Duck Lake The sound won't carry

It stands at the shore, cut bright as the moon yet carved like smoke, billowing, shapeless. Head closed, teeth and eyes concealed, entirely and eerily impassive. Not wolf, not goat; a nameless creature of the lake.

The dark girl retreats to her cold refuge, an hermitage of green sea-stalks and sailing undercoat. Her dark face crests the water, fierce with equal worry and wonder, and gray eyes finds the pale shape through a tangle of cattails.

“What do you want?” The hiss from a swift curve of lip and nose, a thrusting jaw that aimed to mimic a soldier’s confidence, but which quivered with unease.