...just swept across the border and all the way to the plaza, its mellow waves foaming at the great stairs. "An eager tide", they said. "A blockage must've loosened upstream"... But I beg to differ. The water tastes different. It whips against our outer walls, rising... during Queen Pikemead's rule, this would've never happened. Our kingdom erodes under Gormander... we've become weak.

As a lass, the reflection greeting me each morn' on the river's surface seemed so far away. I was tiny then. Lowered my body, and stretched out my arms to feel the ever-pleasant flow as people passed me by. I could barely reach the bottom.

My tired mirror image now rises closer each day. The water swirls with menace. Perhaps we will soon all fall into her cold embrace. "Just sell your house and move", they said. Sell it to whom? All the others wish to flee as well!