Thoughts by the water

   The beach was almost empty but that did not matter. I stood there for a long time, looking at the ocean and just thinking and thinking about everything: my family, what I was doing there, the chances of meeting someone to fall in love with, job opportunities and so many other things I can’t even remember. After a while, I sat down on one of the many steps of the stairs that lead people from the park to the beach and just sat there for at least an hour. During that time, the climate change from bad to worst and I could see a storm forming over the ocean, not very far. It looked awful but I didn’t care. Or maybe I did but wasn’t afraid, I don’t remember which one it was.

 After a long time there, I decided to walk the few blocks that separated myself from the metro station. And during that time, maybe ten minutes, I kept thinking about all of that again. At some point, after validating my ticket in the station, I found myself being bored out of my mind by my own thoughts. Why was I so melancholic or depressed or whatever it was? It wasn’t unheard of for me to be like that but it was never that deep, that strange either. When the train came, I sat down on a chair by the window and just looked out the window to the darkness outside and the passing stations.

 That weird state almost made me lose my station but I “woke up” just in the right moment to descend the train and almost run up the stairs. By then, I just wanted to get home and to my bed. I walked some more blocks and almost didn’t realize it was already raining and thunders could be heard in the far distance. But somehow, I didn’t really care. Normally, I would have been shaken by the sound of thunder but this time it was as if nothing was happening. The journey in the elevator towards the top floor seemed eternal but when I got to my door I felt kind of a warmth feeling, maybe from finally being in a place I called home, where I could be safe and in peace.

 It was an odd thing to think because I could be safe in many other places but there I was feeling like I just had saved myself from the apocalypse or something like that. I actually felt relieved to get off my coat and walk into my room, where my bed seemed to be waiting for my arrival. I just let my body fall on the bed and I closed my eyes, trying to avoid thinking about anything. I was successful in my attempt to do so because I fell asleep quite fast, something I wasn’t usually able to do at that time of day. I only slept for three hours but it was enough to feel recharged and less pessimistic and emotional.

 It was already night when I sat in the bed and took off my clothes. The general heating system of the building had been lit up and the climate had changed to a more cozy one that at the time of my arrival. I stayed just in briefs for a moment until I realized I lived alone and anyone looking at my windows would be a person freezing in the outside. I actually walked towards the window and almost missed the street below as the rain, and the mist that came with it, had invaded the city, making only things that were incredibly close visible. I caressed my arms and then walked out to the kitchen. MY apartment was small: bedroom, living room with kitchen on a side and a bathroom. But it was more than enough for just me.

 I heated up microwave lasagna I had left and, as it was cooking, I grabbed myself a beer from the refrigerator. I probably gulped down half of the can’s content before I started eating but I guess that was because I was dry from three hours of sleep. I had no TV so I took the lasagna and the beer to my room. There I turned on my laptop and looked for something fun to watch. I smiled and even laughed while eating so my trick to get back on the bright side of life worked, as it often did. I thought of those moments down at the beach, but couldn’t really explain them. I had just stay there to think and nothing more.

 It is true that my life is not the most exciting one in the world but I thinking so much about it was useless and pointless. I had a small job that paid badly and I was trying to look for a better one but for now nothing had come up. Somehow people saw my resume and said “no” because I have no experience. But how could I have any experience if I’ve never even been hired, not from the age of eighteen when I started looking for work. Not my fault in any case but here we are. I had to tell myself that, eventually, something would come up and I could be improving my life in that aspect. I didn’t want to be dependent from my parents forever.

 I love them and I missed them. For a moment there, eating lasagna, drinking beer and watching a silly show online, I was reminded of them again and this time a couple of tears went down my cheeks, one on each side. I really missed them a lot and there where not near, not near at all. They lived across the ocean and we hadn’t been able to talk for a few days because of damage to their Internet network or something. It had been painful because every couple of days I chatted with them put the camera on and tell them about my day and they would tell me about theirs and so one. Maybe that was to blame for how I felt but maybe it was just a part of a bigger thing.

 I finished my lasagna and my beer so I went to the kitchen to throw it all to the garbage bin and to take another beer from the refrigerator. I took two steps away from the kitchen but turned back and took another beer can because I knew I wanted to be at least a little drunk to sleep. After many years of getting to know myself, I realized that when I was drunk I never had awful nightmares, not even nice little dreams filled with hope and joy. I just didn’t have any or didn’t remember. Whatever it was, it was fine with me and hat was what I needed on that rainy day: to stop thinking and just sleep. I opened of the cans and started drinking when I heard a silly music playing. When it stopped, I realized it was my cellphone.

