How Does The Crow Solve The Problem Of Scarce Water In The Story?

While I was on vacation with my parents, we stood on the deck overlooking the sea when my father suddenly asked, "Mother duck says quack, quack, quack, quack. But?" I was about to reply, "Only four little ducks came back," when he kicked me into the water. "What's taking you so long to finish a song? Are you cognitively arrested or what?" he barked. Cold water filled my lungs like lead as I bobbed in the waves. "Help me, Dad! I can't swim!" My mother told the captain to steer the superyacht away instead. "Then stay in the water a little longer. Self-preservation may finally make you learn to swim. That's what you need. Real grit and adversity to unlock your potential." I flailed my arms and fought to stay afloat, but panic took over. My right leg cramped and refused to move. I could only watch the superyacht fade into the horizon. I drifted for a while before I could catch up with my parents' superyacht. I wished I could tell them how many ducks came back, but they would never hear my voice again.

I was the Peacock Princess. On the day I came of age, suitors from every corner of the clan gathered, all eager to win my hand. I chose Silvan, the noble Green Peacock, believing him to be the finest of them all. But after our marriage, I gave birth to a third-tier White Peacock. When Silvan saw the child, his face twisted with fury. He snatched the baby from my arms, killing it in one brutal motion. In his rage, he attacked me, ripping me apart from neck to feather, and tossed my remains to the wild beasts for their feast. Meanwhile, my elder sister, who married a second-tier Blue Peacock, gave birth to a rare and magnificent Purple Peacock. Her husband was crowned the new King of All Birds because of their child. But when I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the day I had first chosen Silvan. This time, he publicly rejected me, turning to my sister instead, convinced that marrying her would bring him the coveted Purple Peacock. I knew then that he had also been reborn. He believed he could change his fate and father a Purple Peacock with her. But in this lifetime, he wouldn't even be able to produce the humblest Black Peacock.

It is the third year of the apocalypse. All water sources have been thoroughly polluted, making even a single bottle of clean water extremely rare. Every base has to send out search teams to find new water sources for all. My husband, Jasper Curran, is a geologist, and so, he is able to locate water sources that are still pure and unpolluted. However, when someone holds a knife to my throat for the last bottle of water—thinking that he will do anything to stop them—he hands the only bottle of clean water to Avery Grayson, the person who claimed she was my parents' real daughter instead of me. "Ave is thirsty. She's been suffering since she was little and she even had her parents taken by you, Arianne Grayson," Jasper says. "Just let her have the water." Jasper's expression is too calm and collected, as if my life is not on the line because of him. "They're just trying to scare you. You've enjoyed so many years of being spoiled with a luxurious lifestyle anyway. So what if you get bullied a little?" The people then kick me to the ground in a fit of rage as I watch Jasper huddle Avery into his arms and disappear into the desert. I get beaten up so hard that my chapped lips crack and start bleeding once again. I look at the menacing faces around me and quickly exclaim, "Wait, wait! I can help you find clean water too!"

My fated mate, Warren, heir to the Alpha of the Moonwatch Pack, was struck by a curse that left his wolf spirit broken. At the price of burning away my own wolf spirit, I earned an ancient pack prophecies. To lift his curse, I had to dance at the edge of the Moonlight Spring on every full moon, until the water of the spring came to a boil. So month after month, I sacrificed up my wolf spirit and danced the Moon Goddess's sacred rite. All I wanted was for the spring to boil, so he could take his place as Alpha and never be looked down on again. But I danced fifty-nine times, until my wolf spirit was nearly in pieces, and the water never so much as simmered. The night before the sixtieth full moon, I caught him drinking a potion Maya had slipped into his hand. Maya was my aunt's daughter. She was also Warren's first love. Right then, she was curled sweetly against his chest. "Warren, you know there's nothing wrong with your wolf spirit. The prophecy Ella bled for was never going to work. But you keep faking it with the dark-magic potion I make for you. Are you doing all this to get even for me?" Warren's voice was flat. "She took your place. She deserves to pay for it." "Once the pack sees how useless your fated mate really is, I can marry you and no one will say a word against it." Five years and fifty-nine dances of sacrifice, and all of it, from beginning to end, had been a lie. The Moonlight Spring of the Moonwatch Pack was never going to boil for me. I was done clinging to him. My mother was gravely ill, and her one regret was that she'd never see me settle down. If his heart already belonged to someone else, then I would just have to find myself a new mate.

There was a river that ran through our village. According to the legend, a river god dwelled in its depths, and every month on the 15th, the village had to send a young woman to enter the water and serve him. At first, everything seemed normal. After their service to the river god, the women would return to shore, go home, and eventually marry and start families. But this year, the peace was shattered. Every woman who spent the night with the river god turned up dead, their naked bodies floating to the surface. I secretly watched as they retrieved the corpses twice. The evidence of the violation was horrific. This month, I was selected. I had been chosen to marry the river god.

After dinner with my college roommates at a restaurant in the Old Harbor district, the rain came down hard without warning. We huddled under the awning, pulling our coats tight, calling our boyfriends one by one.My friend Maya nudged my shoulder with a grin. "Your guy chased you so hard the entire school knew about it. He'll definitely be the first one here." "Right? Four years of college. Hot coffee delivered to your door on rainy days, your bike path shoveled clean in the snow, and whenever you didn't feel like getting up for class, he'd organize the professor's lecture notes and send them straight to your inbox." "That year you had your senior exhibition and came down with a high fever, he stayed with you in the studio for three days. Made you soup, fixed your models, stayed up so late his eyes were bloodshot. Evelyn, I honestly thought you'd found yourself a fairy-tale prince." They chattered on about my love life. Before long, their boyfriends all showed up with umbrellas. When they glanced my way, their expressions faltered. "How come Noah isn't here yet? Isn't your apartment just across the river?" I smiled and held up my phone. "He said something came up at the office." Maya asked her boyfriend to drop me off first. I sat in the back seat, spotted a familiar figure standing outside the pet grooming salon on the corner. He was cradling a silver-gray longhaired cat in his arms. The cat was wrapped in a soft little wool blanket. He was shielding even its ear tips, terrified of letting a single drop of rain touch it. It was Noah. The cat in his arms belonged to his childhood neighbor, Selena. This wasn't the first time Noah had left me stranded in the rain for that cat.Another message from Noah. "Babe, the rain's too heavy. Wait until it lets up and then call a car home. Don't be stubborn. You won't get wet that way." What he didn't know was that from the day Selena moved to this city last year, I had already been soaked through.