ELAINE

The deer was eating grasses and reeds that stood in the tips and corners of the river. It's eyes were unsuspecting. Or, only half-suspecting for one of it eyes were fixed upon the land side, as if a predator will sprang upon it from only that way. It's other eye was fixed on to the ground, looking for tasty grasses and

reeds. It was a stupid animal, Elaine thought. Or it was only innocent - and confused, not knowing clearly the rules of survival. It suddenly dawned on Elaine that the deer was like her. Or, maybe, she was like the deer. Or, exactly speaking, she was initially like like the deer, when the guards threw her here. Now she had changed. But the deer. It had not experienced the pain, the suffering, the despair, the gloom, the desperate attempt to live, to survive and then losing all hope, the wish to die that she had felt, which led her to survive. That is why she was human and the deer was an animal. That is why she was the hunter, and the deer her prey.

She looked at the deer closely for sometime, then dived into the water. She swam quickly with her lithe and light body and peddaled through the water, taking extra care not to make any noises and then slowly drilled her way out of the water. Nope, the deer had not still seem her. She slowly took something out of her rabbitskin vest - the one she had made herself, after killing the rabbit with the same thing that she will use now to kill the deer.

She uncovered her hand to reveal a straw, and then with her other hand she took out a few a sharpened piece of wood. She put one end of the straw in the mouth and loaded the wood pieces into the straw fro the other end. She closed on social her eyes, and with her other eye she concentrated on the deer, her posture fixed and calm. And then she blew.

The deer remained unknowing till the last part, when it was too late. When it realised that a sharp piece of wood had been loaded in its neck. It ran then, but it's trail was marked by the blood it dropped, caused by the wound, which in turn was caused by the bleeding erected by the sharp wood piece. She would soon find it - and dead too, either from the heavy bleeding or the heavy dose of poison she had mixed in the sharp wood piece and made by brewing certain plants she found in the deepest corners of the forest in which she lived. The forest which was now her home.

Sure enough, she found the deer dead after going around a soft distance. There was a time when the dead frightened her. But that was before. Before her husband was killed. Before her only son was killed. Before her whole family was wiped out by the enemies. But that was when she was queen of Arkonia.

She slung the dead deer over her shoulder as a hunter would do, for that is what she was now. A hunter. A wild jungle girl living the equally wild forest, unconnected and torn from society - but surviving, yes, still surviving, whether to eract her revenge or to do nothing. She went off in the direction of her " camp " to start a fire and cook the deer, but before she needs to get the poison out of its dead body, by washing it with certain herbs she knew - one of the many experiences and lessons she learned while living in the forest.