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Hide and seek

"Josie! Are you ready yet?" A bubbly young, high pitched voice rang out.

Josie remained silent, not wanting to give away her position.

"Ready or not, here I come!" The voice cried gleefully. The sound of footsteps could be heard, crunching on twigs and dead leaves. Josie remained silent and unmoving as the footsteps got closer. When the crunch of twigs under moccasins stopped she could hear breathing. She could sense how close her friend was to finding her. Carefully ever so carefully, making not a sound, Josie got ready to run.

When her friend took one more step, Josie bolted from inside of the hollow log, running like a wildcat. Her friend squealed in shock, then began to give chase. Just before Josie was able to tag the designated counting tree she felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun around and nicked her friend on the hand just before the other girl touches the tree, then Josie lunged for it. She feels bark under her hand and grins. She won again!

"I win!" Josie proclaimed, leaning against the tree and breathing heavily.

"No fair!" Wined the little blond haired wisp of a girl. Not yet two feet tall, she claimed to be five years old. Josie wasn't sure if she believed the strange little girl or not, but since she was only four; she listened to her.

Josie herself was not much taller than her strange companion, only she had black hair and dark skin. Josie's eyes were also black, and her lips were over ripe raspberry coloured. The girl looked like sunlight on a lake, with almost white curly hair, pale pale skin and white-blue eyes. Her lips were the colour of freshly bloomed wild roses, a pink so light and fragile looking.

Josie knew that her friend wasn't fragile. They had spent the last hour playing hide and seek in the forests outside of the village. And Josie hadn't lost a round yet. Both of the young girls were getting hungry.

"Want to come back to the village? We have food, and you can stay with me." Josie informed the little girl.

"Okay... I suppose we can go." She says sounding a bit hesitant. Josie grabs her hand and drags her companion along the trail that leads back to the village, humming a happy tune. The little girl walks along, her steps as springy as ever, but she is abnormally quiet.

Soon Josie smells smoke. Thinking that this is odd, she slows down. "Do you smell the smoke?" She asks the blond girl.

"We should go." The wisp says, backing up slowly, tugging on Josie's hand.

"I want to see what it is" Josie protests, fighting against the dragging. She breaks free and runs the rest of the trail to the village, halting abruptly at the end of the trail, just before leaving the forest. She knows that it's a bad idea to run out into something unknown. Carefully Josie pusses aside a poplar branch and looks out to her village.

The village is on fire. Brilliant red and orange flames that dance their way across the sky shoot up from every longhouse. Sparks fly up with a hiss and a large crashing sound as one of the houses collapsed. Josie can feel the warmth of the fire from where she stands, a good ten paces away from the blaze.

People are screaming, crying, yelling for loved ones. Josie watches from the edge of the forest with eyes as wide as saucers, as a big man she's never seen before carries her mother out of one of the longhouses. Her mom isn't moving.

Their are people are running to escape the fire, some with children in their arms. These people get stopped by big men, not from Josie's village, and smacked hard on the head. They fall down and do not move anymore. The children hide and run. The men of the village take their weapons and go after the big men, but the big men avoid the weapons and hurt her people instead. Tears streaming down her face Josie watches, hiding just like in hide and seek.

"Run Josie! Come on, we have to run!" A voice that sounds like water running over rocks yells right by her face. Josie turns to see her strange friend, and let's herself be dragged back the way they came from. Tears blind her as she stumbles along, guided by the hand in hers. Eventually she starts to run herself, running with the pale girl away from the horrors of her home.