Delilah’s Song #5

FORAGING DOWN RIVER FROM THEIR MAKESHIFT camp, Delilah gathered black wild bramble berries from a tangled thicket near the water’s edge, piling the delicate fruit into a crude bark cone. Her head snapping up, alert, when she heard muted voices. Men’s guttural voices, arguing. There was a harsh barked laugh followed by a shrill shriek of a woman, which was quickly cut off by other indistinct muffled sounds. A horse whinnied across the river, to her left. Someone else was making camp for the night. Two men, possibly more, and certainly one woman. Abandoning the fruit at the base of a tree, Delilah crouched down and inched her way through the dense undergrowth to her left, edging toward the river, in order to get…