 I looked for it in my pants, which had been lying on the floor, and checked the missed calls list. Shit… To add more fun to the party that was that day, my ex-boyfriend had called, probably because I always forgot about that stupid watch he had once left in my house and now he tormented me with it. When we broke up, I took everything that was his from my apartment and just left it in his doorstep, without even ringing at his door to say “Hi” or anything of the sort. I just wanted to get it over with and move one. But apparently I had missed that stupid watch, which was able to avoid my cleaning by being stuck behind one of my bed’s “legs”. Now I had it but I had no urge to give it to him. If he wanted, and I had already told him this, he had to come for it.

 You would think that a person that you find having sex with someone else would be at least a little bit ashamed of he’s behavior but no, he wasn’t like that. He didn’t care at all about those “little” things and was just obsessed about that ugly watch. I had never been very lucky with men but that time I really missed it by a long shot. He was a handsome guy, true, but that should have alerted me. He was too close to the ideal men, in body at least, and those kind of men had never even been close to me so there was my red flag and I didn’t even care to see it.

 Anyway, I still thought about it. Not about him because I realized I had never really cared about him as a person, nor as a lover to be honest. But we had a good thing going on about how we spent time together and that was something very nice to have. But those six months were over and now I was in my briefs drinking beer and watching cartoons. Of course, I still wanted to find a person to actually care for, someone I could hug and kiss whenever I wanted and for that person to want to do that with me too, someone to comfort me in a day like that one and for me to hug tight whenever he felt weird or sad. But who knows if that will ever come my way.

 I think it’s better not to torture oneself with what could have been. That’s one more of those useless things. I decided to stop think and just drank the third can of beer like a professional, almost without breathing and just gulping it down as if my life depended on it. I turned off all the lights and just looked to the window, where the rain was still falling heavy on the street and all over the city. It was a nice thought to think that many people near me and maybe further away were having a similar moment, just looking out through the window before falling asleep. It was comforting somehow.

 I closed my eyes and, before I fell asleep for another eight hours, I thought of the men I would like to have in my arms, the job I would be proud of, my family and how their hugs felt and a future where nothing mattered, only my true happiness.

Dangerous questions

  It wasn’t only the rain but also the wind that kept us from walking faster but we finally made it to my building. We were completely soaked, dripping water all over the floor. I told him it was better to go up the stairs rather than taking the elevator. There was a lady that would have loved me to do something foolish in order to go to my house and do an hour-long speech about how neighbors should behave. She was a real pain in the ass but I understood why she was like that: she lived alone with her cats and rumor has it that she was left in the altar by some guy who vanished. She was devastated and now behaved like a bitch with everyone.

 I opened the door to my apartment and we got in. Suddenly he grabbed me by the waist and pressed me against himself. We kissed and in a matter of minutes are wet clothes were on the floor and he had taken me to the bedroom. His kisses somehow felt better after all that cold in the street and his body felt warmer, more comforting. We kissed in the nude for a long time and I understood we were good just like that. We didn’t need to have sex right then, it was better to hold each other and just kiss, keeping our bodies warm.

 We fell asleep after a few hours and it was me who woke up first. My bedroom window was covered in vapor and it actually felt a bit colder than before. Naked as I was, I decided to go to the kitchen and have something to drink. It was late at night, around 2 AM, but somehow I had just woken up because of this thirst. I stood by the living room window and cleaned it with my hand. It was raining fiercely outside, thunder sounds far in the distance. Just below the window, the street looked like a river, a lot of water rushing through.

 Suddenly I felt his hands on my waist again but this time he hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. I finished my drink and left the glass on the coffee table. Slowly, he lowered his hands and, next thing you know, we were having sex right there in my living room. I liked the feeling of his hands over my body and hearing how his breath had a rhythm that changed according to what we were doing at the moment. He seemed in control and I liked that because I wanted it to happen that way. We understood each other, in and out of bed and I was grateful for that. It wasn’t every day that you find a guy with whom you feel so at peace with.

 After finishing, we went back to bed and slept in a hug and well covered by the blankets. It was suddenly very cold and, before I went asleep, I heard the sound of something small hitting the ground. I realized it was hail just the morning after, went it was all covered in white, as if snow had fallen. But it was still raining and, according to the weather guy in the television, people should avoid going out if the could because of the flooded streets and the risk of streams forming everywhere. The city was practically built on a hillside so water always ran just past it, which could increase the damage done by the water.

