[Many Years Ago]
She had taken to visiting the lake on mornings like this when the fog settled over the water and the cold bit at her skin.
There was loneliness in the air.
A quiet between the nocturnal animals climbing into their burrows to sleep, and the diurnal creatures just starting to wake.
But in this quiet, lonely existence, she could hear something. A hum. A soft, delicate hum like a song being carried on the breeze.
It wouldn’t last long, only about a minute, and only on mornings like this. But something about it always reached out to her.
Within that song, her own loneliness faded away for just that minute.
Which was why when she heard the loud splash of the lake being disturbed, just as the hum had begun, she found herself quite agitated.
No one should have been there; this was the one place in all of the territory that was hers alone. Not even her demanding and restrictive mate would follow her out here.
