Moon Fishing

Small Valley with Pond

Bree Hill comes down from the north in folds here, forcing the Great East to bend around it. There are two main hillocks, and nestled between them is a green and grassy meadow in which is a small, but deceptively deep pond. Trees grow thickly along the hill edges themselves, but the floor of the tiny valley only has a few: ancient oaks that preside over the pond.

Contents:

Nob

The moon waning from the full hangs heavy in the sky, heavy and golden as a ripe peach. Ada shivers slightly but pulls her shawl around her, knees pulled up under her skirt, she leans forward to watch the moon sink behind the trees lining the pond. Plop!

Ripples spread silver from reeds growing at the feet of the large willow weeping into the black water. She sighs but settles herself as well as she can on the damp grass.

The night is not silent. Aside from the small noises in the water (fish?), there are frogs croaking on the far side. They fall silent as Ada moves, but resume almost at once. There is a distant hooting, and a tiny squeak of alarm. The whisper of grass brushing against itself.

A twig breaks. In the moonlight, shadows shift weirdly.

\"I\'m not really nervous,\" she whispers to herself, then shakes her head at talking to herself. But she looks around when the owl hoots.

Something scuffles in the woods nearby, and then a dark figure bursts out of the darkness into the moonlight. It shrinks nearly at once into nothing more than a boy - about 11 or 12 - carrying a fishing pole over one shoulder. He hasn\'t noticed

Ada, and heads quietly, but without trying to be too stealthy (or maybe he /is/ trying, and this is as quiet as he can get!) towards the water.

\"Oh, dear mother,\" Ada sighs breathlessly clasping a hand to her heart. \"You scared me,\" she hisses at the figure.

And Lek, to whom the whisper comes completely unexpectedly, whirls around, his eyes wide and white in his tanned face.

\"Wh....\" he quavers, then relaxes as the words sink in. \"Well, you scared me!\" he retorts. Brown eyes look at her curiously.

\"Whatcher doing out here? Y\'ain\'t never fishin\'!\"

\"Well, /you/ scared me! So we\'re quits. None of your business.\" She clambers to her feet, stiff from sitting in the damp and brushes her skirts out and resettles her shawl. \"You fishing? At this time of night? It was so hot in town tonight. You\'d never know it out here.\" She twists to look back toward the town. It is mostly dark so late at night only the lanterns of the town watch glimmering in the distance.

\'Course,\' Lek says, his voice half scorn for one who doesn\'t know this evident piece of knowledge, and half surprise that she does not. \"Best time for it. Catch the \'crawlers up easy,\" and here he holds out a wooden bowl clearly filched from the Pony\'s kitchen where-in tangle a handful of nightcrawlers. \"And,\" he ends, waving a hand towards the pond, \"Fish like th\'moon.\"

\"They do?\" She takes a few steps closer to look at the bowl half-repulsed but her curiosity getting the better of her. She peers into the bowl one finger extended to nearly touch it. \"Fish like it or crawlers like it?\" She looks up to study the boy\'s face the moon making dark pools of her brown eyes. \"You do this a lot?\"

Lek shrugs. \"Fish, I reckon. Though th\'worms comes up in th\'night, too. I don\' think they care about it being light or not.\"

He gestures towards the pond where more small ripples bloop and ring over the surface. \"Lots of bugs out, see?\"

Something of the little girl that she hasn\'t left so far behind surfaces and she looks out eagerly into the pond. \"Skating on the surface. Frogs like them, too. So what do you catch? Wonder why my brothers never do this...

\"Fish,\" Lek says. Duh. \"Here,\" he tells her generously, \"I\'ll let you have a try, even.\" And he turns towards the water, carefully threading a worm onto the precious hook (bent pin) on the end of his string. A cast, and the boy settles down to wait.

She flattens her mouth into frown that says, \"Boys!\" but doesn\'t say anything. She watches him thread the \'hook\' with a careful eye, gives him a good once over as if to reassure herself he is who he says he is then settles down next to him. \"You get the first one. I\'ll watch.\" She barely covers her mouth that stretches into a yawn.

Lek barely nods, he is that intent on his fish. And the night weaves on, the two of them catching several good-sized fish before the boy heads back to town to sneak into his room behind the kitchen.