(Untitled)

[it_has_teeth]

Out in the lake, someone is swimming.

He never stops swimming.

To stop swimming, to stop moving, is to die.

Pity he's already dead, then, isn't it?

ed'Rashtekaresket, the Master Shark, circles his tiny domain.

He might be restless. He might not be.

You're welcome to find out.

Comments

[white_flowers]

Near the lake, someone else is walking. She fades into the snow, almost, and seems not to mind the cold at all.

Each step crackles in the ice-rime over the snowy ground.

[it_has_teeth]

"Someone come swimming at last?"

The voice is dry and passionless, and faintly amused.

"Cold as it is, I believe I am doomed to disappointment."

[white_flowers]

"No, dear -- it is a walk only that I am having," the light soft voice answers. Blodwen looks out at the lake with a touch of surprise.

"Although I do not mind the cold."

[it_has_teeth]

In the center of the lake, a vast white tailfin surfaces, if only for a moment.

"'Dear'. It is a new name, that one, and almost entertaining."

[spinningcoins]

Hats, cloaks, and walking sticks can be put to much greater use outdoors than in.

That is to say: two Elizabethans pass near the lake, bundled up against the chill. Rosencrantz has a flat rock in hand, which he's currently examining with full curiosity.

The lake's still mostly unfrozen toward the center.

[outofdepth]

Guildenstern is examining Rosencrantz examining the rock.

"Something you were planning on doing with that?"

[spinningcoins]

"Well. I'd only...." He holds it up. "You'd think, wouldn't you, that if I threw this, it'd simply sink straightaway, correct?"

Rubbing it between his hands, he aims it at the lake and lets fly.

Plunk.

Silence.

"....And so would I," he finishes, and pulls his cloak closer.

[it_has_teeth]

"You might skip it. Some have tried, before, and succeeded rather well."

The voice is dry, but hungry. Very hungry.

And in the center of the lake, a vast white shape circles below the water.

[buddyofchrist]

A slightly distressed discple is walking by the lake with his hands deep in his pockets when he spots the fin.

"Holy shit, that is a damn big shark."

[it_has_teeth]

"That is one way to put it, yes."

The voice is dry, and distant, and hungry.

And it comes from the lake.

[buddyofchrist]

"Oh jeeze."

Pause.

"I speak Shark?"

[it_has_teeth]

"You speak something. I speak something else. My suspicion is that we meet in the middle."

Or it's the Speech. Whichever.

[river_meimei]

It's cold. The lake is half ice; snow has drifted and melted and refrozen on the ground.

All the same, River is outside. The black recorder-box she's been using to learn about hyperspace vanes is being held by the bar, for the moment, and she's wearing a long black pea-coat. (The duster's at home; this one she borrowed from the bar. It's still two sizes too large.)

Snow and ice crunch under her boots.

[it_has_teeth]

"It's cold for walking, perhaps."

This dry observation comes, perhaps not unsurprisingly, from the lake.

And the shark that is swimming there.

[river_meimei]

"I have a coat." Unruffled.

Her tone makes it more an announcement of fact than a reply, but that's River.

[it_has_teeth]

"Useful things in the High and Dry, are they?"

Ed is aware of coats. He often swims the shores near New York, or he did. And you are, after all, what you eat.