Akteon: A Ghost Story

[hopkins@dg-rtp.dg.com (Edward Hopkins)]

This is Alfredo el Bufon again.  I wish to apologize for the faux pas I
made in my earlier request.

Those stories about deer hunters put me to mind of one a little bird told me.
Seems this fellow Ray was out hunting one night with his best friend, Mel.
They split up, and Ray started following some tracks that went up into the
cemetery.  He stopped a while to watch the moon rising, all full and rosy,
over the river.  Then he went on following the tracks, and the moon, veiled
now in sheer white clouds, followed him, and glared down on him, and made
him start to think.
"That's the Hunter's Moon... or is it the Huntress Moon?  I forget which.
Last month, we had the Harvest Moon.  Of course, it was really the same old
moon all along.  Funny, how people give it different names, when it just
flows from one to the other.  Like this old buck I'm following.  When I
catch him, I'm going to eat him. But he's been eating plants in this cemetery.
The plants grew from the bodies of people buried here.  And one day, I'll
end up buried here.  It's the circle of life.  'You are what you eat,' they
say, so, in a way, I'm a deer."
Just while he was thinking this, he got shot.  Mel came running up, and
said, "Ray, Ray, I didn't mean to shoot you!  The moon tricked me!  In this
light you looked just like a deer!"
"I know it's not your fault, Melampos," Ray said.  "It serves me right for
catching the moon getting up from her bath."  Then he died.


By the way, what's the difference between the cheapside and the Merry Rose?
I don't intend that as a riddle.