Faithful Pebble
Part Three
"She must have toddled off the trail, like the maiden once talked of with baskets and red capes." That was the opinion of the hens of the village, those plump women who spent most of their days gossiping around tea tables and washbasins. "She did not listen to her mother's advice and look at what happened to her. For shame!"
"No, I would say she was meeting a secret lover of some sort," the man, a young man of fighting age with steel trap armor and a beer snorted with his brothers. Never mind that she was only a child. Rumors are rumors after all and in his mind, perhaps she was older, more developed, more—He coughed and blushed, the red of his beer smearing across his nose and whisker dotted chin. "Anyway, she was meeting him in the woods on that very hill where the well is. No one goes there you know. It is a perfect little hide out, if you know what I mean."
No, they did not know what he meant, the young children, you know, those dirty snot plagued cretins that mother's love, old men detest and teenagers dread. They did not understand that at all, but they knew for sure what had happened. "She was drawn there."
- Calla