Stars raced overhead behind a slipping lace of tree limbs, clouds blowing like rags across their gleam, a moonless silver-etched gossamer high in the clear air. She could hear nothing beyond the hum of her blood and the catching sigh of the leaves and twigs as she ran. There was so little time.
In a little while, the twigs below and leaves beside her gave way to a fine sand and free air. The sound beneath became a tiny rhythmic scratching and the constant hiss of a stiff breeze flicked her hair against the sack she carried on her right shoulder. The shine of starlight glinted from ripples along a riverside beach. She veered slightly to her left, avoiding wet sand and the slight sucking sound it would add to her footsteps. A few more lengths and she was scrabbling one-handed over a rounded grassy bank ...
...into a hollow surrounded on all sides by reeds taller and more supple than she. Like a whisper she glided through them into a cavity beneath the roots of a huge fallen tree. The reeds closed behind her like a curtain, leaving no trace. She drew the scarf around her neck over her mouth and nose. Her chest heaving, she silently satisfied her burning need for air and let her body quiet itself.
The noise of little creatures re-asserted itself quickly in her aftermath, and with the soughing breeze would drown the rise and fall of her breathing under the tree. Although she had been quiet, not even she could entirely escape the notice of crickets, frogs and other minor dignitaries of a woodland night. She hoped the interruption was slight enough to escape the notice of more sinister creatures. With luck, this little hiatus in woodland conversation would escape detection in the sighing wind, or would be attributed to the passing of a neighborhood predator, and deemed unworthy of notice. Within the hour, as the light grew to day, the tide would rise, the wind would turn landward, and the water would roll up from the river's mouth past the beach near her tree to the salt marshes beyond. Her footprints would disappear, and she could sleep until night fall.
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