The River and Her Monster

I am not obligated to live.

 
The daughter stands at the edge of the small, decrepit pier. The debris of years of tides and floods crackles under her feet; loose bait shells, old moss and rocks kicked up by the water, broken bottle glass smoothed by the river. Her skirt shifts around her shins like bedroom curtains and she stares listlessly into the water. Cooling dusk rushes her soft face like a brace of wolves and she holds out her arms, fingernails clenched against her palms and she wishes for the dogs to devour her. They do not; they only halt and rest beside her, twilight fur brushing against her skin. The daughter cries freshwater tears that fall into the muddy abyss below. She falls, legs folded haphazardly beneath her. The smooth glass dints her thigh. Eyes watch from the water and the daughter stares back, not understanding that the world continues to spin outside. They find her in the morning, shaking upon the rotting boards of the pier. She is taken away to bed, but not before a blow is landed on her cheek so she will remember to be good, and not to play with the dusk.
 
The eyes belonged to the fish, who watches all things in the river. The tides and floods, the debris, the flowing skirts of broken women. Her heart bleeds for these things, leaving trails of gold wherever she swims. There are none like her here, this river and all things along it belong to this fish.
The broken woman has left the river. 

So why does she still belong to me?

 
The fish blinks pearly eyes before catching a long silver minnow and dashing its head against the rocks below. The flesh is sweet on her tongue and she relishes the feeling of the scales cracking easily under her teeth. One day something bigger will dash her on these rocks, relish her sweetness, crack her scales - but not today. She returns to the pier, lurking below in the shadowed reeds. She holds to the post and rocks with the river's slow embrace. The creaking of the boards turns her eyes to the hidden sun.
 
The girl has returned. It has been many days and the sickness lingers in her bones, like grey static. Her frozen wolf of a wind is gone from its uncommon place and its replacement is warm and whipping; flocking around her like birds. The bedroom curtains of her skirts rise and fall, playing with the air as she stands cold and still.  She thinks about the eye and wonders if they were real. Below, they stare at her ankles and think about how soft they are, how sweet they would taste. The daughter walks to the edge of the pier and falls with more grace than before, her legs dipping below the kindly river surface where they dance in a spiral. She tries to find healing in the sun, the birds, the water. She finds, instead, a claw latched around her ankle and screams.
 
It is an odd sound to the fish. Like bells beneath the water.

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