The Ballads of The Skeleton Crew

The Ballad of The Gone Girl (3|3)

(№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.