Chapter Four: Merida

She crept forward, eyes peeled, ears straining to pick up any sound. Her body was as tense as her bow string, pulled back, ready to be unleashed on its next unsuspecting victim. Merida stepped with light feet over the floor of green and growth of the forest, eyes trained on her target. She hadn't been noticed yet, and she planned to keep it that way. Her heart was racing and her own breathing sounded unbelievably loud in her own ears. She had to get this right. There were no second chances. It was this shot, or it was the end.

An orange curl fell in her face. She blew it out of the way with a huff as quietly as she can manage. She felt the mass weight of her hair grow heavier as the sweat and humidity weigh it down. Normally, she would've wrangled her mass of unruly curls into a pony-tail. Especially for hunting, just to keep it out of the way. But she'd run out of her stock of hair products that she usually used to tame the mane a month or so ago. That, mixed with the dreadful humidity had turned doing anything with her hair a hopeless endeavor. Looked like she'd just have to deal with it.

It was quiet. Mind numbingly quiet. The only quiet you get after the world has ended. There was no distant sound of cars on some back country highway. No whirs of air-conditioning units or water systems from apartment buildings and overrun neighborhoods. No buzz from the land lines strung across wooden pillars along the side of the road. All of that had stopped and died out months ago. Now there was nothing. All those sounds were gone, leaving only the quiet noises of the forest. The chirping crickets. The small twitter of a bird. The rustle as wind combs its way through the tree tops. There was only the quiet the threatened to betray Merida's presence to her prey. The unrelenting quiet that was so complete it—

"Merida!"

Bloody hell. In the blink of an eye, the squirrel that she had been honing in on for the last minute and a half had shot across the maze of tree branches and was out of sight. Merida released the tension on her bow, letting her arms fall.

"Mum!" she hollered in annoyance. "Ya spoiled my shot!"

"Merida." There was a rustling as Merida's mother came crashing through the underbrush, creating a cacophony that grated on Merida's ears, compared to the absolute silence of before. "You shouldn't be out here on your own. It's not safe," her mother said as she finally came into view, emerging from the brush like some woodland queen. All elegance and head held high. She'd always been like that. Too much pompous grace for her own good.

Merida rolled her eyes.

"It's not any more, with you makin' so much noise."

Her mother came to meet Merida, amongst the greenery, face to face. The look she gave her daughter was far from amused.

"Merida, I'm serious."

"So am I," Merida said, her irritation only exaggerating her already prominent Scottish accent. "Look at the racket yer makin'! You'll draw every bloody sicko here with yer yellin' an' greetin'."

Elinor raised and eyebrow.

"'Sickos'? Is that what you're calling them now?"

Merida swung her compound bow over her shoulder as she sheathed her arrow and turned away from her mother. She started marching deeper into the woods.

"I'll call them wha' I want," she said, back turned. "Now leave me bee. I'm lookin' for dinner."

"Dinner's on the table."

Merida stopped in her tracks. Silence fell on the two of them. Not the peaceful silence of before. But a strained silence. Elinor knew what her daughter was going to say. Merida knew she knew.

"From the pantry?" Merida asked.

"Where else would it come from?"

Merida let out a hissed breath through clenched teeth. Her fist shot out to hit a nearby tree, the bark bloodying her knuckles. She spun around, a mass of orange curls flung around to follow, and marched towards the direction of the house.

"Merida," her mother started as she reached for her daughter. "I just don't want you out here where you could get hurt—"

She smacked her mother's hand away without a word and kept marching, leaving her mother alone in the empty silence of the forest.

"Merida, no weapons on the table!"

"I'll put mai bow wherever I damned well please!"

"Fergus, control your daughter!"

"Boys! That does not come inside the house! PUT IT BACK!"

The DunBroch house was chaos, as always. Everyone was yelling. Elinor was trying to control a daughter as unruly as her hair. Meanwhile, Fergus was attempting to keep the three DunBroch toddlers in check, a task as easy as training chipmunks for the circus. It was almost as if nothing had changed. As if there was no epidemic. No HSE virus, no sickos. As if the world hadn't ended to leave them standing on their own.

They were separated from it all, on their own little secluded plot of land in the woods, removed from the world and its hoards of sickos. They acted just as they had before the virus hit. Family dinners. Stories in front of the fire place. Washing laundry, cleaning rooms. Eating from the pantry as if it wasn't a week short of running dry.

