Then, without any sort of warning, the hand that clutched the rifle barrel that Pool himself was clutching pulled him from under the canvas wall of the tent.
Etelka was beside herself, if only for a few minutes. Her watch told her that they…she was only an hour before dawn and still directly northeast of the clearing, above which Baba Yaga’s Hut hung dutifully.
She gathered her senses, and, kept her limbs away from the permios edges of the tent. Etelka knew that the tent was a flimsy wall around them. It would not protect her from an attack by the creatures, the new people she sought to encounter. Oh, Constable Pool….
Fortunately, nothing came of the night or the morning. Pool was gone. She woke from a dread-sleep, thinking it had only been a dream, but he was still gone.
About 20 meters from the camp, Etelka found the rifle and suspiciously, the 5 magazines Pool had stuffed into the pockets of his jacket earlier, all strewn in the same little area. She collected them.
Etelka returned to the camp. By some amount of luck, as she returned through the forest, she found more deer drinking from the stream in the same spot that their brethren had been killed last evening.
Bringing the rifle to bear on her shoulder, she cocked and fired, bringing down a small male deer. The others scattered from the shot.
The dim distant dawn corresponded with the direction of her now cracked compass. Etelka, dirty, not interested in packing up the camp, needed to get Pool back.
She made sure she had her belt, with all of the pouches, especially the ones with the alien rings, the compass, the ammunition for the rifle and her own automatic. She out of sentiment, brought her hat as well.
The stream bed had been the route that the creatures had taken. It was the route that Pool had been taken up. Up stream. They had had to get fresh water from above the killing ground of the creatures with their deer.
A half a day of trekking and Etelka now wished she had brought food and water with her. The water of the stream tasted okay, but who knows what ill fate awaited her the day after tomorrow for having slurped it up.
Still, with the carcass of her deer on her shoulders, legs on either side, she trudged on, until after hours—or was it mere minutes—Etelka knelt down into the water of the creek when she smelled smoke.
Work in progress. Mistakes and misspellings are present. This is a very rough draft. Copyright 2021 Ion Fyr ionfyr.net
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Ion Fyr 