The Thing makes whole cityscapes of water splash up around it, as it moves the corpulent blue quay of its bulk over to the river's edge.  It is flailing now, faltering - all those cabled steel muscles unhooking bloodless from the tonnage of its bones, all that fat starting to feel as heavy as it is.  And so it is lashing out, trying to prove its strength by making everything yield around it.<br/><br/>It stomps and beats the mud of the lake into a snotty froth.  The great furnace of its breath draws in guttering gusts and leaks them out its gaping jaws.  Its head swivels in wonder.  The Thing stumbles longer, breathes shorter.  Snot runs in braids of red and yellow from its cavernous nostrils, and from the abyssal gape of its gorge, a low and mournful whine quests out.<br/><br/>The Thing staggers to the shore.  Its thrashing arm can now only sluggishly mill the water as curtains upon ribboned curtains of its black blood ooze from under its arm.  Behind it, a black pool the size of a house spreads its shadow in the lagoon.<br/><br/>The Thing heaves a sad cry. It bubbles it through lips flecked with gummy mess of kidney bits and intestine.  It rolls its sightless eyes.<br/><br/>Fern's dagger takes them apart like apples.<br/><br/>She chops and chops, chipping away its face in a frenzy.  The Thing gives all the resistance of a block of clay; it just shambles to the shore, gripping her tight - still claiming her in its dull, animal acquisitiveness as she takes a chunk of cheek off the bone, slits a nostril, exhumes wormy masses of vitreous humor from its eyes.<br/><br/>Finally, Fern gouges something pulpy and cartilaginous deep behind an eyeball; something that clicks as she hits it.  The dagger rebounds, the tip broken off.  The Thing shudders like an epileptic infant.<br/><br/>It grasps her tighter.  Releases its bowels.  And topples on its face on the very shore of the green field.<br/><br/>Beautiful things take up song in the endless forest, and fragrances that bring the breast to a fever of pleasure encircle the massive stink of the Thing.