Walpurgisnacht

[MethodicalSlacker]

If there was a point where Violet lost the plot, it was when she went into the menagerie and did not kill the people inside.

No, even earlier than that. She let Michael go. She let him walk away, alive. If she had killed him, she'd be in a better place than she was now. She'd have supplies. She wouldn't be eating breadcrumbs. It was almost ridiculous to think that what she got from Kyle would run out at some point, but here she was.

Violet also had the chance to take Layla's things. What little she had. She could have also shot the people who came after the attempted robbery, then. Those two. What were their names? Violet couldn't remember. Then she'd be swimming in supplies. Survival would come down to self-defense. Perhaps that was where she went off the rails.

It was more likely that she was thinking too far back. Clearly, her mistake was not taking cover from far away and shooting the gang at the cliff. They were sitting ducks, out in the open, with no cover. Why had she approached them? Why had she not killed them? All that had happened when she went over to the group was that she lost her gun, and she lost face. If she truly meant to outrun fate, then she had spent the better part of the day running in circles while it got closer and closer to her.

Now, it snapped at her heels.

[Violet Schmidt continued from The Special Special Special!]

Violet groaned as she loaded more bolts into her repeating crossbow. She missed the simplicity of the rifle. There were too many points of contact on this weapon. Too many ways for it to break. It only held six shots at once, as well. Hanging it around her neck a couple of days ago was an idiotic idea. Now, she had to deal with the cumbersome piece of string hanging off the back of the crossbow. Additionally, her neck still hurt. Almost as dumb as putting the knife in her belt loop, she thought. When she took it out earlier to carve a sigil on a tree, Violet nearly tore through her jeans and into her hip. After that incident, she made a sheath out of medical tape, string from the crossbow, and plastic from her water bottles. It's not like refilling them was an option, anyway. She didn't trust the water on this island one bit.

The walk through the woods had left Violet a sweaty, sticky mess. More than before, anyway. She'd taken off her shirt and put it in her daypack. The robe still covered her, its blackness absorbing warmth and sunlight, the heat offset by its breathability and lightness of weight. The shade afforded by the trees was pleasant, but the air was still humid and disgusting. Monkeys yelped in the distance. Something careened through the underbrush and then collided with a rock. Violet didn't look up from her crossbow. It was probably just an animal running around. Nothing Violet needed to concern herself with.

A squelchy, groaning noise came from her stomach.

Maybe she needed to concern herself with the rustling after all. There was a good chance that there was a lunch to be made of whatever made it. She finished loading her crossbow and looked around, hoping to find the source of the rustling. At the very least, she could get some target practice in. As she scanned her immediate surroundings, she noticed some movement in a nearby bush. Whatever made the movement remained hidden, but its presence was still apparent. Violet trained her crossbow on the foliage, ready to track whatever was inside to the left or to the right if it made a break for it.

She didn't have to wait for very long. Out of the bush hopped a squirrel, holding a tuft of grass in its mouth. Violet led the squirrel in her sights for a couple of seconds, and then pulled back on the trigger. She blinked, and then the squirrel was nailed to the ground, a bolt driven through its midsection. Violet grimaced, got up from under the tree, and walked over to the squirrel. A quick touch to its torso confirmed its passing into the next world. Violet tugged the bolt out and winced as she brushed viscera off the shaft, holding it up to the sunlight to check for any damage to the bolt. The head of the bolt looked somewhat blunted, but otherwise she felt like it should fire fine. She had a few unspent bolts left over, so she didn't want to resort to using leftovers quite yet, but it was good to know that retrieving her ammunition was possible. There was one thing she could reuse on this island.

Now arose the question of what to do with it.

Violet took her knife out of its makeshift sheath and held it up to the dead squirrel. She'd never been hunting before, but she'd seen a couple episodes of Survivorman with her father when she was younger. Even without having seen that, Violet knew that she'd need to skin it. She didn't want to eat fur. Did Squirrels have fur? Feeling her kill, Violet felt like the more appropriate word for it was hair. If it was hair, then maybe it would burn off in the fire when she cooked it. For a moment Violet worried about having to rub sticks together to start a fire, until she remembered the lighter in the medkit. She breathed a sigh of relief at that. All she had to do was gather some sticks. No rubbing of any kind needed to take place.

