By the lake

Nature was showing off that day. The sky was bluer than a Robin's egg with nary a cloud to mar it. The lake was a brilliant mirror of the sky, the sun, the trees whose leaves rustled softly in the warm breeze. Birdsong filled the air. The ground was soft and warm beneath her back.

The hands around her neck were not.

"Please, stop," she wheezed.

"No talking, " he responded.

"Please, I'm sorry..."

"Of course you are. Now. Too late," he said in a singsong-y voice at odds with his size. Well, and with his actions one might say.

He squeezed until she stopped moving.

Then he sat back against a tree and listened to the birdsong and watched the dragonflies flit across the lake.