 I decided to let him stay over the day, until the rain stopped at least. We had breakfast together and I discovered he chew with his mouth open. It was amazing to discover this because I also realized we had never had dinner or lunch or anything together. Every time we met was for sex or most of the time at least. And yeah, the sex was great, but it hit right there that we didn’t really know each other that well. As he ate his cereal with his feet on my coffee table, I watched him and realized we had no idea about the other person. We had been going out for three months now and I didn’t even exactly knew what he did for a living or what kind of movies he liked or anything else apart from sex.

 Things like movies or art or literature where great interests to me and I was surprised to see I didn’t know what he liked. So I turned off the TV, to his obvious displeasure, and asked him to play a game. Each one would have five questions, one per turn, and we could ask each other anything right there. After all the questions have been asked and answered, we could go back to whatever it is we were doing before. He accepted and we begin. It was a very bad way to begin, as my first question was “Why are your feet on my coffee table?” He instantly turned red and put his feet down.

 Ashamed and a bit confused he looked for his question. As he thought about it, I looked at his face and realized too that I had never really stared at him so close before. He didn’t look bad or anything but for most of the time that we were so close it was because we were having sex and that's not a moment you use to look at a person’s face. He finally asked me whom I had dated before him, something we had never discussed. I told him about this other guy, with whom I had dated for a long time before he left to live in Australia. He was in real state and I met him when renting my place. We went out often but never got serious because he already knew he was going to leave so he didn’t want for things to get weird.

 He just nodded to my answer but didn’t say a word. I could feel he wasn’t feeling very good about my answer but he didn’t say anything, except for “your turn”. I wanted to ask the same thing but that would have been boring. So instead I asked him how many relationships he had had in his life. He took his time to answer, visibly counting every person he had known. I started to get really annoyed because it was obvious he had slept with many men and was deciding which ones were “valid” as a relationship and which ones had just been a one-night stand. I didn’t wait for the answer. I just said “a lot then?” and he opened his mouth like a fish, not saying a word.

 I told him it was his turn but I think I said it with rage in my voice. His hesitation to answer had made me very angry and I just stood up and went to the kitchen. It was an open kitchen so I perfectly heard when he asked me what my favorite food was. I answered instantly that I love pasta with Bolognese sauce and meatballs. I told him that answering that fast was easy because I was sure of what I like and what I had done in the past in order for that to be my favorite food of all.

 He asked if I was mad about his answer to the question I had made him but I answered he had not even answered. As I grabbed two slices of bread and put them on I plate, I tried to breathe as calmly as I could but I was already trembling from rage. He said he didn’t answered because I had gotten all weird just before he was able to say anything, to which I responded, without missing a beat, that it was unusual for a grown man to need so much time to count the number of people he had been in a relationship with. I told him that I was just asking about the boyfriends and not the sexual partners, so that must be easier for him.

 Now it was a look of open hatred, the one he gave to be as I put ham and cheese on the bread. He said nothing but he turned around, no longer willing to play any game or answer any questions. We stayed in silence for several minutes until he said, in a clear voice, that he had only been the boyfriend of three guys. The first one in school, another in college and the last one just a year ago, meeting through a mutual friend. Yes, he confessed he liked sex and had been known to have casual sex with many guys but that it wasn’t something he did often.

 He shut up and resumed eating his cereal, again chewing with his mouth open. I told him to chew with his mouth closed and then he erupted, just like a volcano. He told me that I was too controlling, trying to make everyone do as I said. He reminded me of earlier, when he joined me in store and I apparently mistreated a worker there because she didn’t understood what I was looking for. He also said that during sex, I always wanted everything to be about me and that couldn’t be the case every single time. He complained that I had never tried to please him and that it was very exhausting for him.

 Obviously, there was no right way to answer that. He was shaking, no longer eating. He just stood up and went to the bedroom. I just stayed in the kitchen but I had lost my appetite, if it is that I had one before. He went out of the bedroom but didn’t talk to me. Instead, he picked up his clothes from the floor and put them on right there. I said, in a soft voice, that he could get sick if he wore that. But he didn’t listen or simply didn’t care about what I had to say anymore. He was very annoyed, that was obvious, but he didn’t hesitated for a moment. He went for the door and went out. He slammed the door and left my place.

 I looked at the window and realized it was still raining. Then, the doorbell rang and I opened. It was him, telling me he had left his wallet somewhere. He looked on the floor and found it beneath the sofa. But before he left again, I grabbed his arm and hugged him. Who cares if I didn’t know him that well? I needed him now and I was hoping he needed me back.