Setting aside the skinning of the squirrel, there were still some things that Violet knew she didn't want to eat. She could get rid of the head, for one. Violet picked the squirrel up and walked with it back in the direction of her bag. There was a tree root sticking out of the ground that she could use as a cutting board, she figured. It took some sawing, but the head came off relatively easily. The tail didn't have any meat in it either, so Violet took that off as well. The feet didn't look tasty either. Gone they went. Apart from that, she supposed all that she needed to do was… skin the poor little guy?

Just a week ago, Violet would flinch at even the thought of harming an animal, and yet here she was, cutting up one that she had just killed herself. This was necessary, though. She was going to make use of the entirety of the animal, apart from what she'd gotten rid of. Once she figured out how to skin it, the rest of the animal would be consumed as a meal. Violet figured that if she cooked the Squirrel for long enough, its stomach would explode or something, and then it'd be okay to eat the rest of it. Some parts would taste better than others, but nothing could go to waste. The bones could be whittled and fashioned into more crossbow bolts if she was really desperate.

The main problem for her, as it stood, was skinning it. She didn't know how she was supposed to do that, and there wasn't anyone around that she could ask. She could just eat the skin, maybe, but that felt a little dirty to her. Animal skin was tasty, but she didn't know if Squirrels had disease or something. Come to think of it, she didn't know if squirrels were safe to eat, generally. It didn't really matter. She was hungry. The obvious thing to do was to poke a hole in the skin and try to just pull it off. That sounded like a vaguely familiar thing to do. She picked up the squirrel by the back of its neck and tried to pinch the skin up from the meat. Carefully, she started a hole in the skin, dragging the knife back along the squirrel's back. Putting the knife down momentarily, she took both hands and got her fingers underneath and pulled, blood gushing down onto her hands.

"Why do you have so much blood, Mr. Squirrel?" she asked between grunts, "Is it because you hate me? Is that why you're bleeding everywhere? Fuck!"

And just like that, the skin peeled back, hanging around the legs of the squirrel. The smell of death was coming from the creature something fierce now. Violet put it down on the tree root and looked off to the side for a moment, ready to get up and walk over a few paces to throw up if her body really wanted to. Silently she offered a small prayer to the forces that had guided her along this far, those she thought had abandoned her but even in this moment were telling her the right answers, guiding her by the hand towards salvation. She asked them if this was, indeed, a permissible act, if the squirrel was fit for consumption. They responded by confessing that they had placed the squirrel in the bush just for her. She thanked them, and, feeling no further disturbance in her stomach, looked back down at the squirrel. Violet picked it back up and picked the skin off of the legs, tossing it aside. So much for eating all of it.

What she needed now was a skewer. There were a few sticks around, but none of them looked particularly sharp. Not enough to pierce through the ah hell anything was sharp if it was pushed hard enough that stick looked good. There was a long-ish stick on the ground by her foot that looked a little bendy, but definitely long enough to get the whole squirrel on it. Violet wasn't entirely sure where to skewer the animal, though. Longways was probably correct, from front to bottom. She decided on putting the stick through the part where its head had been, rather than the squirrel's butt, because that was just weird. Sure enough the stick managed to poke its way through the other side, with a little bit of effort. Now all that was left to gather some wood for the fire.

Violet looked up to check on the time. The sky was a deep, sickly orange, the warmth of the sun fading as the world turned closer to the color of her name. This fire would be important not only for her eating the squirrel, but for her survival in the night. It would be just as easy for her to find temporary refuge in the nearby village, but that was contingent on finding a place that had not already been claimed. Her stake was already made here. Violet carried the squirrel with her, knowing fully well that having one hand occupied diminished her ability to hold a large amount of sticks. The last thing she wanted was for her kill to get snatched when she wasn't looking, a distinct possibility given the presence of various other predatory animals in the woods, as well as other humans walking around. It was hard to think of them as classmates anymore. They were separated from her in a way that they did not—could not—understand.

