Greatwater Lake the vagrant rover life

@Adeline and @King ♥

Other characters are welcome to make cameos or “roll call” posts, particularly Undersea members. I deviated slightly from the original line, “the vagrant gypsy life,” so as not to use a potentially problematic term. I’m sorry, John Masefield! In my defense, he uses the term “fellow-rover” a few lines later.

This post takes place the morning of May 23, 2017.

It was a slinking, skeletal creature that lingered in the shadows at the southern side of the lake, tufted ears twisting and flickering uneasily. She experienced the dawning of the day as a mole might, reflexively blinking tears from her Neptune eyes and squinting in the fragile, rose-blush light. The velveteen of her cheeks was so sticky and coarse with a blighted mixture of caked earth, saline, and grime that the moisture didn’t soak in or trickle down. It lingered in purulent globules that stretched into strings at the innermost corner of her almond-shaped eyes. The scalloped gradient of her ribs stood out sharply — it was something she’d been able to conceal when she’d had the luxury of grooming and feeding herself regularly, but now the lank and greasy strands of her dusty oilslick fur pressed flat into the divots between her bones.

The arch of her spine was a crenelated bridge, the knobs of her vertebrae bordered by the crests of her shoulders and hips, as she skittered to the water’s edge and peered down. She was thirsty, and a flurry of intent sniffs from her dry, cracked nose told her that the area was untouched by her captors, but she faced the glimmering surface with fraught consternation. Tremors raced from the tip of her nose to the tip of her tail as she glanced wildly back and forth, moving at a stuttering rate composed of fits and starts and frantic double-backing. When her lips first met the sweet chill, she practically levitated, leaping back as if she’d been burned — and she shook so hard her teeth chattered with the force of it for a good minute or so.

Thirst drove her forward, and she started the excruciatingly tentative process all over again, placing her paws with meticulous precision in her own prints. Whuffing nervously, she watched the ripples of her own breath on the water before lapping greedily. The swirls of brown that spread out from her dirty chin and the matted feathers of her throat appalled her, but she couldn’t seem to settle enough to drink properly, let alone bathe. Every flicker of sound or motion caused her to flinch — and eventually, when her thirst was slaked at last, she simply hunkered down in the mud at the riverbank, red-rimmed eyes glassy and staring.