081413 #worm There he was, in the pool at the top, as good as already dead. Half naked, he floated supine in the pool. A silly grin taunted his desperate face. He would have stayed in there forever, circling troutlike in the square, blue pool. Lazily he would have spun about, in the realm of pure potential, never needing to close his mouth, nor open it to scream. Would he have died? or lived? Would it have made any difference, ultimately, if you and the willow-haired girl--guided him? If you directed his flow, the way one might nudge a soggy stick, stuck in a bend in the river, out of its beaver trap, just so you could watch it flow into a new, wide arc, past the fast part of the stream, orient itself effortlessly, and sail away? She held on to you; you pushed him with your foot. He plunged. The coiling water whisked him straight down, then whipped him around a curve to the right, and--just like that--you never saw him again.