She was a small sprite of a girl when she first came to me with two other girls—older, probably her sisters. Though I had never seen any of them before, I kept my vision on her as she played in the splashes of the other two. She had green eyes, black hair to the waist, and aoristic features. The others stayed near my shore, but she swam far into me, and I awarded her by tickling her toes with my icy fingers. She giggled and called her sisters chickens when they wouldn’t come and join her. But they didn’t, and I was glad to have her all to myself. She lapped around in me until night. Then she went and left me for a seemingly never-ending time.

The next time she came, she was well in to puberty and had a womanly figure. She came with a slight smile, and a bit of hesitance. And a man. He had short, brown hair and a dangerous sparkle in his eye. They sat at my bank and flirted. Then he kissed her; I wanted to make words and shot the word that I heard from a dirty-mouth sailor a few years ago. But lips had I not. She backed away and told him she was too young. He coxed her back to him with words of honey. He then grabbed her arms and chafed his body against hers. And it was then I smelled his friends on the breeze as they watched him humiliate her.

I could not stand it anymore. In insatiable rage, I sent my previously calm waters out to flood his feet, to reach his legs, and to latch on. He, and the watchers with him, panicked and fled; all went, except her. She stood in the slight puddle of my rage and stared into me, wiping her tears away. She mouthed ‘I will be back’, and left me, again.

Eight years of ravenous hunger went by before I saw her again. And she came with a man, again. This time, this man was different—happier, more love--and another was with them. Cradled against her chest was a child, a sleeping baby. She sat near me, her toes skimming across me. The men laid out a blanket and some food. There they ate. And laughed. And loved. And here, in myself, I cried my self away.

Over the years, they visited me to swim and for the shade of the surrounding oaks. I watched as their daughter grew, filled out into a dashing maiden with the sun for eyes. She liked to search my depths, going deeper then her mother had ever done. I cared for her, but not like I did for her mother. I also watched she, my sweet, aged, and got gray streaks, and wrinkled, but still somehow maintain her beauty. I also watched the man, the human man who I wanted to be. He aged wearily, before his time, coughed at too much strain, never had breath, looked a man older.

I knew that he died when she came with red eyes and a dolorous face to me. She cried at my shore as I wished to be with her. Alas, I couldn’t; water has no shape. She stayed there until dark, the moon a glitter between the oaks. The daughter came and took her away. She, the daughter, walked funny, with a limp not present before. I put it away as nothing, a stubbed toe maybe. I should of padded attention to it; that was the last time I saw the daughter.

A month later she, looking much older, came back. And her daughter was not there. She cried and cried and I could do nothing. My longing brought it, the power that came to me as I watched, out, I think now, but then, then I could not think as a watched the tears, the tears that strengthened the power from where, I did not know. I surged together into the shape of the dead husband mixed with the other man from so long ago. I walked out of my bed, to her and comforted her. A hot feeling flooded my limbs and I started to rise with her in my arms. We floated away on the wind. Away from life, away from sadness, and away to happiness.