This is what happens when you haven't written any random fiction in a while and you don't feel like writing reflection papers

I was sitting in the fishbowl this afternoon when I wrote this. I haven't done anything like this in a while. It was fun. Also I inspired Kara to desert homework for pointless fiction. I wish I could keep going with this without having to do research for it...

Dark night closed in. Wind high above the trees scrubbed the sky clear, and faraway stars peered down, unable to shine through impenetrable branches. A fire was lit in a clearing. A lone figure crouched, stretching out frigid hands to the heat.
Outside the shifting circle of firelight a twig snapped. The figure was instantly on his feet, every sense alert.
He waited a full minute, counting silently. The sound was not repeated. He took his place again, slowly, cautiously. His head began to nod, and, after a few silent minutes, he slumped down on the bare ground.
The wind whistled down into the clearing. The fire popped. The man sprang to his feet with a growled curse. He looked around the clearing, consulted the watch at his wrist, and swore again. He sat down, then stood back up. He paced around the clearing, stretching, watching, waiting.
The fire was beginning to die when a noise made the man stand bolt upright in the shadows of the clearing. He listened, barely breathing. The noise was repeated. He waited a minute. It came again. He produced from a pouch at his belt a small whistle and blew softly on it. The sibilant hum rose above the wind and lingered. The answer was borne back to the waiting man on the breeze.
As he stepped back into the fading firelight another figure emerged from the shadows. They approached each other hesitantly. The firstcomer lifted a stick from a pile in the dirt and stirred the embers to life.
The revived flames threw the new arrival’s face into the light—thin, deeply tanned. His eyes were guarded and speculative, their color indeterminable in the firelight. He waited. The first man stepped forward and cleared his throat.
“You’re late.”
The words, guttural and hushed as they were, broke the spell that silence had woven over the clearing. The newcomer merely looked at him.
“You’re late,” he repeated, undeterred. “I don’t like late. It makes me nervous. I don’t like to be nervous.”
A blank stare was the only reply.
He shook his head, frustrated. “Well, you’re here now. Let’s hurry this up.” He turned to a worn pack by the fire and dug through its contents, one eye on the silent man in front of him.
The second man watched him for a moment, then turned slightly and loosened the pack he was wearing. He separated the straps almost reluctantly, and reached slowly inside, producing a small brown paper package. He held it for a moment in his hands, paying no attention to the man in front of him, who had drawn forth a similar parcel. He stared at it with an unreadable expression on his face, then with a flick of the wrist tossed it at the feet of his companion.
The first man smiled a smile of one who has accomplished a long-anticipated goal. He held out his own bundle in his left hand and kept the right buried in his bag.
“We’re even,” he said quietly.
And with that his right hand, holding a gun, came up out of his bag.


For a split second the man hesitated—the moment between his words and the raising of his gun, or perhaps the pause between the cocking of the weapon and the pulling of the trigger. That moment was his undoing.
The second man turned and kicked the gun out of his hand. As it went whirling through the air the expression on the face of the shooter turned from sneering confidence to craven terror. He reached for the gun: panic took over and he turned to the forest, desperate to escape. He turned back; he grasped for the bundle at his feet—
He was dead.
The entire exchange had not taken more than five seconds. Five seconds in which an eternity of fear had been lived by the dead man. The victor stood still, arm outstretched, gun smoking in his grip. He stood motionless.
The constellations wheeled and swung, oblivious to the nightmare transpiring beneath the shielding branches. They danced on, shifting and sliding through the night sky.
It was daybreak before the second man emerged from the clearing. The fire had been smothered, all evidences of ash and ember covered. The bundle that the first man had held was buried with him, in a shallow grave at the edge of the clearing, where scavengers would be sure to find and destroy it. The second man carried out of the forest the package he had brought with him. It weighed on him like a dead man.