SHINIES AND SLASHERS
Two perfectly ordinary crows were carefully watching the fields from a safe distance. They had once over been perfectly content to completely ignore the scarecrows and do what the hell they wanted. Then that had changed in a most unexpected way when the bloody things started walking about. That in itself would have been freaky enough, But then they’d killed the guy who made the scarecrows and hung him out there.
Usually, at that point, a crow would have been more than happy with the free food, but in the circumstances, it freaked them the hell out. So now they took scarecrows seriously. Then out of the blue, this was happening, a young human in a dress was charging in and chopping them all down, and the creepy one just hopped down and scarpered.
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Mibbet and Rosalind were on the rampage now, in full Rosalind Von Harmsworth mode, chopping the freaky scarecrows in half as they went. Then suddenly, one hopped-down and fled.
As you have probably figured out by now, fleeing in terror is probably a sensible reaction, except there are 4 things that are inescapable, 1. gods, those buggers never let go once they have it in for you (also sometimes if they had it in you if their wife finds out.) 2. Death. 3. Taxes (this one only applies if you are not rich enough to have the potential to change things. For some inexplicable reason, if your contribution could actually help a lot of people, society makes paying it optional; it’s like they don’t realise that the “no thank you” box will always be used if offered.) and of course 4. Pissed off Princesses (and believe me, Rosalind has 2 modes, terrified and flaming livid, and she just got scared enough to swap gears.)
That is not to say that they weren’t going to make a spirited attempt at escape; they’d played a ghost long enough to have zero desire to partake in the ultimate method acting class. So they sprinted over the corn as fast as the paths would allow. Rosalind, meanwhile, preferred the more direct approach; if there wasn’t a path towards her prey, she made one. Mowing down the harvest in her path with every swing, it may have been slower, but not by all that much.
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The killer was having a really, really, really bad day. How had it gone from scaring off a nosy girl to this? He bolted towards the labyrinthine Johnson family estate; that place was huge; maybe he could lose her in there? (Rumour was that place had been built up and up to massive proportions as a way of trapping in a vengeful spirit by old man Johnson. Really the only vengeful spirits involved had been of the alcoholic kind, as old man Johnson’s response to any overly complicated building project the neighbours undertook was “hold my beer”, and with the number of beers he had for people to hold, the result was inevitable.)
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So he dove through the front door, into a passage and dashed through the first door he saw, hotly pursued by Rosalind, who proceeded to flatten the door rather than open and close it in pursuit (in flagrant violation of the teachings of Hesaidshesaid god of drama.)
Now the chase was on, but no matter how many doors he fled through, they were rapidly bifurcated by a hatchet-wielding Princess. So he made a break for it once more, this time heading towards the Palmer Place, with a rage roaring Rosalind hot in pursuit.
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The crows looked on aghast until one (let’s just call him Caw for now) opened his big beak.
“Cawwww,” he said, which given that nobody speaks, a crow may translate as “did that really just happen or has the field gotten ergot again?”
“CAAWWWW CAWW” replied the other crow (let’s call him Cacaww for now in the absence of much on the ground knowledge of crow naming conventions), which we can only assume, based on their later actions, means “It happened mate, we owe that human so many shiny rocks, now next time something snuffs it in the field we get meat and veggies, SCORE”.
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The killer hadn’t really been back on the palmer estate since the attack, and now here he was; he wasn’t much of a fan of the feeling, though. Something told him the couple were still here, and he really didn’t desire to meet them. (which, given that they had realised he was here too and were pissed off, was an unfortunate combination for him.)
He drew a knife from his boot and headed into the farmhouse. The downstairs was rather devoid of hiding places, and now that girl was after him. So he did the most sensible thing he could think of in this situation and ran for the stairs. (Hey, nobody said he himself was particularly sensible, and all signs so far point to him really not being so.)
He ran upstairs and quickly hid inside an old wardrobe, and a moment later, from outside came the click of a key in the lock.
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Wannashowa was hanging around in his pond, minding his own business, when a familiar-looking offering circle appeared above him. He took his place below the circle quite looking forward to the biscuits, aiming to catch them before they fell into the pond (nobody likes a soggy biscuit, not really, they just pretend to when visiting relatives who have never figured out they only keep so long, then quickly dip them in a cuppa so they don’t seem rude and can disguise the frankly horrible situation and even worse taste as something a bit more tolerable.)
So the resultant offering circle spitting out instead several large shiny rocks, mostly at rather a high velocity, was a rather unexpected and also rather unpleasant surprise.
“It would appear, sir, your worshippers have now gained a new species.”
“What new species?” Wannashowa asked cautiously, examining the rocks. “Is it the dwarves? Or Goblins?””
“Not exactly, sir.”
“Well, who is it? Spit it out.”
“Crows, sir.”