Running Water

"Turns out not all water in this place wants something from you. Some of it just flows past, takes what you're willing to give, and keeps moving. That's a kindness I wasn't expecting."

The walk to the lagoon was a special kind of torture.

My arms burned with the weight of the laundry I carried, muscles screaming their displeasure at being asked to support what felt like half a wardrobe's worth of dirty fabric. The pile shifted constantly, threatening to topple with every uneven step, and I found myself clutching at rogue socks and escaping shirtsleeves with fingers that had long since gone numb.

But the physical discomfort was nothing compared to what was happening inside my head.

Karen walked ahead of me, her long strides eating up the distance with an efficiency that left me struggling to keep pace. She hadn't spoken since we'd left camp, hadn't turned around to check on my progress, hadn't offered any of the small talk that might have filled the silence with something other than my own spiralling thoughts.

Does she know?

The question repeated on a loop, a broken record of paranoia that I couldn't switch off. Every step brought me closer to the lagoon — to the rocks where Chris had hit his head, to the water where I'd completed Clive's bargain, to the physical evidence of my crimes that might still be visible if someone knew where to look.

What had Chris told her? He'd claimed to have slipped, according to Karen's explanation the night before. "The clumsy bugger slipped on the rocks." But that was the version shared around the campfire, the public narrative crafted for general consumption. What had he said in private, in the darkness of their shared tent, when it was just the two of them and the truth could be spoken without witnesses?

Nothing, I told myself. He said nothing. If she knew, she wouldn't be casually inviting you on a laundry expedition. She'd be confronting you. Accusing you. Demanding explanations you can't give.

The logic was sound. The logic did nothing to quiet the fear.

My wounded leg had begun to ache with renewed insistence, each step sending pulses of discomfort radiating up through my calf and into my knee. The healing that had happened at the lagoon — that grotesque transaction, that violation exchanged for flesh knitting itself together — seemed to be reaching its limits. Whatever Clive had given me, it wasn't permanent. It wasn't complete.

Nothing in this place ever was.

The dunes rose and fell around us, ochre waves frozen in time, and I focused on the simple mechanics of movement to keep the darker thoughts at bay. Left foot, right foot, don't drop the laundry, don't fall behind, don't think about what happened the last time you were at this lagoon.

It didn't work.

The memories surfaced anyway, bubbling up from whatever cesspool I'd tried to drown them in. Chris's body above me in the water. The taste of him. The sound he'd made when he hit his head, that wet crack that still echoed through my nightmares. My hand wrapped around him while he lay unconscious, stroking, finishing what Clive had demanded—

I stumbled.

The laundry avalanched, clothes cascading from my arms onto the sand in a dirty waterfall of fabric. I went down with them, my knee striking the ground hard enough to send a fresh jolt of pain through my already-abused leg.

"Fuck," I muttered, scrambling to gather the scattered garments before they could absorb too much dust.

Karen had stopped, turning to watch me with an expression I couldn't read. "You alright?"

"Fine," I said, the word automatic, meaningless. "Just lost my grip."

She didn't offer to help. Didn't close the distance between us or reach for any of the clothes that had landed at her feet. She just stood there, watching, waiting for me to collect myself and continue.

I wondered if that was deliberate. Wondered if she was testing me somehow, measuring my reactions, cataloguing data for an interrogation that would come later.

The paranoia was exhausting.

I gathered the laundry with movements that bordered on frantic, stuffing shirts and trousers into the pile without regard for the sand now clinging to their fabric. Karen was right about one thing — everything in this camp needed washing. Including, especially, the clothes I'd just dropped in the dust.

We resumed walking.

The lagoon appeared on the horizon sooner than I'd hoped, its crystal surface glinting in the morning sun like a promise or a trap. The sight of it sent a cold finger tracing down my spine, and I had to consciously prevent my feet from slowing, from finding excuses to delay the arrival I'd been dreading since Karen first mentioned our destination.

Karen led us to the edge of the water, choosing a stretch of rocky shoreline that offered flat surfaces for laying clothes to dry. My stomach dropped as I recognised the specific configuration of stones, the particular arrangement of boulders that surrounded this section of the lagoon.

This was the spot.

The exact fucking spot where Chris had cracked his head against the rock. Where I'd knelt beside his unconscious body and done things that would haunt me until I died. Where Clive's voice had whispered encouragement while I violated a man who'd only come to help me.

