If a chance traveller had been walking down the road by the forest he would have seen two dark silhouettes against the setting sun.
They're playing tag, thinks the traveller to himself, and stops and watches the two with amusement. The only thing that puzzles him is the way one of the figures does a little pistol shooting from time to time. Hope they don't hurt themselves, the traveller thinks, alarmed, and drives away a horsefly crawling up his cheek. It must be Spring, he thinks, when the horseflies are here. Which reminds him he has a snack in his backpack.
"You wouldn't say no to it either, I'll bet!", he mentally addresses the horsefly as he unwraps a cheese and salami sandwich. Oh, what a smell! ! The taste of bread rolls over merrily on his tongue. First on the tip, until the saliva runs, and then he shifts it further back, and just as he swallows....the taste suddenly changes colour, darkening, broadening out, and expanding into every coil and passageway of the traveller's digestive tract - before it slips home into his stomach.
The traveller's face plays host to a blissful smile.
If.... but there had been no traveller walking down the road.
Rosie gets up and runs for it over the wet clods. Mud weighs down her shoes,.. She runs straight into the sights of the cab driver's gun.
Today is a bad day for Rosie.
This time the bullet didn't miss her. It went right through her and hit a stone in front of her. It lies on the stone, around it drops of blood like petals. Rosie bends down and picks up the bullet. She gazes past it and through her bloodied fingers. The bullet precisely fills a hole in the forest horizon where two trees have become interwined. ..
Rosie falls to the ground, dying.
The clods of the field are near and so friendly,, she thinks, why did I never know that before?
An angel is approaching. "Come with me."