Greatwater Lake fear and loathing

he came to take the children, and she did not fight him. little by little the biological imperative that held zharille in thrall did melt away, and mesen-ka chose the best time to come and collect; she did not fight him as he gathered their little bodies; she did not rise to say her goodbye to them. numb, not even angry.

it wasn't until later that she felt a thrumming hostility; as she rose and left the den for the first time in weeks, filthy, hungry, without a man to serve her; and she saw too that the girl child she had found, gone too.

alone then. she takes herself to the lakeside and with heavy steps she lurches through the shallows, to the depths that touch her chest, flood across her back, chill her throat; and with a frothing huff, zharille goes beneath the surface of her lake.

her emergence is abrupt; she is sopping wet but the majority of the den's murk has been cleansed from her. she still feels numb. as she climbs to the shore and stands there she casts a bleak-eyed glower across all that she holds dear, and feels the autumn's breath gust across her body.

without drying herself she begins to march and she does not stop.