a winter squall arrived to tear with a child's headiness through rusalka. unable to sleep, the wounded harlot watched grimly its path, shadows falling across the sound as the storm-crone writhed in powerful command of the sea and the land. debris ripped down by invisible lances began to cascade to earth; the tall pines were clawed, boughs snapping audibly against the teeth of the dirge.
erzulie, teeth bared, held back from this, seeking instead the dunes upon the beachhead, now wet with the ocean's own lashings. as before, fish came to gasp out their deaths upon the sand, and she moved gingerly among them toward a much larger shape further along the shoreline.
hunger clawed at erzulie; her wounds had stiffened further, and though she knew it was part of healing, she feared starvation among the more wounded creatures of rusalka before it was over. perhaps she had nothing to fear; she circled the broad, torn bulk of the seabeast quietly, its blood bringing her tongue to bathe the outside of her jaws.
above the jezebel, the storm cried onward.