It took weeks of working myself to exhaustion every night to get the two runes carved into my chosen stone. Several times during my crafting, I saw the peculiar lady in white, dancing about under the trees again. Each time, she fled my polite inquiry after her. Following the last, I resolved to remain silent and to smile pleasantly, and thus hopefully gain her confidence in that fashion. Naturally, death being so fond of irony, the opportunity didn’t present itself.

Once I was finished with my task, I observed my handiwork with pride. The symbols were very clear, surely the strange interloper would find them an unmistakable sign of friendship!

After that, it was naught but a waiting game. While I had found I could lift the stone well enough, I would need the fog to be thick, and the hour to be right, in order to throw it far enough to reach the trees.

I spent each night out in the field, as I had been, but now I was restless with inactivity. Waiting on things like the weather didn’t suit my temperament at all. Idleness also gave me time to doubt my strategy. What if I did sling my rock, only for it to fail to catch the notice of its intended target, hidden amongst the grass, underneath the trees?

Uncertainty ate at me until I could no longer bear it. Begrudgingly, I formulated a new plan. Or, rather, I revised my original one. I would wait, not only until the witching hour, and until the fog was thick as thieves, I would also wait until the bizarre maid was sighted, so I could draw her attention to the rock as I threw it towards her. Though she'd doubtless flee at once, surely she’d take note of a concurrently hurled projectile?

After three unrewarding nights with fog as thick as pea soup, where I waited the entire witching hour with the damned stone ready in my hand, on the lookout for a crazy woman that never came, I was profoundly grumpy. I retreated to my favored, darkened spot in the castle ruins just before dawn, only to find a gaggle of hippies had taken up camp there! After having such a rough go of things of late, I was having absolutely none of it!

I iced the air around them into an arctic chill, then howled my most soul-rending, hellish shriek! They all jumped awake, clearly terrified, and I whipped their terror into a frenzy by manifesting a particularly horrifying, eyeless and decaying version of myself, shrugging my head loose, and throwing it to the ground in their midst.

My decapitated laughter echoed after them satisfyingly as they stumbled and ran away, out of my sight and off into the pre-dawn darkness. Feeling slightly better about my lot, I collected back my head, replaced it on my shoulders, curled up on one of my favorite, old, stone benches, and let myself drowse.

Perhaps I would not have rested so soundly if I’d had any clue of how shortly, and how drastically, everything was about to change.

Notes

So glad to see I got a new subscriber and a new vote! Yay; welcome! <3

Let me know how I'm doing! Rate, comment, subscribe! :D