Free Wild Thing by L. J. Kendall

sensed it; very occasionally, fired an arrow at it.  Once, deep in the woods, she'd felt it sneaking up behind her and spun and fired, driving it away.
    With a shiver, she remembered the best time: she'd been hearing something with heavy quiet footsteps moving in the forest, somehow always moving away from her no matter how silently she crept toward it.  And finally, when it attacked – invisibly grabbing and twisting her, pushing against her mind, trying to force a way in….  In the end, she'd lashed out at it somehow and felt a contact, then a sort of shocked stillness and sensed it retreat.  That had been juicy.
    When she'd told her uncle about it, though, he'd gotten the strangest look on his face.  Like she'd scared him; or like he'd been scared for her.  He did that nervous finger-dance he sometimes did, and asked her to tell him more, and for a while he'd seemed to get even more worried.
    'I must congratulate you on your active, ah, investigation .  But keep in mind that there must be simple nature spirits within the Institute's grounds.  Don't confuse them with It .'
    He'd actually looked quite pleased with her, though; and she had to admit, just to herself, that she hadn't thought about nature spirits.  In the end, even though she knew he was wrong, she just nodded like she agreed.  After all, she didn't want him to worry about her.  Maybe even try to stop her Hunting.
    But normally there was nothing, and she simply roamed, breathing in the earthy woods smell as she stole through warm sun-dappled groves, placing her feet ever so carefully so as to make no sound, nor break any fronds from the delicate bracken to reveal where she'd passed.
    On days when Faith was busy, she liked to climb the dark rocky hills to the west.  Cooled by the wind's chill, it was nice to look down over the Institute from the very edge of its grounds.  Or sometimes, down in the Forest, she'd sit with her back pressed up against the tall, mossy wall.  She liked the stone wall.  For some reason, it felt friendly.  It was easy to imagine it was cupping her, holding her safe.  Best was when Faith was there with her, though, so she could snuggle up beside her.
    It was fun to build dams in the stream that led to the small lake, too.  It was hard to wait while the water level slowly grew to bursting point.  Sometimes, though, she'd pile on extra earth just to prolong the build-up, to create a bigger climax.  Other times she couldn't wait, and she'd poke a small hole, watching in fascination as the whole structure tore itself apart.
    She wished she had another girl, or even a boy, to play with though.  Faith couldn't build dams or climb trees.  Luckily, she'd mentioned that to her uncle: and after he'd pointed out how she didn't really need anyone else; how Faith was more than enough companionship; and how a Huntress didn't need other people, she'd felt much better.  Most of the time.
    But as a Huntress, of course, she kept her bow and arrows close at hand.  Just in case.
    One day to her great delight, she even managed to hit an animal.  Unimpressed, the bruised squirrel chittered angrily at her from a safe distance up its tree while she crowed and did a victory dance below.  But then she'd wasted the whole afternoon trying to improve the deadliness of her weapon.  No matter how she tried, though, she simply couldn't break off the rubbery cup at the end of the arrows.  She'd even tried sneaking a sharp knife from the manual kitchen, but it just wouldn't cut through the tough, stretchy black cap.
    Nerida had got real upset when she'd found her with the knife.  She'd been all, like, 'Sara, put the knife down, there's a good girl,' as if she thought she was gonna attack somebody with it, or something!
    Nerida was super-weird.  Her boyfriend, Dwayne, was also always looking at her sneakily, whenever he thought she wasn't looking, like he expected her to creep into his room one night and do something scary.
    Actually, she