.Erasure. A first chapter. Crime/mystery. Please, please read. There's not enough prose here on Opuss. The rusty brown woods cast long, blue shadows over the quiet path in the horizontal seven-o'clock light, around half an hour before any stars would be appearing. In the distance, above the tops of the furs and the spruces, sat two cold, blue mountainsides. Their bases were dissected by the dry woodland up front. Some daylight caught the relaxed, summery saplings and haggard shrubs through the sycamore trees, and dotted them with warm streaks of shadow, just as the dazed insects started to break out from the cover of the treetrunks, flowing about the air in little clouds. Some kind of small black creature could easily be found basking on any random bramble-leaf, lazily chewing on an uncurled fern, or darting around in between all the dust and pollen kicked up by the horses. The surrounding woods towered just high enough to block out landscape, but were sparse and dry enough to give two drivers space enough to pass each other, one wheel dipping awkwardly into the little crease at the side of the track. By winter, pools would have formed and frozen, and all shadows would be being cast by the yellowy light of a small sun. In spring, green would spring from the buds of all the yews, and the occasional deer would be seen pacing about the undergrowth: possibly even a boar. most signs of movement had migrated into the neighbouring valley by summertime, leaving only pressed hoof prints, scattered porcupine quills and dead beetles for walkers to point at. At the start of september, the deep blue-black of the dusk skies would be swapped for quiet, rolling grey, as the points of the fur-trees became raggedy, and torn. By this time the roots of the mountains might even be in view, their bases littered with climbing forests, and curious little wedges of rock. There were no roe buck or boar or lizards out meditating as the two strangers walked along the path with no shoes. It was summer. They made the normal amount of sound you'd expect from a couple with no footwear and extremely ill fitting clothes. Sigh, pat pat pat, snappat, teeter... Pat pat pat, sounded the duo, as they trundled along, arousing the suspicion of a nearby mother crow, who flapped, distantly, forgetting to caw. The first, a squat man, carried his head down to the ground as he walked, watching his feet, placing them exactly. His arms were on the straps of his pack, hands open And suspending the rope an inch or two away from his chest, as a sewing Machine suspends it's thread. He walked like a lost guide, and there were clear unintentional tan-lines beneath his stretching Hawaiian shirt. His companion was taller, a woman in her mid 30's, aloof but inelegant, as she raised her calves to avoid each spattering of wetter mud. The crippled sunhat on her back strangled her, and In her pouch next to her hip a carton of french orange juice was quietly warming up. Neither of the pair looked at each other while they walked. Plod, step, raise, arch, wander, they went: until the man signalled for the walking to cease and the sitting to begin, gently crossing the woman's path in communication. She followed. As the log sank a little, neither could be sure whether it was them or their seat emitting the creaking noise. The woman stretched round to empty her pouch, and the man took from the pack a tiny white bread roll: it's only contents. They sat there for a long time, chewing the world away, and gulping at the silky warm liquid whilst one tried to read the French for "from concentrate". It was seven minutes and eighteen seconds before anybody spoke.