Chapter 5: Things Got A Whole Lot Worse

Vanessa talked with Jessica for hours within the treehouse, Vanessa wanted to know so many things about her father, and Jessica explained what happened between her, Vanessa her mom, and her father, Jessica and Maria were best friends, they both loved this man named ‘Rick’, but while he was dating Jessica, his feelings for Maria were bigger then when he was with Jessica, so they broke up, of course, Jessica heartbroken tried to get him back in multiple ways, Jessica was kind of ashamed to tell her all this, ‘when you are in love, it is like a war, but if that other person does not love you that much back, you can fight so much you want, but you will never achieve that goal of being together’.

After multiple hours of talking about her father, Vanessa noticed a longbow on the wall, ‘that is a nice bow’, Jessica walked over to it, ‘I could teach you’, without hesitation Vanessa replied, ‘I would love that!’, so from that day on Jessica would teach Vanessa in secret, since Maria was not supposed to know that she was seeing Jessica almost daily, especially after everything that happened between them, she probably does not want anything to do with your husbands ‘ex’, but so far Vanessa did not see any evil in her, the only strange thing was she was living in the forest and not in the village itself, but the treehouses look exactly like normal houses in the village.

A week later, the bandits had left the forest, both Jessica and Vanessa had no idea why, but they kept on training that whole day, Jessica made a bow together with Vanessa, so she could practice on her own too, quickly she became very good with the bow, hunting small critters, and shooting far away targets, with almost every shot she would hit spot on, days were going fast, the forest seemed to be quiet, too quiet some people would say, was something about to happen?

More days went by, as they kept talking about her father, and that Vanessa wanted to go out and look for him, Jessica did not want to be mean, but told the reality, ‘after ten plus years he would probably be dead by now, and even if he was alive, why did he not come back yet?’, both of them had no actual answer on that question, so instead Vanessa kept on training with the bow.

That late day it already was dark before she went home, but something did not feel right, she did not know what but she would find out rather quickly after leaving from Jessica her treehouse, toward her own home, on the half way she smelled a burning mist, ‘what is that smell?’, she ran quickly through the forest, as she thought about the bandits that were in the forest before, ‘are they trying to build the forest down?!’, but it was even worse, as she reaches the end of the forest, to the path of her home, she stood completely still, the house she grew up in was consumed with flames burning everything inside, the rooms, the table, even the front of the house, everything was on fire, there was one single sign smashed into the ground in front of the house with a small note, ‘If you want to get this woman back alive, pay us what her life is worth, if it is too low to our taste, we will just kill her instead’, totally in shock she dropped the note, as she rushed back into the forest to the secret treehouse.

To Be Continued.