Duck Lake The sound won't carry

‘Berna’. What is it, a name, or a thing?

Berna does not move, and Tauris wants to know more. She dares to edge closer, face parting through the reeds, nose doing what it will to dissect and make sense of it, while her prickly alpine edges stand in caution.

She smells the pulp of her body, the strangest odor of wolf-kind, and gathers herself, muscles clutching, pelt dibbling, to move nearer, wrenching through cattails.

In the shallows with only a few paces between them, she studies the disfigured half-girl, wanting desperately to ask what happened but tongue stilling in kinder judgment.

She could go now, if she had wanted. Something told her this berna would not give chase. But for vigilance or fascination, she did not turn away.

“Is this berna’s lake?” She would ask, proper pronunciation lost on her foreign tongue.