Everyone eventually managed to settle down to the table for a meal, Fergus adjusting his large form at the head with the three wee devils fidgeting on the other side of a brooding Merida, her bow and quiver swung over the back of her chair, and Elinor at the other end.

"Boys, eat your veggies, don't play with them," Elinor chided the triplets, who'd begun a war between themselves, launching peas at each other with their spoons.

Merida aimlessly stabbed at the roast beef on her plate, ignoring the ruckus across the table from her.

"You too, lassie," her dah'd said as he leaned towards her, so her mother wouldn't hear. "Better not let that go to waste." He'd spoken in a low voice, trying to be encouraging in a way only a father can be.

She glanced up at him, then looked back down at her plate without a word. She continued to abuse the meat with her fork.

He was about to say something more, when Elinor spoke up.

"Fergus, your daughter was out, roaming the woods again this evening."

He looked at Merida, then back to her mother, confusion spread thick across his face.

"So what? She's grown, she can go where she likes."

"Fergus," Elinor said, a pointed look on her face. "It's dangerous out there. What with all those sick people roaming around."

"Mum," Merida interjected. She didn't like being talked about as if she weren't there. "There isn't a sicko in a two mile radius of the house. I—"

"It doesn't matter." Elinor shook her head. "All you need is one straggler, and we've lost you for good."

"I can take care of myself!" Merida burst. She was sick and tired of being treated like a child. "Besides, we need some other way of findin' food."

"And what's wrong with the food that's in front of you?" her mother demanded.

"It's from the pantry. We keep eatin' from the pantry, we won' have anything left in a couple of weeks! It's not like we live on a farm. The only other way for us to get food is teh hunt if we don't want teh starve." She didn't get why her parents were being so thick. It was only logic.

"Merida, you can't go out there alone. I forbid it! It's too dangerous, you'll get hurt—"

"Then let Dah'd go with me! Then I won't be alone."

"Merida, you know your dad's leg has been acting up. If he suddenly can't walk, then you would not be able to get him back home. You're not strong enough to carry him."

It was true. Fergus DunBroch was a large man. Close to four hundred pounds of nothing but height and muscle. Much to big for Merida to heft on her own. He'd lost his left leg a few years ago during a hunting accident. It was a story he'd loved telling Merida and her brothers, dramatizing it, changing little things every time he told it to make it all the more exciting. But recently, the nerve endings in his stump had been acting up, at times causing him enough pain that he couldn't wear his prosthetic. The flair ups were few and far between, but the chance of one happening while he was away from the house would mean a certain death. And likely not a quick one.

"Mum!" Merida was reaching her wits end at this point. Her mother just wouldn't listen. "Yeh've got teh give me my freedom! I can't stay cooped up here for much longer, I'll go mad. Just let me into the woods. Let me hunt!"

"Merida, the woods are dangerous."

"Just let me go for a few hours tomorrow and I'll show you that it's not that bad."

"I can't do that."

"Of course you can, it's not like—"

"No, Merida, I really can't."

"I don't see what the big deal is. Just one chance. Tomorrow, just let me—"

"I said no."

"Why? Why not? I just don't—"

"Because we won't be here tomorrow!"

Silence fell like a hammer. Everything stopped. Merida went numb. She couldn't comprehend what she'd just heard. Fergus stared at his wife, stunned that she'd lost her temper so quickly. Even the triplets had stopped their pea war to look at their mother. At four years old, they couldn't understand much of the world, but they understood what their mother had meant.

After a moment, Elinor closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. Her shoulders slumped the slightest bit when she exhaled.

"We only have a few days worth of food left," she announced into the silence. "We can't stay here any longer. We're leaving in the morning."

"WHAT?!" Merida shot to her feet, dumbfounded. Her mother continued in a steady voice.

"Your father and I were going to tell you after dinner, but it looks like you've given me no choice."

"Mum, that's mad," Merida insisted. She started throwing her arms around, her energy close to bursting at the seams. "Just let me go out and make a run to town. I can pick up food there and be back before nightfall."

"No," Elinor said, her tone dangerous. "I am not having you go out there on your own. You may never come back."

"It's a lot better than all of us leaving!"

"Merida, your father and I have already discussed this. It is final."

"Don't you get it? We can't leave! We're safe here. If we go out there—"

"Merida."

