Esme(e) ran.
        She could purchase no more breath but she possessed desire and decision unmatched, a spirit rare indeed her fury and she ran.
        Her dark sodden skirts clung to her legs. Weighted they were in league with knobby claws of roots and branches of drowned trees at river's edge who sought to plead their tales of woe and pure injustice to her, to delay her until it was too late. She forbade them, gave them nothing, but she was too late.
        Edwina!
         The cry could not escape Esme(e) in the winter's dawn, the brink of tide and eddy. She saw a strand of red hair traced across a snag glimpsed a moment only. No 1 could be sure of it except Esme(e).