A River Runs Through

Born of Fire

It is known by many that rivers are a contradiction within themselves.

Water that flowed, clean and fast and fresh, provided sustenance for those that gathered on their banks. Fish swam, flashing their silver scales through the light that filtered in. Deer and rabbits and panthers gathered and took the water into themselves. Bears hunted and trees grew tall and strong, nurtured by them.

The duality of rivers came with the rain.

When water cut too deep, when currents ran too fast and caught the unaware to drown them it was a tragic, necessary risk to take for the water. When the sky opened with its sorrow and wept down upon the land the rivers swelled with tears and rage that tore through the land and ripped asunder those not weary enough to flee and those two stuck in their ancient ways to think to leave.

River were life, and given the chance they were death.

River Kelly, River Quinton, these days, was not quite like those rivers. Mostly she gave out grades, not stabbings. Sometimes she passed a snickers out with them, when her students look a little too tired and a little too stressed.

She wasn't even that big on rivers themselves. Despite her name sake River was and always had been a city girl at heart. Ever since she left small town Oklahoma she had been in city after city. LA, NYC, London, Tokyo, Lagos, she had been everywhere in the world.

That was when she was younger, though.

Things had changed and now she was a professor of philosophy at Columbia. She was even coming up on her tenure, that night in April when the sun sunk low and red on the horizon and the shadows reached for her throat. The sky puffed out small clouds so slim they looked more like smoke than condensation, making hazy shapes for her on her walk home from the subway.

It was quiet, this close to her house. Weirdly quiet.

It was the type of quiet that came on play grounds after dark and long stretches of highway. A quiet that was not meant to exist in a city the size of hers. The hair on the back of her arms started standing on end and River began to walk faster.

Her hand dipped into her purse, wrapping around the hilt of a small knife she kept there. Her fingers brush against her dead phone as well. Dread twists inside of her. The Morrison's dog doesn't bark when she walks past, the light that always flickers when she walks beneath it stays on, glowing gold. A single point of light she stops just shy of.

Her eyes sweep across the street, over cars and cracked cement. Into the alleyways and past garbage cans. The shadows don't move.

She relaxes, slowly, willing her shoulders to stop being so tight. The toes of her shoes barely touch the single circle of light when the air around her moves, wind blowing her short hair. Red bangs flutter in front of her face and for an instant she sees only that.

A gunshot rings out.

River runs. Her heart beats in her ears and she tears down the street, under light and back into darkness. The air tastes cold and she smells the copper before she skids around the corner, so low to the ground her finger tips touch street to steady herself. The sight she somes across makes her stomach turn and her pulse beat hotter.

Three men and one women. Two of the men have one arm each and the third is covering the struggling woman's mouth. A gun smokes in his other hand. The woman isn't going down quietly, she thrashes hard, throwing her self between one man and the other and for a second River thinks she might break free.

Then, the third man drove his fist into the womans stomach and she stopped struggling. Over the mans shoulder the woman made eye contact with River and she was struck still for an instant.