She managed to reach the first of the lakes without much difficulty, keeping much under the shade of the -rarer now- rocks and fir trees. She was put off when she saw the lakes from close.
The surface was covered around the edges with vegetation, as ugly and contorted as the fir trees and the vegetation seemed to be home to some sort of water crawlers, oversized, fat and as ugly as their home. She looked at it with disgust and she hoped that maybe, just maybe the next one, just some hundreds steps away would be better. She advanced following the rock wall, alert to any noise or shadow, but the night was silent like death. She retained from letting out a sigh of frustration when she reached the second lake. Of course it was exactly like the first. Why would it not be! Foolish hope. So it will be this ugly and dirty water or no other, she thought, and she did not afford the luxury to be picky so she returned to practicalities: reaching beyond the thick barrier of repulsive low life and vegetation without entering the water was problematic. She found a solution for that issue fast.
She had, as usual, a long, multipurpose, rope and the water bottle was rather heavy. She tied well an end of the rope to the bottle and she threw it far, in the very middle of the lake, after checking again the surroundings for dangers while shaking out of it the undesirable herbs she collected earlier for a desperate solution. She waited for the air bubbles to settle and pulled out the bottle by the rope, with hope. It still smelled like those herbs but nothing worse than that. She tasted it carefully, barely touching her dry lips with it, careful for any hint of danger from it. She spent enough time in the wilds and trusted her instinct on the safety of food and water, and anyway everything here was a bet the stake of which was life itself. The water was not like a mountain spring but it was probably safe, so she drank enough to quell the thirst and little enough to risk as little as possible. She wanted to throw again the bottle in the water again in order to refill it completely before moving on when she felt to her guts the presence of imminent danger.
It was nothing tht she heard or saw but she knew she was not safe there and she had to vanish from there that instant. She took one more look all around and nothing -but nothing!- would alert her mind and experience, yet she felt the danger was following her, not ahead, and getting nearer. She stood up silently and leaned against the rock wall,each step faster and equally silent. There was no way to go out of the shade of the rock wall without stepping into the light of the full moon, shining atop a cloudless sky. The rock wall was going far more west than she wished for but she had no other choice. The wind suddenly changed direction and the smell that it brought, albeit faint, hit her and made her freeze. Wargs! Not one, a lot of them. There was a warg lair close by, a warg camp, however one wanted to call it, to her south east. They were probably resting and expecting no visitor from between their rather forward camp and their deeper defenses. A calm voice she almost did not feel as her own reassured her from her mind: Go! They will not feel you! Go! The danger is behind you, you have no choice! Go!
