"Hmmmm...." she grumbled as she stepped from the woods and found herself on strange feeling stone. It was hot, and black, with dashed yellow and white lines. The initial grumble could not be translated into what we know as speech, and the title she had given herself could not be described as a name either. But if we were to give some semblance to what she called herself, we could think of it as the words "One Who Burns the Pine," as it was she burned pine needles to smoke out things. She, however, did not know the word "Pine" or "Burn", not anymore at least, and usually communicated through grumbles and a stabbing from her makeshift garbage fashioned spear. The spear itself was a long thick stick capped with sharp pieces of broken class and rusted metal that sat like a crown on the top of the stick.
She grumbles again, feeling the heat begin to make its way through her calloused feet. The sun was bright, and the air wasn't so cold here, so "One Who Burns the Pine", stood basking in the late Autumn light, warming her skin. But soon a large thing came whooshing by almost knocking "One Who Burns the Pine" over, and in an incoherent language yells and honks like a goose, except...not like a goose. The thing stank, and glistened like the crown of spikes on the end of her spear. "One Who Burns the Pine", decided that this "Offending stinky honky thing could probably do with a good stabbing." although the thought wasn't that coherent, it was more of a feeling, and an image of her beating the shining surface of this thing with the stones she kept in a satchel she made from the stomach of a bear she found dying in small valley of the mountains.
Now, deep in the recesses of "One Who Burns the Pine's" mind is an interesting concept. "I can just follow it to where it is, and it if moves again, I can keep following it until it dies, OR, I can just kill it." The thoughts, again, weren't this coherent, and I'm sure "One Who Burns the Pine" has never heard of the concept of a "Pursuit Predator". But here she is, having those thoughts that ancient humans did and she walks along the hot black stone after the smell of this thing we would all easily identify as a diesel fueled truck usually used to compensate for the size of the drivers genitals.
By night fall, she finds the thing, shining in light that isn't the moon at a large enclosure with many lights and strange looking architecture. "This is most defiantly not the forest." is the prevailing feeling she feels and thinks, as the geometry of the structure seems impossible compared to her hovel of moss and mud and stones back in the woods. But here is the stinky honkey thing, unaware of her presence. She walks up, inspects it, and begins stabbing and beating the thing with a multitude of items at what she deems to be weak points. The thing screams and honks and flashes light, but "One Who Burns the Pine" is undeterred, as she wants this things shell so she can make more weapons, or even a better home for herself. However, as we the readers know, welded steel is very hard to sheer off of a large car, and this feral pre-teen girl from the woods of Appalachia doesn't rightly know that. A man comes rushing out of the large building we'd identify as a "No Tell Motel," naked and carrying a shotgun and shouting at "One Who Burns the Pine" to stop "Fuckin' up his ride."
She see's this naked man, fat with a small thing between his legs, holding what she thinks to be a spear of metal pointed at her. She rushes in and tries to attack the man, but the spear is not a spear, we know it to be a gun, a twelve gauge shotgun with an American flag finish and "Support our troops" burned into the stock. The man fires, and "One Who Burns the Pine" flies back in a burst of smoke and fire and pellets and blood and bone.
She died there from blood loss, covered in bear and raccoon skin. Her right arm is hanging by a thread of sinew and bits of her shoulder are strewn around the place. "One Who Burns the Pine", in her last moments, is looking up at a streetlight, and swears it looks like the sun on a misty mountain day through the trees in winter, and then dies without a word.
The next day, the woods whisper with mist, heavy as smoke and the young pine trees seem to droop from the weight of the dew. Wind sways and the distant sounds of a child crying can be heard on the wind. There is no child, and the trees do not cry. But if these things could happen, they would.
ns 15.158.61.16da2
