CHAPTER 10 She had lain here for over a month. Here since the last time she had fed. Now she slowly digested that meal for the brood that grew and shifted occasionally in her abdomen. In all this time she had not moved save for the few exceptions when another inhabitant of the massive lake had examined her huge frame, thinking she were dead and looking for an easy meal. They were rewarded with a twitch of muscle or the swing of her massive head and the snap of jaws that would send them hurrying away, back into the depths and the safety of the darkness. Other than this, she had no reason to move. She had no natural enemies except others of her own kind—but now something troubled her. She sensed something. A shock wave. A fleeting change in the water pressure that swept along her body and dislodged some of the silt that had deposited on her length as she had remained here motionless. With two strokes of her massive tail, she rose off the mud bed and emerged like a ghost from the gloom, the layer of filth on her back falling away like a shroud.