Does she know? The question screamed through my skull with renewed urgency. Is that why she chose this place? Is this some kind of test, some way of seeing if I'll confess?

I scanned the rocks for evidence — bloodstains, disturbed dust, any trace of what had transpired here just yesterday. But the stone was clean, washed by whatever forces maintained this impossible landscape, revealing nothing of the violence it had witnessed.

"Your leg is bleeding again."

Karen's voice broke through my spiral, her hand coming to rest on my shoulder with a weight that made me flinch. I'd fumbled with the clothes again, dropped several items onto the rocky ground without noticing, my attention so consumed by memory and fear that my body had stopped cooperating with basic tasks.

I looked down.

She was right. Blood had begun seeping through my trouser leg, a dark stain spreading across the fabric with the slow inevitability of a truth that refuses to stay buried. The wound had reopened — probably during the walk, probably when I'd fallen, probably because nothing in this fucking dimension would let me heal properly without extracting some terrible price.

Not this shit again.

The thought carried more weariness than frustration. I didn't have the energy for Clive's games. Didn't have the reserves to negotiate with an ancient entity that lived inside my head and manipulated my body for purposes I still didn't understand. All I wanted was for my leg to work, for the bleeding to stop, for something in my life to be simple and straightforward and free from supernatural complications.

"It's starting to throb now," I told Karen, releasing the clothes and letting them tumble onto a large flat rock beside her pile.

The admission felt like defeat. Another acknowledgment that my body was failing, that I couldn't even complete basic tasks without something going wrong.

Karen's brow furrowed, her expression shifting through calculations I couldn't follow. I watched her think, watched her weigh options and possibilities, and felt the dread building in my chest as I anticipated what she might suggest.

The lagoon. She was going to tell me to use the lagoon. To step into that water, to feel its influence crawling through my nervous system, to submit once again to sensations I couldn't control and didn't want to experience.

"Look," she said finally, her voice carrying a note of something that might have been concern or might have been pragmatism. "Why don't you go and get your leg cleaned up and put some more river water on it? I can take care of the washing."

The relief hit me so hard I nearly staggered.

River water. Not the lagoon. She was sending me to the river — to the other water source, the one that flowed rather than pooled, the one that might not carry the same terrible properties as the crystal depths that stretched before us.

But even as the relief washed through me, suspicion followed close behind. Karen knew about the lagoon's healing properties. Everyone in camp did, after Glenda had used it to treat my wounds. So why would she suggest the river instead? Unless...

The question escaped before I could stop it, my surprise overriding my better judgement. "Not the lagoon water?"

Karen's response carried an edge of practical irritation that cut through my paranoia like a knife. "I can't very well be washing clothes in water that you're polluting with your blood, can I?"

The logic was so simple, so mundane, so completely devoid of ulterior motive that I almost laughed. Of course she didn't want blood in the wash water. Of course that was the reason. Not suspicion, not accusation, not some elaborate trap designed to catch me in a confession.

Just basic hygiene.

I managed to keep my composure, strangling the inappropriate amusement before it could escape. "That is very true."

"It's fine, I've got this," Karen assured me, nodding with the kind of determination that suggested she'd already moved on to planning her approach to the laundry. "But if you could come back later and help me bring the washing back to camp, that'd be really helpful."

"Of course," I agreed, grateful beyond words for the reprieve I'd been granted.

An excuse to leave. Permission to escape this place, these rocks, this water that held memories I couldn't bear to confront. Karen was offering me an out, and I was going to take it with both hands.

"Thanks, Kain," she said, already turning her attention to the pile of clothes, her hands beginning to sort through the tangled garments.

I didn't waste time with further pleasantries.

My feet carried me away from the lagoon with more speed than my wounded leg should have allowed, urgency overriding pain in the desperate need to put distance between myself and that place. The release of pressure found an embarrassing outlet — a sound that emerged from my body with mortifying volume, evidence of how tightly I'd been clenched during the entire walk.

I didn't dare look back to see if Karen had heard.

My cheeks burned with a mixture of embarrassment and relief as I crested the first dune, putting the lagoon out of sight behind me. A smile crossed my lips — tentative, unexpected, the first genuine expression of anything resembling lightness since... since before. Since the attack, since Clive's whispers, since I'd become the monster I couldn't recognise in the mirror. That is, if we actually had a mirror.

