**Chapter 2**

_Ballari stood there looking_ at the boy, Alistarie, stupefied. Had she heard him correctly?

“You want to be…friends?” She hadn’t meant to speak low, but it was the only way she was used to. Thankfully though, Alistarie had heard her once again and gave her a little grin, strangely enough it looked as if it was hard for him to make the expression.

“Yes, I do.” Alistarie's grin disappeared and was replaced with a strange frown of some sort. “I’ve just realized that I have not come to know of your name.”

Alistarie spoke a bit strangely, but that was fine. He wanted to be friends. With _her_. The pig girl.

“Ballari.”

Alistarie looked at her, and Ballari swore she saw a flash of recognition in his gaze. Though that made no sense, she had never met this boy in her entire life. “Ballari,” he said slowly, testing her name on his tongue, “that’s a nice—”

“_BALLARI! GET AWAY FROM THAT YOUNG MAN!_”

Ballari jumped, and both Ballari and Alistarie spun their heads to the owner of the voice. It was a woman, very much short of size, with wispy black hair streaked with grey in a tight bun, and wrinkled copper brown skin. She looked angry as she approached them, glaring at Alistarie then Ballari, her eyes looking ready to attack.

Alistarie was very delighted for some reason, and was giving the woman a very interested look, as though he’d come at the right time and the show was starring. Ballari held back a frightened yelp. She knew this woman better than anyone; she lived with her her entire life. And she knew she was in trouble.

Ballari squeaked, gaining a amused look from Alistarie, and ran as fast as she could to the door of her cottage. She opened the door, got into the house, closed the door behind her, then quickly went to work on the chores she hadn’t completed.

Which…was a lot.

❥ ❥                   ❥  

Ballari rubbed the bruise right above her hip and muttered the things she would do if she ever got a hold on that vile spoon. As if hearing her, the bruise gave her another round of pain, diminishing the hateful words she said against its creator.

The angry woman from before, MISS as she was called, just finished a pot of roast vegetables for dinner and was filling two wooden bowls with the food, until they were both full to the brim. MISS was strangely quiet tonight, which was very unlike herself. Ballari was wondering if it was because of Alistarie and his weird self, maybe she had a feud with the boy before. She didn’t know, but she wasn’t afraid to ask. Not to MISS.

_Why, What, and sometimes, When._

MISS placed the bowls on the small circular table, then went back into the kitchen and then returned with freshly carved, wooden forks. MISS must have gotten them from the local carver while she was in town.

She passed one to Ballari and kept the other one to herself. Then she sat down in her chair, which was directly in front of the girl, and began eating. Ballari took this as a perfect opportunity to find out information.

“MISS, why were you so troubled over Alistarie being near me.” Talking politely was the best way to get through MISS, Ballari even raised the volume of her voice a little so the woman could hear her.

MISS looked up from her food, still chewing, and raised one bony finger signalling her to wait. And so Ballari did. After a few minutes, when MISS’s food was swallowed and was making its way down her throat, she started to speak.

“That boy, my dear girl, was seen going in and out of the Unknown Forest. And as you know Ballari, no one ever comes back from those woods.”

MISS took another heap of vegetables with her fork and ate. Ballari watched as she thought, _I now know _why_, but I have yet to figure out the _what.

“I don’t understand,” said Ballari, “He came out of the woods _alive_, and no one comes out of those woods alive, yes, but what I don’t understand is what.” Ballari looked directly into the eyes of her caretaker. “_What _did he do?”

But the woman just shrugged. “He didn’t do anything, Ballari, though some of the villagers think that he used dark magic to escape the creatures of that place.”

Ballari held back a gasp. Alistarie didn’t seem like the type of person who would involve himself with those types of things, she hoped so anyway. But…you could never judge a book by its cover.

“And you believe this?” questioned Ballari.

MISS shrugged, which was _not _a thing she ever did twice in a row, and said, “Ballari, the monsters in the Unknown Forest are vicious, wild things. Do you think they would just let a boy, a very noticeable one might I add, just walk straight through the forest?”

No, of course she didn’t. She wasn’t dumb.

“MISS, he could have ran, fast enough to escape the monsters.”

“He wasn’t at all tired when the villagers came to find him, and furthermore, he had not _one _scratch on him, Ballari. Not one.”

“Well…” But Ballari was speechless, he should have had at least one. “Not _one_? Not even the tiniest of one?”

The woman shook her head never releasing Ballari’s eyes. “Not one.”

Ballari looked into MISS’s eyes more closely than she had before, getting information from MISS wasn’t hard, but if you wanted to know the important things, it wasn’t as easy.

MISS sighed. “I suppose you think that that’s not all.”

“No, no I don’t. You hardly even believe in magic, so there just has to be another reason that you don’t want me near him.”

MISS sighed once more, this one sounding troubled instead of annoyed. Her voice was low and quiet when she said, “He said that he was looking for someone, that day when the townsfolk saw him arrive out of the forest.”

Ballari began to whisper as well, back into her place of comfort. “Who was he looking for?” she asked.

MISS turned away for a moment, biting her bottom lip like she was telling a forbidden secret, then faced back to Ballari, her eyes full of terror. “He said that he was looking for a girl. A girl named Ballari.”

***

This is the most climactic scene in the thing so far, btw…🙃.

(Okay, so, I know it said to not draft, but I already had this on my phone so, why not use it? This is my minor horror/fantasy novel called Piglet: Red Blood. I made this in the beginning of 8th grade then forgot about it. Thing is, I had 24,000 words on it!!! And I just stopped. I’m continuing it now, though, when I have time with Living Is A Strange Thing and homework. I really do love my characters in this, and have recycled the story multiple times. What you’ve just read is the ORIGINAL FIRST writing of it. Kinda cringe since I was just staring at writing, but I reread it and it’s actually, good? Anyways, have a great day and thank you for reading!)