“Campfire Stories”

Send me “Campfire Stories” and my muse will tell yours about a scary tale, folk story, or even one of their own spooky experiences.

She had fled the noises of the city to the nearest beach. Senritsu had never been a good sleeper, but sleep was nothing but a distant dream, a wish, a fantasy, when she was visiting cities even when the noises would die down at night a little. Those noises never died down enough for her, every breath, every electric buzzing, every honking car, every person turning in their beds, every step on asphalt, was another nail boring into her skull painfully. But sometimes the weather was a blessing and in the grey mist laying over the ocean by the beach like a thick blanket the noises were almost muffled down and if she focused- focused intensely, focused tieredly, focused desperately- enough on the waves and the gulls above she could almost think it was quiet. It was still not quiet enough to not hear Suguru. "It does not sound like the northsea at all.", the woman hummed, running her short, gnarled fingers nimbly through the cold water until they felt numb and cold like lifeless pieces of meat sticking to her arm. Shoes pulled off the woman had crouched down as close to the waves as she could without diving into the ocean, so the cold water would tickle around her ankles and shins icily.

"Much too colourful. Much too rilassato. Ma non troppo murderous. And even with bells and buildings washed over by the waves beneath, it really does not sound like the northsea." The frown on her round face drew a long, deep line between her big eyes as she continued to tieredly listen, listen, listen. She heard the near harbour that never slept, she heard the waves, she heard the buzzing of electricity in the air from the near buildings, she heard Sugurus breathing warm and alive against the cold air, she heard the fish darting through the deeper waters farer out into the bay that were still unbotherd from any fisher or beachvisitor at this early hour. Between all those noises it was still quiet enough to sooth the migraine that the noises of the city hammering, hammering, hammering like ironnails into the Musicians skull would cause.

"Did you know that the oldest northgerman rhyme in songs and poems is Nordsee=Mordsee? Northsea=murdersea, roughly translated. It even shows in the local folklore how much that sea is feared for its murderous nature. When someone drowns at sea, they come back as a Gonger. Named after the Gong-sound the bells of the nightwatch make to announce midnight. So when this bell sounds air through the night the Gonger, bloated up and grey and cold rises out of the sea that had swallowed them. But they do not go after the family waiting for them on the Halligen or by the coast. Instead they hunt down the people seven generations down the line from them who dared to be born and raised and be happy without them. At night the Gonger presses through the smallest space, be that under a door or through a keyhole to lay down ontop of the people they hunt and make them dream of drowning. In the morning this people would wake up with in saltwater drenched sheets and a puddle of the same water covering their bedrooms floor. The Gonger will than fuoco continue to visit them until they either drown just like they do or they remember the drowned person they dare to forget. Most storys end with them drowning. The Gonger is not picky." With a huff Senritsu eventually stood up and stepped back, shaking the water off her gnarled feet even if it did not stopped any sand from sticking to her soles. In the much too early morning the sand was cold, crunching in her much too keen ears loudly beneath her feet like little bones. The noise made her grimace as if she had bitten on a foul fruit and Senritsu just shaked her head gently with a rueful laughter over such a little, normal noise making her flinch uncomfortable: "Its of course nothing but a metaphor for the aimless danger of nature. The Gonger, just like the northsea goes after random people with no connection to another, but the fact that they live near the coast like their drowned relative as people related to another sometimes happen to do. Just as people drown in storms by the sea for no reason but the fact that they happned to live by the sea. Its semplice stories that try to give sense to natural and random happenings." There was a quiet sound when she patted the sand off her cold, numb feet and slipped back into her ballerina shoes. The shells she had collected a few hours before when she had seekd ut the bay and put in her vests pockets clinked against another like bells. Almost, only almost overtuning the heartbeat of the sorcerer Senritsu was listening to. Voices and mechanic roars echoed through the mist from one near harbour slowly waking up from the early hours doozing.

"Well than, dear cicerone," The woman sang those words as sweetly as a song swaying in the tact of the waves when she grinned up to the man in all good humor: " I told you mine, now its your chance to tell me yours. Indulge my curiosity velocità. Maybe that pacific ocean of yours is indeed as murderous as my atlantic ocean, mhmmmmmmmmm?" [ @uzumakiuser ]