Sharp, harsh lines for the fox, as if it or the person drawing it were cruel. Or in pain. Or angry. Or maybe you don’t know anything from the drawing. The emptiness in your stomach, and you don’t know where the feeling comes from, that you’ve been here before. Passed by the journal. Never saw it, distracted by hunger or sickness or how the plastic-strewn shore has become white noise, part of the backdrop to the world.

Overwhelmed, now on one knee, mush against your jeans. Rough. The journal rough in your hand. Sensing a vastness, as if something has entered the forest that doesn’t belong. Something dangerous.

Where could it come from? Beyond the river and the forest lies the old factory. The smokestacks are just faint lines in the night, but their sacrifice billows bright and narrow and tall as if it were daytime.

A swirl of movement in the water brings you back from floating across the forest, toward the factory. A glint, a gleam, a glimmer. You shine your flashlight out across something smooth and long and (you think) light green.

It feels the light upon it, flinches, turns long enough to reveal large, luminous eyes. A blunt snout. Vaguely reptilian, yet not. About the size of a river otter. Moving fast through the bobbing garbage and reeds.

A gasp. You, gasping, startled.

The creature dives. The splash has depth, reach, certainty. The circles spreading from the absence tell you little. Die out before they reach the shore and yet it feels as if, invisible, they pass right through you.

You’re north, not south. There should be nothing like that in the river. The air’s already crisp, the trees pretending to flake leaves. Winters are hotter than before, but, still, how could such a thing survive here?

With the flashlight off, the water’s somehow clearer, more visible. A latticework of light shadows, the trees beyond like figures standing in judgment. You didn’t mean to blind the creature. Whatever it was. You don’t like to cause discomfort to living things. Not if you can help it. Too many things cause discomfort to you.

The sound of gunfire somewhere back in town galvanizes you. Hide the journal under your shawl. Retreat the fifty yards or so to your shelter inside the tunnel beneath the bridge leading out of town. Join the hunched sleeping shapes there, the humid pulse of body heat. Just the one sentry on duty, ramshackle as you all are. A man who has insomnia. Gaunt. Biblical. Nods at you. Stares back out into the night. Still not quite enough to light a fire in the rusted barrel beside him.