By the time she'd gathered enough sticks and branches and tinder to keep a fire going and cleared an area of any stray leaves or other flammable objects that might accidentally start a forest fire (if Violet was in a joking mood, she'd pray to Smokey the Bear as her patron deity for this meal), it was the tail end of dusk. She figured that she'd roast the squirrel like a marshmallow, slowly turning it over the fire. She'd not made a spit, figuring instead that she'd do it by hand. It'd get tiring after a while, she was sure, but to find branches just the right size for holding the squirrel over the fire would consume more energy than she was willing to spend. It'd also deprive her of fuel that she'd use to keep the fire going later into the night. She had a few small branches set aside for that.

Violet took out her lighter and held it close to the bottom of the pile. She'd made it as close as she could to a sort of tee-pee shape, less out of concern for making the fire last long than because she wanted it to be as compact as possible. The point of contact started, gently, to smoke. She then went around the fire and did the same thing in several different spots until it got going—seriously going. On some level Violet was surprised to see that her effort had borne fruit. Here was a real, live fire that Violet constructed herself. It would be foolish not to consider this a trial put forward by the Forces That Be, those condemning her and those guiding her. A literal trial by fire. The last test was the squirrel. Cooking, and consumption.

Violet knew from cooking marshmallows that the best cooking came not from going directly over the fire, but just a little bit off to the side. It's probably take a while to cook through the squirrel, considering it had quite a bit more substance to it than a ball of pure sugar. She watched the fire as it slowly crawled towards its full strength, considering whether or not to add another log for fuel. It was almost mesmerizing, the way it leapt and danced around the twigs and dried grass and sticks. She remembered a class debate in sixth grade in which she argued, passionately, that fire was not alive. Now she wasn't so sure. It certainly moved like it did. It required food to live, and it needed to breathe. It could grow, and it could die, and it could bear children in the form of more fires. Maybe fire was as alive as she was. She wondered what it was thinking. The spirit, in the fire, she wondered if it judged her the same way the others did, as nearly beyond salvation.

For a moment, Violet held the squirrel up in front of her face. Maybe she didn't need to eat the squirrel. She'd already eaten, finishing off her bread. Would it be better if she ate the squirrel herself, or if she sacrificed it? A burnt offering for the Gods above and the Demons below? She'd need to do the work of consecrating the fire, but there was time enough for that before the fire grew to its full size. Yes, maybe, just maybe, she could make an offering to fate. A squirrel's life for her own. It would be the crudest of possible acts, but one that was well-intentioned nonetheless. All she had to do was pitch the squirrel into the fire, if she really wanted to. Release it from this shell and let its spirit sail up into the great beyond, if it had not already. She had plenty of sticks—any one of them could be considered her ceremonial wand. Violet had made herself up a ritual without even realizing it. This, too, was a point in her favor, a clearness of mind and a lack of pre-existing intent, ready to be molded by interactions with those above.

And then Violet was struck by a purely Earthly concern. She remembered, before being placed here, the terrorists mentioning that bonfires were prohibited. Did this count? Has she made a mistake? She looked down at the small fire before her. The smoke rose, thin and dark, into the sky. She was well and deep into the woods, nowhere close to the edges of the island where such a small fire might have been visible. She was in the clear now, but if she discarded what looked like the intended purpose of the fire, that might put her squarely beyond the pale. Maybe a ritual was inadvisable, under those circumstances. What she needed to do was cook her squirrel, eat it, and put out the fire. The air was plenty warm without it. Freshly nervous, Violet held her squirrel out at the edge of the fire and started slowly turning it.

About twenty five minutes later, Violet found herself biting into its cooked flesh. It tasted gamey, which she expected. Not bad. Sort of sweet. On account of her turning it, it was somewhat unevenly done, with some areas more burnt than others, but no bit of it was raw. The back legs of the squirrel had the most meat, and she picked those clean. Most of the torso was strange and nearly inedible, given the prevalence of organs. It disconcerted her just how far from her initial idea of using the entirety of the animal she had come. She had neglected to de-bone the animal, thus discarding the possibility of getting any crossbow bolts out of it, she had tossed the skin aside, and now she was being picky with what parts of the animal were good for her to eat. Maybe she had failed the trial. It was a possibility that she was supposed to rise above her fear, put the squirrel in the fire, and go hungry.

