unresolved

Gnashing at the moss just below her face, she tasted earth and water. He was stronger than she was. He had seen her in the dark and had played with her, batting her around with a sharp claw. She knew she was bleeding out her life, but she wondered still whether her blood would fead the flowers. Her face was twisted and as she was biting and fighting she was noticing how the wind was light tonight and there was already dew on the ground. He cut at her legs, cutting her denim and plaid skin reaching her soft human inside. He cut her again. He was playing. She could almost taste his power in the air. He didn't have to work this hard, but he liked to play. He let loose her right had for a fraction of a second. She grazed the fuzz, and wetness of the moss as she wrenched her hand free and swung all her horror at his smaller brain's face. She landed true and twisted around to face the canopy and attacker. Her legs, her tattered bleeding legs sliced through the air and caught pieces of him, a nose, a hand, a knee cap. Finally he fell on the creeping roots of a tree towering above, too slow to help. She stumbled away and puked up her last meal, what was it five hours ago? She slipped in the grass and fell head first down a steep slope. Splash! Into the slate, night water of the nearby lake. She froze beneath its surface, feeling on the other side of a mirror. She slowly pushed off the edge of the bank without breaching the surface. He was there, at the top of the slope. He was watching for where she would break the glistening surface again. She was nothing to him dead, cold and stiff. She pushed across the shallow lake, her lungs burning with their secret stores of life. Her ears began to ring and she watched him. She watched as he became smaller and smaller. She thought she would rather drown below a mirror's surface with stars littering her face, than to be raped and murdered at the hands of something of the night. She closed her eyes. Is it over, can I break back to the world of air and life. She opened her eyes, a great winged creature of red and gold-brown feathers slowly, lazily grazed the sky right above her. She watched as he dipped right up the slope and into the wooded bank where the man used to be. Where he was standing before and now was gone. It was now safe. She slowly slipped her eyes and nose above the waters and breathed deeply, getting some water in her throat. She swallowed, the lake was a part of her life, and her saving grace.she felt the water edge on her fingertips, she lay on her back and slowly floated the rest of the way across the river. Finally alone, and finally alive.