7

Terry, startled by the shot heard from the gun ran into a thick bush. A large man came running out from through the forest. The man's breath was harsh and heavy. Terry held on to his own breath. He recognized the man, his dark mustache, and his rough arms. It was his father with a large gun in his hands.

Terry shivered for the first time in seeing his father. His father was mad in the face. His eyes were very large as he stared down at the bleeding girl. His nose flared and his lips curled.

Terry then heard harsh whispers. Terry looked up and saw nothing, but the trees above him. They chided furiously. It was the trees and the voices angry. Terry cowered to the ground as the trees spoke.

"When life dies it must stay dead," the trees said.

"Kill it for it is most inhuman."

"The rights to live are not yours and the great tree, the mother, condemns you."

"You cannot live."

"You, Alice, must die."

Terry realized that they, the trees, were speaking to the girl. She was in the center of all their anger and yet she seemed oblivious. She stopped wiping her hands and she looked up curiously. Her blue eyes and her paled skin were radiated by the sun peaking through the openings between the leaves. Terry saw his father raise the gun once more with the butt of it against his shoulder and aimed at the girl they called Alice. Terry looked away, but then saw the stone that had bounced anxiously near him run out from the bush and hit hard against his father's leg. His father shouted and turned around and he could see the small rustling from where Terry hid.

His father in a mad haze went towards the bush, but the stone tackled his father and he fell to the ground with a large thump. Terry stared at his father unconscious. The girl that sat bleeding had stopped moving. Her body was stiff and cold. Terry through the thickness saw a large purple cat walk out from the thinness in the air. It was striped with two types of purple and it had a huge smile under a pair of yellow eyes. It walked towards the girl, Alice. Its tail ticked behind it and the cat so suddenly looked to the bush with its staring grin. The little stone jumped and it floated up towards the cat and rode on its back.

"What trickery!" shouted the trees.

"The cat! Traitor!"

"Cat, this you will regret," whispered the trees.

Terry was scared and confused. The cat looked away with his unmoving smile and padded on the soft grass with Alice dragged along into the forest. Both their figures disappeared into the dark as the cat chuckled.

"A game, just a game," it said in the dark.