Well, I was going to give you an excerpt from Book 2, but my characters had other plans!  Everyone insisted on being introduced– it’s only fair, after all, since we’re talking about them.

This is a drawing of the River Goddess.  She felt that the best way to introduce herself was to give you a bit of her first conversation with Alyssa:

One afternoon, hurrying home down the arroyo, Alyssa noticed
something strange, close to the ground near the right bank. It was near
sunset and she didn’t want to stay much longer in the arroyo but her
curiosity pulled her toward an oddly shaped root. She squatted down
to examine it better and noticed that it looked almost as if it had legs
growing out of the sand, and a long, twisted body. There were little
branches at the top of it that seemed to her like outstretched arms