The Truth Of The Matter

Never Mind, This Neighbour Is NOT Friendly!

There were people in her woods.

This was bad. This was very bad indeed. 

They had fallen out of the large red car that the blonde one had been driving, and now she wasn't sure if the other blonde one-- not the driver-- would even survive the night. He was shivering an awful lot. A worrying amount.

Wasn't that why she had tried to chase them out, anyway? So they wouldn't get hurt, or stuck, or worse, explore?

She stared down at them from a tree, watching as they scurried about underneath. Her legs tangled in the thick branch, her foot swishing through a couple of leaves. They hadn't noticed her yet-- she preferred it that way, anyway.

Maybe if they didn't know she was there, she could convince them to leave.

Overhead, the moon shone, too bright for her liking. Only a few clouds dared mar the picture-perfect scene, a round, bottle-cap-silver moon glowing like a second sun up in the dark blue swath of sky. The trees managed to obscure the moon a fair amount, but not as well as she'd like.

It wasn't a good night for being intimidating. Unfortunately, it was one of those nights that people would look up at and think that it was good for stargazing. Or picnicking. Or horse riding.

Or worse, exploring.

She hated exploring.

She wondered if it was obvious.

And then she reminded herself that she was alone, with nobody to talk to, so nobody would be providing her with an answer. She would have sighed, but ghosts don't breathe-- even if she had, it probably would have been nothing but fog, anyway.

Ghosts don't need to breathe. They don't need to do much of anything.

But she needed to protect them. She needed to chase them away-- they needed to get away from the woods before they got bored. She wondered if they were already bored.

But if they got too bored, they might explore. She didn't want that. She didn't like that idea.

But maybe if they got bored . . . they would leave.

She stared down at the motley group. Her head tilted to the side, so far the ghostly bone cracked. The bonnet on her head whished right through an overhead branch.

One good thing about being a ghost: your bonnet couldn't snag on annoying branches. That was, quite possibly, the only good thing about it.

Down below, the people started yelling. Were they yelling at each other? Why would they do that? Living people were so interesting. So interesting . . . and so . . . tiring.

It was a lot of work to chase after cars. A lot of work to kick the cars.

She wanted to rest, but . . . she shouldn't. She should look after the men underneath. The yellow-haired one was looking particularly pale, rather like the colour of uncooked dough. Oh, but there was a lot of blood on him. That gave him a lot of colour.

It did worry her, though.

If one of their own died, would they stay for longer? Or would they leave? Perhaps they would go away for a funeral and never come back. Or perhaps they would bury the boy here and move into one of the houses. She wondered what they would do.

Oh! The blonde boy was sitting up! So he wasn't dead? That was a surprise.

All of a sudden, the tallest one was throwing his arms around the blonde, yelling something very loudly. She cringed back; the loud noise hurt her ears. Perhaps it was a cry of joy, but it was so shrill she was surprised her ears weren't bleeding.