Ada pointed her chin toward something that had caught her attention and said:
Look! Over
A completely disheveled and visibly agitated woman in a police uniform came sprinting toward the mayor's house. Her cop jacket was half unzipped despite the freezing day, and she plowed through the snow with a sprinter's determination. Her long hair, braided into two heavy plaits, whipped against her shoulders, and her mouth was twisted by heavy breathing.
– Friends, looks like we've got another chance to talk to a representative of law enforcement, – Ada began hopefully and tried to catch the cop's attention, but the woman didn't even glance in our direction. She ran straight to the mayor's door and started pounding on it with her fist. In her frenzy, she apparently forgot doorbells were a thing.
What's wild is that the door opened instantly.
The mayor must've been waiting for her, because he let her in right away and slammed the door behind her, cutting us off from whatever was about to go down inside.
We always shot in a non - stop format, barely cutting anything in post, so everything that just happened was right there for the viewers to see. And yeah yeah, I know I'm overusing that line about how much the audience loves us, but seriously, what can I say? We're their freaking IDOLS!
Did you see that? – Adelgunda turned to me, – she was holding some kind of scroll, and inside was this object… about the size of a hand. Whatever, never mind.
She turned to the camera, now locked on her, and addressed the viewers:
As you can see, folks, local authorities aren't exactly available for interviews right now. But no worries, because we're just a short drive away from the infamous Övrekjäla Lake, which hasn't seen a single tourist or local in years thanks to a whole stack of weird incidents.
If the Dyatlov Pass tragedy was a one - time thing, well, this place has a body count stretching across years – hell, even eras. We'll tell you more on the way there, because tomorrow morning we're heading to the lake, fully loaded with all the gear we need to run a proper investigation. But for now – how about we all chill a bit, yeah?
We stood in front of the camera for a little posing – my co - host smiled sweetly, while I gave the lens a toothy grin and a wink. Our performance wrapped up with an overly tense comment from Odile, who honestly kinda brought me down this time:
Ancient Evil might not be such a myth after all, with everyone around here acting so damn suspicious. And that's seriously weird. I swear on my Beloved Hamster Benny!
The Stone and The Boy.
The crunching snow under her feet was a sound Suzanna had heard more often than her mother's lullabies. Sometimes she thought she could even hear it in her sleep. The crunch of a bear snapping a branch under its heavy paws. The squelch of a worm in a bird's beak. And the sound of a little girl leaving her tiny footprints in the snow.
Aside from her own tracks, the forest was filled with evidence that life here was just as wild as any city madness. Only instead of humans partying, here the animals played the leading roles. A flurry of rabbit tracks proved it. Or the hoof print of a moose with a lumpy nose. And what about the shape of a girl's body lying in the snow, waving her arms and legs? Isn't that basically a jellyfish?
Suzanna loved nature. Like, really loved it. Maybe more than anyone.
Sure, the plant life in her homeland didn't exactly wow her the way jungle videos did, and she was honestly kind of sick of the endless pines. But the best thing about them? They never withered. Even now, in the bitter cold, the firs and pines looked way better than cranky old Julius, the neighbor.
Nature injected them with botox, while Julius just injected her mom's emotional state with needles, arguing with her over every damn thing.
There was still a whole day until dark, but Suzy was in a hurry anyway, for two reasons. First, Petra never really minded her wandering off, but she always asked her to be back before nightfall. And second, Suzy wasn't exactly a fan of the night. That nearly pitch - black curtain, barely softened by streetlights - and even those didn't help much. What's the point of walking in the dark if you can't see anything interesting? And besides, what streetlights are there in the forest?!
While mulling all that over, the girl kept walking, mentally retracing the path to the lake she'd never actually visited. She relied only on her mom's stories and descriptions, which she had memorized in perfect detail. Suzy had a photographic, maybe even borderline freaky, memory for directions. That was one of her gifts.
Her thoughts might wander all the time, but her memory always stayed loyal.
She was always drawn to the distant unknown. And somehow, this little explorer had taught herself to imagine her familiar forest as something like a Latin American jungle - and in her head, she could travel insane distances just by wanting to.
Imagination and nothing but imagination. It helped her so much that when Petra gently asked whether her daughter wanted to follow Grofo, or even go off with him, Suzy shook her head and said:
This is her Why would Suzanna need foreign lands when there are still so many places here she hasn't explored?
Petra seemed satisfied with the answer. But with her, it was always hard to tell - mostly because what truly made her happy was when her daughter felt at peace with herself. And Suzy could only reach that state through a healthy dose of silence and new scenery.
And the two were completely linked. New scenery = silence. At least, in Suzy's homeland.