The Fox at Mirror Lake

Sarah stood at the edge of Mirror Lake, her fingers tangling in the wind-whipped strands of her hair. Three weeks since Daniel left, and she'd stopped brushing it somewhere around day five. The gray at her temples had spread like frost, a silver mapping of everything she'd survived.

A movement in the cattails caught her eye. A fox — a sleek russet male with eyes like old amber — emerged from the shadows, carrying something in its jaws. Sarah held her breath as it approached the water's edge, dropping its prize: a half-eaten rabbit, already stiff with death. The fox drank, its pink tongue lapping at the dark surface, then looked directly at her with unsettling intelligence.

"You don't care about being alone, do you?" she whispered.

The fox tilted its head, then slipped away without a sound.

Sarah had come here because this was where Daniel had proposed, where the water had caught the August sunset like spilled gold. Now, in November's gray dawn, the lake looked different — colder, honest. The water reflected nothing but the skeletal trees and her own fractured image.

She kneeled, watching her reflection ripple and distort. Her hair floated around her face like seaweed. For three weeks she'd been drowning in the what-ifs and if-onlys, but something shifted as the fox's amber eyes lingered in her memory. Wild things didn't question their survival. They simply lived.

Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out the hair tie she'd been carrying since Daniel left. She gathered her tangled hair, bound it back, and stood up. The water kept moving, indifferent and constant. Somewhere in the woods, the fox was hunting.

She would be too.