She pulled up short, surprised by the interruption. Merida cautiously turned towards her father.

"Dah'd?"

He didn't look at her, just stared at his plate. His expression was unreadable, but he was gripping the side of the table hard enough that Merida could see that his knuckles had gone white.

"The town store would be picked over clean by now," he explained cooly. "You'd have to go to the next town over if you wanted to make a run and that's too far of a trip for you to be on your own. Listen to your mother. We have no choice. This is our only option left."

Merida looked helplessly at her father, who refused to look at her. She cast a glance at her mother, her stony expression as immovable as ever. She couldn't believe this. They were leaving the house. Their home. Their safe haven ever since all this madness started. And all for what? Because her mother thought she couldn't handle herself out there. Because her parents couldn't handle the thought of their family separating, even for a day.

If only they'd just listen, then maybe they'd understand. They'd understand that Merida really could take care of herself. That they could let her go and not have to worry about her coming back because she knew she always would. They'd understand how dangerous the world is now and how a family of six out on the road wasn't going to be easy. That leaving was the worst thing that they could do.

She couldn't take it any more. Without another word, she spun on her heal, knocking her chair over in her abruptness, and stormed out of the room.

It was over and hour later, after dinner had been cleaned up and put away, that someone finally came to find her. She heard a rapping on the window.

"Ay," she said without bothering to look who it was.

There was the sound of the window sliding open and a small creak from the frame as someone climbed through the open square.

"Yer mother would have a right fit if she knew you were out here."

Though he'd done it a hundred times, Merida had always found it a wonder that her dad could fit through her small window. She supposed it was form all the practice. All the times he'd come out to find her here.

"Ay," she repeated dully. She wasn't interested in conversation and couldn't care less what her mother thought.

She heard her dad let out a sigh.

They were out on the small ledge of roof outside her bedroom window. She'd pulled her knees up so she could rest her crossed arms atop them, creating the perfect shelf for her chin. The sun had gone down by then, leaving their only light to be the stars and the couple of candles Elinor had burning throughout the house. She came out here often. It was a great place to think, if that was what she was in the mind for. It was an even better place to stop thinking. To let the mess of thoughts and worry drain out through your ears as you gazed up at the endless night sky. Merida had found herself coming out here more frequently ever since the epidemic hit and the world went to shit.

"Lass," Fergus started. Merida rolled her eyes. She knew this would be coming. "Yeh have to try to understand it from our side."

"The only side, apparently," she muttered.

Her father continued as if he hadn't heard her.

"You and yer brothers are the last thing your mother and I have in this world. Our family is the last thing any of us have. And we have to make sure it sticks together, no matter what. We can't lose each other."

He paused then, turning to stare out into the night as he let a stillness settle over the two of them. Merida knew this tactic well. Let the silence build until the other person can't stand it starts talking. She wasn't one to fall for something like that this time. Besides, she liked the quiet.

It was a while before Fergus started talking again.

"Yer mother is a strong woman. I know you may not think so," he added at Merida's eye roll, "but she is. She's done many a thing that I haven't had the heart for. But I really think that losing you. Losing any of her baibes, would break her. Break me, too. Family is first, Merida. Always remember that. First and foremost, before anything else, make sure your family is safe."

Merida could feel her father's eyes on her, looking for a reaction. She turned away from him, letting her cheek rest on her arms, and kept her mouth shut.

"Yeh have to understand, lassie. She just wants to protect you. Sometimes she goes about it the wrong way, and I know it doesn't seem like that's what she's doing most times, but it's the truth. She's like a bear, my Elinor. Doesn't let anything happen to her cubs."

He let out a chuckle at his own small joke. Merida refused to turn back to look at him again. Refused to say anything. When he realized he wasn't making any ground, Fergus let out a sigh as heavy as he.

"Just…make sure yer packed for tomorrow, lassie," he said, voice resigned as he turned to make his way back through the window. He gave her arm a small, meaningful squeeze before wriggling his large form through the restrictive window frame once more.

Merida heard the window slide shut and the heavy steps of her father as he continued out of her room and downstairs. She finally lifted her head again to rest her chin on her arms as silent stillness settled over her once more.

Very quietly, she wiped at her eyes and cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt, the fabric coming away wet under the night sky that was sprinkled with a thousand stars that seemed to stretch on forever.