The secret of the jungle

   The city was deserted. Everyone cleaned the sweat of their heads as they began walking through the empty stone yards that were covered in moss and roots. Most houses were made of solid rock but had crumbled centuries ago due to earthquakes and the growth of plant life. It was a beautiful but eerie sight, to see so many buildings all empty, no sign of life. They were covered in beautifully done “bas reliefs” depicting various images from the people that had apparently built the city.

 Every member of the expedition was now working, no longer trekking through the jungle to get nowhere. They had arrived and this was their price. The camp was built very fast, consisting of sleeping bags for everyone and mosquito nets to prevent people from getting sick during their sleep. They also one tent for meetings only where they held several weird apparatus and various maps of the region.

  When they began really exploring the city, they discovered it was much bigger than anything they had imagined and that they need to have more people in to help them with the cause. They asked one of the younger members of the party to go back to the town on the coast they departed from in order to call for more people to help them. The kid complied and left fast, on one of three donkeys they had brought with them.

 An entire day passed before they realized most of the art in the city depicted a fantastic creature: they were birds, in a flock. But, according to the drawings, the flock could transform into a bigger, gigantic bird that could sleep in the sun or have the power of the sun. That last part wasn’t very clear yet, as there were only images and no alphabet in any of the houses. The whole site was just about the imagining and the architecture, which consisted in at least a hundred houses in a roughly cube like form.

 Meanwhile, others decided to make a map out of the city and discovered the city was even bigger. Maybe it had been a very large city in the past but had shrunk before finally falling to time or some other reason. Some rocks looked older, and more affected by time. The site were they slept, with the houses still holding on in most of their structure, had apparently been abandoned. Some of the members of the team were sure this had happened only a few centuries ago, maybe even only a hundred of years ago. Others were not so sure.

 The more ancient parts of the city were difficult to recognize as the trees and the ground had quickly eroded the stone floor. The specialists did some testing and discovered something strange: the rocks on the “older” part of the city were actually not older than the rest. Tests found out the whole city was only a few hundred years old, at most. So something strange had happened were the center of the old town had not been as affected as the rest of the city.

 Two more days passed and some were already worried about the boy. The trip back to the port should have only taken him a day and he had been away for three. Some thought that maybe something bad had happened to him but the strange thing was that, in their way there, they had not encountered any ferocious animals or difficulties to surpass. They had cut through the jungle and had to stand the mosquitoes and the heat but nothing else. They realized they had never thought about it and decided, the ones that were botanists and biologists, to make a tour around the ancient city to find which species lived there.

 The search was useless as they found only some insects and a couple of bird species. Something was very wrong, as close by regions were known because of their rich fauna and flora. And this place seemed almost dead. Only the trees were really living there. Besides them, only some ants seemed to play a role in the environment. The following day, they decided to widen their range: they would walk a whole kilometer and then circle the city. But again, nothing appeared. There were no mammals or big reptilians, no frogs or big birds. They weren’t even nests in the trees. The botanists took some tree bark and decided to do tests on it to see if they jungle floor was somehow toxic.

 By the fifth day, the team was a little bit hopeless. They had traveled half way around the world and the place they had arrived to seemed dead, with nothing that interesting to see. All the bas-reliefs had been accounted for, not that it made any difference. In every house or building, there were exactly the same drawing of the flock of birds and the one of the gigantic bird attacking people with fire. For all intents and purposes, the people that had lived there had been dead for only a hundred years but had not made any real advancement except for their architecture.

 Some scientists, in the meeting held late at night, thought it was possible that the people that lived there had come from some other region and had quickly left after realizing the area was, somehow, toxic. But the tree bark’s tests didn’t show any massive toxicity. It was very normal although its cells looked strange in the microscope. They looked like the cells of a younger tree and not as big as one of those who grew there. They decided one night to stay only three more nights, in order to arrive at the port at the same time that the boat that took them to the capital city and then to their home.

 The thought of home was interrupted the following day, when one of the few women in the group yelled desperately. Many came to her aid and realized she had discovered something awful: the kid they had sent to the port had been found hanging inside one of the houses of the old city. The woman had woken up early to check the art there again and had found the poor creature. They took him down from there and realized he had a big splinter on each eye, almost used as a stake.

