I feel an unsettling sense that my life will forever collapse beneath me in much the same way that the riverbank folded beneath my weight. What was my purpose here in this world? From the moment of conception I had been unwanted. It had only intensified the moment I was born into this life when my father and mother had laid eyes upon my feminine figure pressed against the wriggling bodies of my brothers. They had been robust. The top specimens that my father could have ever achieved. So I had heard. I had always been a waste - why had they kept me alive? My father's words. When I would bring him a scraggly hare, the last of a warren that hadn't already been cleared out by my brothers, and they would sit with fat rabbits and smirks on their faces. My father had only waited for the day for me to screw up and it had happened when I had ran home, crying about what that strange male had done to me only to find my sides burgeoning within weeks. Then I was homeless, kicked out of a pack I had never truly belonged with to face this cruel world alone.

And cruel it was. Those unwanted pups had been the meal of another female and while I couldn't say that I had felt anything resembling love for them I felt revulsion at what she had done. Loss at not being able to protect them, let alone myself. I had carried them and she had killed them. Each moment of my life had been one step of wastefulness after the next. I was tired. Standing on the bank of the riverside I wanted to lie down and sleep the night away, bask in the growing darkness if only for a short time and ignore the slight ache in my stomach that said I would soon be famished.

It is the rustle of movement that causes my head to jerk around, white-backed ears flipping back in a sign of aggression when the male rises from the reeds. Had he been there all along? Watching my failures with eyes that I bet mocked me? He moves down the slope and across the river with purpose but it is a delayed purpose. He wishes to give me time to run and that is admirable, I suppose, but I felt just a bit furious at life at the moment and running was something I had been doing for far too long. So I stand my ground, watching him with wary eyes and flicking my ears forward only long enough to catch his words before they fall back. "The lake is much easier to deal with," I answer honestly. I had grown so used to the tranquil waters and firm banks that the river was a different source of complex. "Clearly you are used to it. I didn't even see you there," I say, my voice almost accusing as I eye him in a manner that makes it clear I am not sure whether to trust him or not.