Though he couldn’t say what had impelled him to stop, it made sense. The park seemed like a likely camping site, and thus was a likely attack site, as well. He made his way towards a lonely copse a ways away from the nearest bike path. In more pleasant weather, he might have worried about stumbling upon a modern day Hermia and Lysander.
In the unseasonable cold, he was not surprised to find the space between the trees empty. Within a few minutes, he’d located definite signs of an encampment the previous night.
It wasn’t just the chip packets and a cellophane wrapper that smelled distinctly of bread, turkey, and mustard… those could have been left by anybody, not necessarily overnight occupants. A number of people had definitely bedded down on the sparse grass in the clearing.
The exact number of campers, though, was less definite. Somehow, he couldn’t get a fix on how many people had bedded down the night before. The signs were fresh, but… hazy. He started counting, and found himself distracted before he’d gone past the fingers of one hand, though he was certain the grove had been busier the night before.
The signs were wrong. Not false, but wrong… or wronged. Something had been done to them. That was a track of the beast, in a way, and so in a sense he’d already had more success than he might have expected.
That seemed to be the extent of it, though. He prowled around the edge of the trees, and saw signs of people arriving and leaving. Worryingly, more people seemed to have come than gone. There were faint impressions of people having been dragged along the ground, and branches that appeared to have been bent and broken, but these again were indistinct. They weren’t “a little broken”, they were broken… but indistinctly so, somehow. It was harder to notice than it should have been, and difficult to focus on.
There were no tracks of anything remotely beast-like.
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Two in a row! We’ll go again tomorrow, too.
Woo Hoo!! the more i read, the more intrigued i become.
what’s with the Shakespeare references lately?
not that I’m complaining, of course.
Well, as the Shakespeare references didn’t start until we met John, I imagine they’re specific to his character, which is a wild leap of the imagination, I know. But in any case! Yay! Awesome and intriguing Tribe!
actually there have been shakespear references for some time, remember our rosecrantz and guildenstern duo
*loud noises of joy for Tribe updates*
Why is it always Hermia and Lysander? Why not Demitrius and Helena? Why not the mechanicals? Why are we mechanicals always left out? WHY?!?!
I stand in awe of how consistent and distinct the narration of the individual characters is.
this is my favorite story that she writes, but i’m tired of it not being consistently updated. if she can’t update it like it says on the title page, then change it. or just put this on the back burner until she can.
The R & G reference felt like more of a nod to Tom Stoppard to me. I know where they made their original appearances but maybe my impression was only because they were more in the forefront, if only for a few chapters…. I’m digging the Shakespeare refs too though.
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