 The child was buried that afternoon but then, something else happened. It rained. But it wasn’t normal rain. It felt cold at the start, like normal rain, but then turned warm and strange. They soon realized it wasn’t water coming down from the sky but blood. Hot, red blood dripped from the trees and onto everything they had around. When it finally ended, all their clothes were tainted red, and so were their faces. Some of the members of the group were really scared, wanting to live the place as soon as possible. But that couldn’t be done just like that because they had to prepare, organize and that would take a while with so much to pack.

 They started the following day, after cleaning the blood of most of the clothes. But then, other people started to feel sick. They vomited and were tainted green. Their face grew even greener as they got worst. They had to delay their journey back as half of the scientists were sick in just a few hours. They had all eaten the same thing and had been careful only to drink water from their personal stash. They could only blame the blood rain, that had maybe poured into their mouths or eyes and then had contaminated them.

 Soon, only the leading expeditionary was fine. The rest were all sick and vomiting. The ones that had become sick first, were the same tone of green than the surrounding forest. That had become sort of paralyzed, unable to move at all. The man that had led them all there was not feeling sick but guilty. He had convinced personally everyone there to come with him to explore this jungle, promising them fame and glory, as well as a best name in the scientific community He had traced every one of them, had asked for the money and had paid many of their expenses with his own savings.

 And now, everyone was dying. It was hard for him to sleep the last night, before leaving, but when he finally did, his sleep was soon filled with nightmares and sweat. He woke up in the middle of the night and realized there were thousands of birds flying over the jungle. They were circling the center of the city. He stood up fast and tried to find his fellow expeditionary men but they were nowhere to be found. Somehow, they had disappeared.

 The man didn’t stood by and decided to run out of the forest, that had become thicker all of a sudden. He felt the presence of the birds and stumbled upon roots and rocks as he ran. When he fell again to the ground, he helped himself up with a tree and then screamed, like no one had screamed in the jungle before. The birds then flew down onto him and formed a bigger creature, or so it seemed. They attacked him viciously and killed him, drinking his blood and the flying away. Where the remaining of the scientist where, there was a young tree and, between the bark, there was the shape of a face, a screaming face.

In the rain

-       - Whatever you may want to forget, I can help you…

   The voice seemed to come from deep beyond the rain and hail. Marina stood there, freezing but attentive of the voice she had heard. But she never heard it again. Instead, another voice seemed to be approaching, yelling something that she couldn’t understand. Then she saw a shadow that turned out to be her father. He had a large plastic covering him and yelled Marina to go with him. She doubted for a second but he helped her by taking her arm and running with her. They were followed by Anseon, Marina’s pet pig, who stopped every so often to check on mushrooms growing in the ground. About ten minutes later, they were inside their house, by the edge of the town.

 Marina went straight to her room, dripping water. She crossed her mother but didn’t say a word, only standing by the door to let Anseon in. She then removed her wet clothes and put them in a plastic bag that she would get downstairs some other time. She lay in her bed and covered her face. Marina could hear the voice again, as clearly as she had in the downpour. Who had talked to her? The woman, because it was a woman’s voice, had not revealed herself and Marina’s father probably scared her away.

 Anseon climbed on to the bed and Marina uncovered her eyes, caressing his pet and wondering what had really happened that night. She had only gone to the forest to pick up some berries for a desert, the ones she did every week, and suddenly a storm had formed and she had been trapped there, on the mud, between the hail, the rain and that strange voice from beyond. It may have been a forest spirit or maybe a wandering soul… Many people, including her grandfather, stated that the woods were haunted and that spending any time there after nightfall was, at very least, dangerous.

 Marina was distracted from her thoughts when her father came in, without even knocking. He knew very well she hated when he did that, only because the doorknob didn’t work. She then grabbed a book that she had left on her bedside table and pretended to read, although she didn’t even look at more than two words. Her father sat down on a small chair by her closet and asked her why she had left the house that day. Marina left the book aside and told him he knew well that she always cooked a pie or some desert for all the family. She knew the best berries grew in the forest and she had gone to grab some. Her father then asked why she didn’t have any of them with her when he found her and Marina explained she had dropped them when running from the storm.

Her father didn’t seem to believe her very much, especially because when he found her she had not been running or anything similar. But apparently he decided not to keep asking anything and just old her to go down for dinner. After putting on a sweater and caressing Anseon’s belly a little more, she went down and sat besides her mother. Her younger brother Mason was already eating, trying to cut his meat but failing awesomely at it. Marina realized she was not very hungry but tried to eat at least some bites. She knew her father was looking her every move, as if she was a dangerous criminal. Her parents started talking about the downpour.

