretched beetle squirming under a boot sole. Ousted ironically, for what the Skeleton Crew had brought among the village, but the girl was far too lost, too gone in the charm and magic of them to actually consider she had any reason to stay back than edging closer. The Crew would be her unravelling, as we all know. She suspected nothing yet and will personally cause though her destruction in the future.