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Once upon a time: all as it should be.
The always-gloom of the forest-deep; maybe dusk, maybe dawn, who could decide. The stillness of the skeletal branches.
The world is like a movie: silent and colorless.
Light ice-crystals are orbiting in the air, melting in Celine's pinned up hair (when did it get so long), pale stars in the ebony black — someone once told her that she was a fairy-tale vision, and that someone… Now, she would just claw his already-blind eyes out like a crow.
Her boots press heavily into the packed snow as she, for the first time in who knows how long, pauses.
A steady pace of slender, careless footsteps appears before her, leading her gaze deeper and deeper into the shadows of the woods.
Speaking of the devil.
Pupils dilate, neck tenses: the restrained ferocity of the hunter when she catches the scent of game.
“Gotcha, bastard,” Celine says, because she has to say that out loud, she must break the unanimous, one-way unity of the scene; her voice is low and weary, and her breath, a puff of dead-white vapor, blends into the background.
From her shoulder she swings her rifle into her hands (such a pleasant weight), and the weapon clicks, ready for action. Then, with soft steps, she sneaks after the tracks.
The icy ground crunches underfoot, as if old bones are breaking.
Adrenaline begins to rush furiously through her veins, so that she doesn't feel the strain of exhaustion as she rushes through the thicket of the forest and through the worst of the winter.
The outline of the footprints are already blurring, becoming shapeless, but Celine is not afraid, never afraid, she cannot lose the trail.
I must find you, if, just this once, you did everything right.
She is inexorably charging forward, shadow by shadow, the soles of her boots parallel to the tracks, and the hunter must first catch the thoughts of her quarry, adapt to them, and then cut in front of him.
Every story has its universal rules, and it’s a tale told by an idiot.
The footprints in the whiteness are only there because of her, Celine thinks with a sneer, their sole mission is to lead her finally, finally to the prey.
You had to leave them, Mark, your precious plot required something to follow.
The rifle was hanging on the wall of the cabin so that it could be fired.
Everything must have a purpose .
That one bullet in the chamber of the gun is there to pierce her dear ex-husband's heart at just the right moment.
Everything means something.
One, simple bullet, no more; that's how Celine knows she can't miss.
A vague memory disturbs her concentration, one of the fading few: someone teaching her to shoot, and his satisfied, admiring grin when he declares that Celine is a better shot than he is. His name… She can no longer remember that name.
Details, big or small, either they move the story forward or add character, and not all details are necessary. Of course.
A wry half smile, that's all the thought deserves now, and she doesn't slow her cautious gait even for a moment. In fact, she only speeds up, the sound of her march ringing through the frozen land, slipping through the bare boughs.
Every step led to this.
She maneuvers around stumps of felled trees; her nostrils are filled with the paradox of the smell of cleanliness and carrion.
Revenge is always predestined, a necessary heartbeat. If it is a good story, it must be fulfilled, because every good story is a promise kept, like ‘till death do us part’ or ‘I’ll protect you’.
Celine rages and wants to howl at the moon, and she imagines what a beautiful, satisfying tale she will write in the snow with Mark's blackened blood, full of sound and fury, and panting now she runs, her finger on the trigger.
Wind rises (take that into account when aiming), the horizon clears, the cold is like a wolf's teeth, biting through skin and sinew and muscle.
A few strands of hair fall in Celine's face, but she can see a figure in the clearing, a few hundred steps ahead, she's found him, she's found him, she's going to carve his heart out, breathe in, keep your eyes on the target, the world's film frames are spinning slower, she can almost hear Mark laughing, what a distorted, bouncing voice, but this is how it's supposed to happen, this is how it's written, aim, shoot...
She gets the end of the rifle in the air just as her brother slams his axe into the middle of the woodcutter's stump, next to their cabin.
The gun does not fire, though she dares to swear she hears a shot (or two or three or…) from somewhere in the distance, as far away as her memories can be.
The clash of the axe echoes for a long time; if there were birds in this cursed place, they would all have flown up in fright.
But there are none here. Just them. Dead things, always returning to the same place.
Celine blinks, silently exhales: the tracks lead right up to the door of the house, exactly as she left them when she set off into the woods at nightfall. She paced around following her own steps; a snake biting its own tail.
The light of the rising sun is now fresh and burning on her cheeks.
With slack muscles, she heads towards Damien, the emptiness in her chest heaving, as if her heart had stopped — his brother's smile only makes it worse.
He will soon have to pin up his hair too when chopping firewood.
“Are you alright? Did you find anything?” asks Damien, massaging his tired wrist under the sleeve of his coat. The usual scenario.
“No,” Celine spits the word, filtering it through her teeth, and tightening her grip on the gun as he walks past her brother to the house. As usual.
“Ah, that’s fine, don't worry about it. We'll eat yesterday's leftovers then. There's always…”
With a crash like a thunderclap that cracks the ice on the windows, the cabin door slams shut.
“Tomorrow,” Damien sighs.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow: all will be as it should be.
The witch will go hunting, and Celine will find the footprints in the snow, and follow them, and she'll wonder when she got her hair so long, and the hunter will seek her well-deserved prey and she will fight and she will circle like a crow over corpses, and there's always leftover meat for dinner, and the rifle should have been fired, and instead the axe will strike.
It’s a tale, signifying nothing.
Though maybe by then Celine won't even remember that anyone ever taught her to shoot.
The comfortable weight of the rifle on her shoulder will only add to her character.