Goosebumps ran along the bare flesh of her pale, freckled arms. She had fallen asleep on the bear skin without meaning to, lulled by the clear, golden warmth of sunset and the chirring of crickets. Her slumber was deep and still, and though her eyes crept open, her body felt distant and irrelevant. Her limbs were motionless in the moon-kissed darkness.
Summer had passed. She felt a tinge of regret for every season when it ended. She didn't like endings. Didn't like goodbyes. Winter was the only season she ever felt glad to bid farewell to. Winter was the season of silence, of illness, of lifelessness. Death.
Her eyes blinked slowly. The shapes of her camp were grey and blurry. Somewhere beyond the hidden hollow, an owl hooted.
The pale-faced man had not given up his hounding of the huntress' footsteps anytime she ventured near town. She sensed that he found some kind of sickening delight in her discomfort. The way his eyes bored at her while he asked questions that he already knew the answers to. As if he only wanted to see the reaction. The furrowed brow, the slitted eyes, the tightened lips. She would scowl, but he would grin.
Her quiver had been propped beside her bear-fur bed when she went to sleep tonight, but it had fallen over. The arrows had spilt halfway out onto the ground. She summoned the will to find her seemingly disconnected arm, and moved it, reaching over to lightly run a fingertip over the shadowy point of one of the prized, black arrowheads. So sharp that it could easily prick through her skin if she pressed too hard.
She imagined it pricking right through the pale-faced man's throat.
Winter was coming. Not yet. But soon. And winter was the season of death.
Inwardly, she smiled at this thought. Outwardly, she withdrew her hand, closed her eyes, and fell back to sleep.
