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We left the hotel, where the warmth had been in the fire, the fire in our eyes, and went outside to walk to the perched lake. These things, these mythic local things, sound strange when you write them. Both weirder and less weird than they are. After all, can a lake perch? And surely a pool only some 30 metres in diameter can not rightfully be called a lake? Whatever the case, the name is surely not the original, which would most likely have come with a story, and with a living ssss, some onsounding life-full sussurus lingo whose provenance could be found in the teeming black water.