“The forest was silent as the day waned. Then came...

      “The forest was silent as the day waned. Then came the flap of a bird in a bush. The crack of twigs under stealthy footsteps. Someone watching from the wood. A faint shape and shadow in the wind, a stirring in the leaves. I gazed into the dappled dark, wondering at the watcher.

         I ran. A path seemed to open before me into the wood, some small track to a little town, a forgotten village.

           I sensed the watcher, keeping pace with me in the thickening forest, maneuvering silently through the clasping vines, the slapping branches and heavy windfall logs."

          — from the novel Sinful Folk