And our fingertips touched, briefly, fleetingly, even as the thing’s head swooped in and she was jerked beneath the surface—brutally, completely. Even as she looked at me and seemed almost to have an epiphany, a kind of spiritual revelation, before vanishing into the murk and exploding back up again, grunting and hyperventilating, unable to get any air, bleeding from her nose and mouth. At which the animal swung its head away and she bobbed over like a top, like a buoy, her face half-submerged, her visible eye blinking, once, twice, before glazing over and just staring, blankly. Devoid.
And then I stood but did not leave, looking at her head and shoulders—at her hovering, ink-black hair—as the allosaurus consumed something and the strange lights shone down—eerily, subliminally, stoically