 Spring had arrived, that much was true. But it never rained like that on this part of the world. They hoped it would soon end because the river downhill could overflow and that would be devastating for the little town. As both kids had class the next day, no parent said anything when Marina stood up and left her plate almost full. She went to her room and hugged Anseon. Marian then thought of the rain, the voice, his parents, of everything that had been going on in her life and then started to cry in silence. The pig appeared to be worried about her but she soon fell asleep. After all, she was very tired and needed the rest.

 However, the rain didn’t stop during the night. It hadn’t become stronger either. It just rained and rained, sometimes some hail falling, others only liquid water. Marina’s mother called the school and learned it had been closed permanently because of flooding. The school was located in the lowest part of the valley and, apparently, many volunteers were trying to make a barrier with sand bags in order to repel the water. Father had gone to work, as the factory did not close for rain or for anything else. Mother was attracted to the idea of helping the school but the children were too happy about not going to class that it would have been cruel to take them there anyway.

 Marina decided to spend the time writing. She had been reading a lot about poetry and thought she could give it a go but after an hour she realized it was much more difficult than what she had thought. Then, she decided to try drawing but that wasn’t much better either. Bored with the outcome of her attempts at being an artist, she decided to help her mother with lunch. They did a gorgeous steaming hot soup, with all kind of vegetables in it and pieces of chicken. They all needed something like that to warm up the bones; after all, the rain didn’t seem to recede in any way.

 After they had the soup, Marina decided to cook one of her pies. True, she had lost of the fruit she had picked the day before, but her mother still had some lemons and all the ingredients to make one. So she started cooking and realized the feeling she had when doing a pie was the one she would have want to have when writing a poem or drawing some scenery. It was that permanent bliss, that strange peace that sets in when one does what one likes. When she finally put it in the oven, she looked through the window and then she was sure she had seen an elderly woman outside. But after blinking and getting close to the window, she realized the woman was not there.

 Maybe it was because she had been inside the house for too long… She had started imagining things. After all, the day before, she never saw the face of the woman that had talk to her. Marina thought she was just too eager to have something special happening to her and that’s why she was imagining things. When the pie was done, she gave a warm slice to her brother and mother, along with some tea. Her dad arrived just when they sat down and she gave him a slice too. For the first time in a long while, they had a nice time as a family. There was no fight or no unusual tension. Her father told them about the flood down in the valley and how the factory had been closed earlier to also prevent flooding.

 They chatted for hours until night came and mother started heating up some soup for everyone. It was then, when Marina went to her room to look for her notebook, that she saw the woman again. From her bedroom window, she saw the old lady looking at the house, at her. She smiled when Marina looked at her. The girl pulled away from the window, breathing heavily. Apparently, she was the voice in the rain. It was two coincidental… What did she want? Why did she think Marina wanted to forget something? Or was it a trick to lure her into the forest.

 Marina then decided to wait for everyone to be asleep and then she would go outside, not minding the rain, and demand an answer from the woman. She waited patiently, distracted by her family during dinner. Somehow, her father was in a great mood, telling jokes and holding their mother’s hand often. Mason had spent all they making small clay characters and they all congratulated him because they were just great. Even Marina got to confess to her family how much she loved doing the deserts, cooking. She told them about that feeling, the kind that fills your heart when you do something that you love.

 Her parents encouraged her to keep learning all about it, about confectionary and cooking in general. They knew she could be great as all her creations were just delicious. Their support almost made her cry and it was Anseon asking for food that distracted her and made them all laugh. After some time, they decided it was time to go to bed and see how the next day was going to be like. Marina volunteered to wash the dishes and her father stayed at the dining table trying to fix a clock that hadn’t worked in many months. When she finished, she looked through the window and then to her father, who was immersed in the fixing of the clock.

 Marina decided to sit at his side at the table and just speak to him. She did so, without stopping. She told him about how she was going to go to the forest again, following and old woman she had seen her earlier that day. She told him she felt that woman had something to say or to do and she needed to find out about it.

 Her father turned to her, smiling. This confused Marina. When he started talking, it was in a very soft voice, almost melancholic. He explained that woman had been seen often in the last few years. The forest was haunted, indeed. By a woman that had thought that the best way to deal with thing was forgetting about them if they hurt or if they're scary. That woman, he explained, was a rumored witch, an ancestor of theirs. He advised Marina not to acknowledge her but never to forget about her because she represented that which they should never do, which is ignoring problems. He then told his daughter to bed and rest as the next day they would be helping people in town. She smiled, kissed him on the cheek and went upstairs with Anseon to sleep, a dreamless sleep.