Citizen 119 Krova

  "G'night, mama," a wee Krova said as she leaned her head into her mother's nuzzling, a smile on her face as she looked up at her mother who was nothing more than a shadow in front of her, her back lit up by the moonlight behind her.

  "Good night, Krow, sleep tight and I shall see you in the morning."

  Krova closed her eyes and listened to her mother walk across the bedroom to the door outside and to the courtyard outside. Then the door slowly and quietly closed and Krova's eyes opened once more, staring up at the ceiling while her ears pricked up to catch the sounds of her mother moving.

  She could hear her mother's strides through the courtyard to the opposite side of the courtyard. There she would remain for a few hours before she retired and then her father would join not long after. Until then, Krova waited in her bed for complete silence to fall onto her parent's home before she threw the blanket off and jumped out of her bed. She quickly grabbed a bag she had stowed away behind her cot and then carefully opened her door to peek around it, making sure that the courtyard was clear and her parents were indeed asleep.

  When she saw and heard nothing, Krova dashed out from her room and scurried across the courtyard like a cat burglar. She was otherwise quiet as she dashed through the courtyard and scaled the wall by climbing the olive tree growing beside it. Landing on the other side of the wall, Krova looked left and right down the streets of the residential area before she rushed down the cobbled streets and towards the street corner where she and a few of your friends planned on meeting up.

  Krova was nervous that she would be the first there, if not the only one to show up for such a daring quest. But she was thankful to see three of her friends already there waiting. Now with her there, they only had to wait for two others before they could go off and get up to mischief.

  Earlier that day, Krova and her friends had heard nothing but the excited whispers and murmurs of their peers and parents talking none stop about a ship of food. As with most children, they had no idea what the adults were talking about and believed that in a warehouse there was a ship made of food. Which not only confused them, but also made them really excited about it, because a whole ship made of food sounded delicious - and surely something as large as that meant they could eat here and there and no one would be the wiser about it.

  Krova and her friends snuck down the roads and streets to the warehouses, all hugging the shadows like the gremlins they were. Some of her friends had even thought like Krova and brought bags to stash some food in after they raided the ship made of food. When they found the warehouse that supposedly held the ship made of food, Krova couldn't help but frown when she and her friends looked at the warehouse.

  While it was big, it certainly didn't look big enough to house an entire ship made of food... Unless it was a smaller ship, then perhaps it could fit in there.

  Krova and her friends snuck into the warehouse through an open window and straight away noticed a lack of a ship. "Wh... Where is the ship?" Krova whispered as she looked around the dark warehouse.

  "I don't know," one of her friends whispered back, "maybe... it's small? Like us?"

  Krova and her friends all broke away and started to look through the warehouse for signs of the ship. Maybe they had taken the ship out of the warehouse already and moved it, or maybe it was already eaten?

  As Krova looked around, she suddenly smelled something sweet and lifted her nose to follow it a fat sack. She opened it and saw something she had never seen before; they were small even to her and the colour of blueberries... But these certainly weren't blueberries. She picked one up and then sniffed it some more, enjoying the smell it was giving off. It was even making her drool... Could she eat it?

  Looking around to make sure no one was watching her, she took a bite out of it and her eyes opened wide. Tender, ripe and juicy, it seemed to melt in her mouth and make her tongue tingle. It was like a cherry but not as bitter and juicy as a pear but... better!

  She scarfed down the one she had taken a test nibble of and then grabbed two more, gobbling them down one after another. Her mouth and hands were sticky but man, was she in love with this delectable little fruit - and she had no idea what it was. Krova had lost count of how many of the fruits she had eaten but she was almost positive she had eaten more than five.

  When no ship made of food was found, Krova and her friends decided to give up and head home - but not before they looked through the warehouse for food, which there were plenty of choices to pick from, and stashed their finds in their bags before they clambered out of the warehouse and scurried away back to their homes.

  The next day, Krova was ill with a bad stomach - she had eaten far too many "figs".

~ AccursedLore (LadyTeaTime)