Violet didn't particularly care, though. She could just as easily hunt another squirrel tomorrow and make a sacrifice of it then. What was most important, as much as she hated to admit it, was satisfying her physical, material body. After all, she would be depriving the spirits of future sacrifices if she deprived herself of food. A pitiful squirrel now, or a potentially larger creature later? The spirits had their pick. Violet just wanted to roast, for Gods' sake.

Once she finished the squirrel, she realized that she had no water with which to put out the fire. This was an issue. The longer the fire burned, the better her chance of coming under the fire of "divine" retribution, if she was allowed to blaspheme for a moment, which of course she was given that her entire existence at this point was heretical. Her shirt lay discarded in the grass a few paces away. Violet supposed she might well use it to smother the fire, but was concerned about getting too close. She took off her robe, careful not to let it touch the fire, and put it next to her bag. Using that to smother the fire was out of the question. It pained her to remove it, even. It was comfy.

It would be impossible to smother the fire with her shirt as it currently burned. She'd have to wait for it to get down to embers before she did anything. Violet gathered her fuel logs and put them in a pile next to her daypack, leaning against the tree. Then, she watched and waited as the fire slowly exhausted itself, leaving a pile of charred sticks, red embers, charcoal-like, burning on the ground. She was scared of touching them. Not in the same way that she was scared of touching living things, though she was certain the feeling of actually burning would be similar to the feeling of mental burning she felt in those cases. At the very least, it wouldn't be dissimilar. The embers looked incredibly hot. Touching them, even with her shirt, didn't look like a good idea after all. How long did embers burn?

Dirt wasn't flammable, was it?

Violet bent back down to the ground and took handfuls of dirt, plucking out blades of grass and throwing them onto the embers. Maybe this would have a better smothering effect. It removed the need for her to ruin her shirt. She took a small stick and used it to gingerly mix the dirt with the embers, careful not to touch any of them for too long. Violet wondered how long she'd have to stay by the fire. Even disregarding the sacrifice of animals, this was sort of already a ritual, she decided. The elucidation of the mysteries of fire was not something Violet had expected to take away from this evening. Maybe it would come in useful someday. Maybe it would not. Either way, she was glad for the experience. Glad that her stomach was full, too.

When she felt herself getting sleepy, Violet stopped. There was a good bit of dirt mixed in with the embers, and they looked a good bit less red. She held her hand out to them, seeing how close she could get without having to pull back. Surprisingly, though they were still warm to the touch, they were just about safe to leave on their own. Violet looked up at the sky. It was deep in the witching hour now. She must have spent hours just throwing dirt on the fire, stirring it, and repeating, entranced by the dying of the light. Her eyes felt like pits. She looked down upon the remains of her fire and spoke aloud.

"Here is the end of all I have been," she said, "and in every fire yet to burn is everything I will become."

There wasn't any particular meaning to those words. Violet primarily just felt neat saying them. But they also felt right. She'd spent much of her trek through the woods stuck in regret, her mind caught in loops of dry logic with no purpose. She was focussed on when and why she'd fallen out of focus rather than the meaning present in every experience she had. Trial was the wrong word to use for the generally unfortunate events that had sequentially occurred to her in the last week. It was easy to label them as such, given their often life-or-death nature, but it was slightly far from the truth. Really, they were lessons. Difficult lessons that she had to pass on pain of damnation, but lessons all the same. Sometimes they taught her that she would need to kill her friends. Sometimes they taught her not to risk interactions on a friendly basis anymore. And other times they taught her how to start a fire.

As Violet curled up under the tree and wrapped herself once more in her robe, she found herself grateful for every lesson she had learned on the island. If she had no choice but to win, to out-run karmic destiny, then she may as well try her best to…

Enjoy was the wrong word. This still wasn't exactly a fun thing that she'd want to do again.

What she needed to do was be open.

Receptive.

Understanding.

Ready to learn.

And right now, Violet was ready to sleep.

So sleep she did, until the announcements woke her in the morning.

[Violet Schmidt continued elsewhere.]