A short I rewrote is a different POV from an excerpt for school.

The clear water of the Hudson stared back at me, blue like the sky. My relative rested in my cottage, perhaps, reading a fantasy volume to distract his overly active mind. The outbreak of Cholera was distressing to both mine and his sanity. Though he was digesting the news with fear interlinked in his thoughts. While I took the information with a new sense of caution. It seems that his every waking thought revolves around the deaths...

I entered the cottage full of antiques I had collected throughout my lifetime: old books, furniture, and trinkets lined the walls. My favorite volume sat on a designated shelf in the parlor. I could see my relative's shadowed figure by the window.

"Hot day?" my relative asked.

I nodded in confirmation, slipping onto the armchair opposite of him.

My relative's eyes skimmed over the page some twenty times before I found it in myself to confront him. "Do you need anything?"

He answered with a simple no.

"Are you sure?"

He hesitated. "I saw something."

"What?" I leaned closer.

"A monster."

"Really?" I raised a brow.

Perhaps my dear relative was confused; I have not seen bigfoot yet.

"It was large, thick like an elephant, and had shaggy black hair and metal scales!"

I couldn't restrain my laughter but returned to nonchalance upon seeing my relative's face.

"There it is now!" he exclaimed.

I turned eagerly, noting the presence of an insect. "What?"

My relative jabbered on while I pulled my favorite volume from the shelf that contained synopses of Natural History. I read a passage from the book on the genus Sphinx, family Crepuscularia of the order Lepidoptera of the class of Insecta. I watched, amused at the expressions overtaking his face.