The chuckle that escaped was soft, almost surprised by its own existence.

I was getting away. From the lagoon, from Karen's potential questions, from the scene of my crimes. The river waited ahead, offering healing without the strings attached, and for just a moment — one fleeting, precious moment — I allowed myself to feel something other than guilt and fear.

The river greeted me with a sound I'd almost forgotten existed — the rush and tumble of water over stones, a constant murmur that seemed to speak of movement and change and the simple physics of liquid seeking lower ground.

I'd put as much distance as I could between myself and the lagoon before turning to follow the waterway back toward camp.

My leg demanded attention with increasing urgency, the throb having graduated to a steady pulse of pain that matched my heartbeat. I scanned the riverbank for a suitable spot, somewhere I could tend to the wound without worrying about being observed, without having to explain or justify or perform for an audience that might judge what they saw.

The rushing water called to me, promising relief and cleansing. After the horrors of the lagoon, the simple innocence of a river felt like sanctuary.

I found a secluded stretch where the bank curved inward, creating a small alcove hidden from casual observation. The rocks here were smooth, and I lowered myself onto one that jutted out over the flow.

Carefully, gingerly, I rolled up my trouser leg and immersed the wound in the cool current.

The relief was immediate.

Cold water enveloped my calf, rushing over the torn flesh with a gentle insistence that seemed to wash away more than just blood and dirt. The throbbing pain that had been building throughout the morning dulled to something manageable, the constant screaming of damaged nerves fading to a murmur I could almost ignore.

And there was something else.

A familiar zing of pleasure — faint, ghostly, an echo of the overwhelming sensations the lagoon had forced through my body. It tickled along my nerves, whispered through my blood, a reminder that all water in this dimension carried some trace of whatever power Clive wielded. But it was manageable. Bearable. A pale shadow of the intensity that had unmade me at the lagoon, easy to acknowledge and easier to set aside.

I sat there, letting the river work its magic, and allowed myself to actually look at my leg for the first time since everything had gone wrong.

The wound was... better.

Not healed — not completely, not the way Clive's bargain had promised — but improved. The bleeding that had alarmed Karen seemed to have stopped, the edges of the gash looking cleaner than they had before. And there, around the margins of the injury, I could see the first signs of healthy tissue forming. Pink flesh where there had been raw red. Edges that were beginning to knit rather than gape.

The stitches Glenda had placed — back when I'd been unconscious, back when she'd apparently worked through the night to save my leg — were holding. Whatever surgical skill she possessed, whatever techniques she'd employed in those desperate hours, they were doing their job. The sutures pulled the flesh together as they should, creating the framework for healing that my body was finally starting to achieve.

I had no memory of Glenda's work. Couldn't recall the needle entering my skin, the thread pulling tissue together, the careful attention of a doctor fighting to preserve what the shadow panther had tried to destroy. But the evidence was there, written in the pattern of stitches that marked my calf like a road map of survival.

Given time and proper care, I thought, this might actually heal.

The realisation brought a small smile to my face — tentative, fragile, easily shattered by any of the thousand things that could still go wrong. But it was hope, genuine hope, the first I'd felt since Clive had revealed its true nature and the scope of the manipulation I'd been subjected to.

I didn't need the lagoon.

The thought crystallised with a clarity that felt almost revolutionary. The river could do this. Clean water, regularly applied, proper rest and attention — these were the things that would save my leg. Not bargains with ancient entities. Not violations of unconscious men. Not the surrender of my dignity and my morals to forces that saw me as nothing more than a tool to be used.

The river flowed past my wound, carrying away blood and fear and a fraction of the guilt that had been weighing me down. I watched it go, watched the current take what I was willing to give, and felt something loosen in my chest.

Not forgiveness. I didn't deserve that, and might never earn it.

But maybe — just maybe — survival that didn't require me to become something I couldn't live with.

I sat there longer than I needed to, letting the water's song wash over me, letting the cool embrace of the current remind me what it felt like to simply exist without crisis or demand or the constant pressure of impossible choices.

The sun moved across the sky. The river continued its eternal journey toward wherever rivers went in this dimension. And I breathed — really breathed, deep and slow and almost peaceful — for the first time since I'd arrived in Clivilius.

It couldn't last.

Nothing good in this place ever did.