My visit here had been enlightening to say the least.  And again, I find myself slipping into the cool aqua.  This time it is different.  The waters do not stir the creature awake.  There is no hunger churring within my stomach.  No lust boiling from deep within.  What has changed within me I wonder...

My pace down the channel is leisurely.  I spend most my time looking at the world around me with a new sort of appreciation.  The water droplets trickle down my scales from my drenched forelock.  Each drip a perfect pitched key as it returns to its source.  My ebony ear flickers at each note.

I curl around a bend in the rivers flow.  The water begins to quicken for a moment over some rocky shallow falls before spilling into a stagnant pool.  I begin to float lazily, the birds chirping in the treetops of the forest along the shores.  There is a sudden crack of twig, and my head turns slowly.  I see a spotted fawn and its mother drinking at the water's edge.  I smile as I watch them, noticing only now my reflection and within it the lack of dagger like teeth.  If not for my scales and slitted eyes, I'd have thought I was not looking at myself.  It was me though, just an earlier, less cryptic version.

Continuing along I now lower my face into the water.  Schools of fish gather alongside me.  They must not sense the animalistic darkness I held within.  The thing I had worked so long and hard to control.  Could it be that I have conquered my demons after all?