mouths and turn from his fingertips, her eyes explaining that she'd been where he wished to take her, and that she knew he would make it seem that she'd never been there before. The only way out was the way they had come, back across the dark water, talking unheard, alone -- the beach long empty of swimmers. The squad car was perched like a cat in the dunes, hidden, until its white eyes opened a path in the sand. Barebacked and cuffed to the post, he can see that the short-whip, curled loose in the sheriff's hand, is as tan as her legs set off brown and bare against her father's creased white slacks. A fondness for birch trees found her poised in a patch of shade where the wind stays broken and the ground holds damp in a lingering fog. Her flared nostrils steamed as each sound cleared itself in her mind; it was here she learned to live-out the seasons, waking in half-sleep to her own bleating, rising from the residue of a dream that has her leaping a cliff, falling it seems forever before impaling herself on a branch, blood blowing like the rapids that roared up at her, until she wakes unharmed, unsure of things, even the grass where she lay. It was no dream that brought him to her in the midst of that frozen lake, four mongrels yelping from shore where they gave up the chase, the doe sprawled on the ice, her