A Slave to Water
an excerpt

Rosalind had become completely unhinged before she got home. Or at least, that was the medical term she used to describe it. The maids, what few were left, were giggling about it in the hallway.
“Told him to get out.” One said
“Told him, if she hadn’t divorced him already, she would right then, just to hurt him the way that he had hurt her.” Laurel added, as she scooted the others from the hall and motioned Gwen into the suite, before she discretely left.
Rho was in a fine state; shoving clothes and what-have-you into a sack, tears running down her mottled face.
“Stress getting to you?” Gwen leaned against the wall to watch.
“No!”
“Oh. See, when I see you packing like that, I assume you’re running away again. And you only run away when things aren’t going the way you want, and you need time to clear your head, but instead of saying ‘hey, I need time to think’, the next thing we know you’re packing your things to go hitchhiking to Nova Scotia to join a commune.”
Rho bristled with fury.
“If I didn’t know better, I would say Dorian told you some uncomfortable truth, and instead of dealing with it…”
“STOP trying to psychoanalyze me!”
“…You’re taking it out on your friends like you always do. Why are you so angry? Feeling frustrated? Feeling shut-in?”
“Shut up!”
“Lets go spar.”
Rosalind spun on her heel and stalked from the room.
“He still loves you, y’know.”
“No! Do you know what he…? Never mind. Just never mind.”
Gwen polished her nails on her shirt. “For a moment there, I thought we were going to have a break through. For a moment, you actually almost said what was on your mind.”
“Gwendolyn, please don’t psychoanalyze me. You’re right; I am angry. I was about to run away again. Lets not go there, OK?”
“Back when we first got here, when Zephon and I were talking about Ophir of all things, he said that the hardest part for those that… whatever it is that they do that makes them…like that.” Even pragmatic Gwen shied away from the word ‘zombie’. ”Was that everyone they ever loved in life rejected them after it happened. That by becoming undead, somehow…”
Rosalind dropped a string of guild-rings with a clatter. “Undead? He was so cold…” Her eyes were wide with surprise. “Like a vampire? He’s dead, like a vampire?”
“I would say, more like a lich…like Ophir”
Her eyes were distant, “I’ve seen Ophir drink blood…”
“Snap out of it. All the Tartars drink horse-blood; its one way to stay alive in the winter. And it psychs the Cyntherians out, no end. You were so out-of-it, you didn’t notice Dorian looked different?”
“He shaved his mustache.”
“He grew a foot taller, and his hair goes down to his butt.”
“Dorian’s dead.” Her eyes began to leak tears.
“You didn’t know.”
She shook her head. “He came to confess. Said he was leaving. It didn’t make any sense.” She fingered the guild coins in her hand, weaving the string in and out of the holes. They clinked softly with a bell-like sound. Gwen focused on the sound, knowing what it might mean someday for her son. He would be a slave to the sound of water-quarters; meting out the energy of his own life, his own soul, one cup of water at a time, until he was all shriveled and used and as blind as the rest of them.