The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Herself 
by Kathryn Ptacek 

The water cleaves in front of her as she glides along sinuously.

The cool wetness caresses her skin, her scales, and she lowers her head to the water and is refreshed.

She glances up at the sky … the russets and golds paint a dying day, and she knows she doesn’t have much time. Minutes perhaps. Calling for their mates, birds rise from the lake and head to the tall trees surrounding the lake. They will nest there for the night, and she envies them.

Mist rises above the water, giving the lake an eerie silvery look, and she heads toward the ghostly veil, feels its gentle fingers on her.

At sunset, everything changes, and she leaves behind her water world to walk once more on the land, and she wishes she could change it.

But she can’t.

Not yet. Not now. Maybe never.

It’s always been thus … she was born this way, a child of water and land, of both, but not wholly of either … Her mother was the same; her father, she doesn’t remember.

She takes a deep breath and rolls over to allow the last rays of the sun to warm her breasts and stomach, to warm the scales that form her curving tail.

She sighs and dives deep, scaring the few fish remaining in the lake, gliding over the pale blue stones lining the lake floor. And when she finally bursts out of the water, droplets spraying everywhere, she finds the sun’s light is gone, and darkness is creeping into the forest and the lake. And she begins to feel the change. It is never easy, never without pain, and she grits her teeth as she heads for the shore, reluctantly, and by the time she had reached land, the scales are gone, and she climbs awkwardly out of the water. Only in the water is she graceful.

Near the car sits her assistant, patiently waiting, as he has done for hours, as he does each day.

Not speaking, he hands her a large towel so she can dry herself, and she dresses quickly in the clothes he’s laid out for her.

She walks, her human limbs still cumbersome, to the driver’s side and slides in, all too aware of the uncomfortable leather, the unwelcome smell of metal, the humanness of it all. Her assistant sits in the passenger seat and begins to talk in a low voice, quickly bringing her up to date on the news that she missed during the day, the transactions that await her, the meetings that must take place now that it’s night, and all she can think of is dawn when she returns to the lake and her natural self..

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Fiction © Copyright Kathryn Ptacek
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com