'Twas...

...a dark and windless night, and the scent of adventure hung heavy and expectant in the warm air like a curtain waiting to be pulled back from the window.
Three travellers came to the door of a keep just as a fourth stole out to meet them, and the two women amongst them embraced, for they had endured a long separation. With the joy of reunion, they all soon felt within them the irresistable tug of escape, and away they went into the waiting darkness.
The road carried them the long way down to the shore, to sand dunes and salty breezes and the taste of the sea. There was a full moon rising; it came up from under the earth orange and foreign, and lit an unnatural path through the clouds for them upon the damp sand. Their high spirits did not falter at this bad omen but simply skated over the augury like skimming stones skipping across foaming surf.
The four found a spot amongst the dunes' dry grass. The night grew quiet and close around them, with the deep chill resonating from what lay far beneath the sand starting to seep into their bones, and so they began to build a fire.
They used wood logs and dry sticks and a book of maps as kindling, as they knew their way and believed they would find no use for it on the journey home; they laughed unheedingly together about their foolishness at burning their only compass. Passing around the bottle of sweet sticky innocent brew, their only libation, they made jokes about one another as only real friends can and enjoyed being in one another's company once more. Smoke billowed around them, into surprised mouths and eyes, and coughing and laughter echoed down towards the waves.
When the fire had finally begun to burn merrily, their simple revelry was cut short by a sudden disturbance not far from their camp. The four stopped as still as death, and listened. The sea air carried unmistakeable sounds of approach towards them. More than this, they felt it; the presence of hostility was tangible. Their fire burned lower and yet the smoke was enough to make itself known to anyone near, and looking. They crouched low to the ground like hunting cats and hoped they would go unnoticed...




We were chased by gypsies last weekend. I, in true horror film fashion, tripped and fell, lost a shoe and caught myself on a fallen branch, ripping myself free in the nick of time.

The moral of the story, I hope, is clear...