Prey
It may have been as summer ended with flames of gold, red, and luminous salmon pink, intoxicating in brilliance. Pungent woodsmoke tantalizing senses, and a sudden chill that foreshadowed winter as night fell, dusky and beautiful. Or maybe snow piled high at roadsides, dark descending early. The wind a moan through streets silent but for the squeak and crunch of footsteps, the long northern winter underway. Perhaps rivulets ran through cracks and gullies, washing away the detritus of winter, bubbling, gurgling, singing a spring song. When tree limbs grew supple, and life sprang from the soil with green sprouts and insects stirring, and the nights shortening. I don't know when, but this is what I do know. A young woman rode a bus one night in Thunder Bay. She was at college. Already she had beaten many odds, graduated public school, and high school too, which had meant leaving her home community, hundreds of kilometres away. She carried within her strength of spirit, a wi