Too soon, the girl began to jump. Kyo felt the distinct urge to look away, as if watching her would somehow weigh her down. But he didn't dare move his eyes. If she fell he would have to follow immediately after, even if his poor swimming meant he went down along with her. He could not leave her alone in the water.
Could not leave. The last he had seen his boy was on this side of the river. Not the other. Suddenly the urge to look away --to look for something, someone else-- grew stronger. He folded a hand into a restraining fist and slopped his way down the muddy, rocky bank. Now he would have to go back up the slippery slope to get a good look around at the surrounding grass. It was better to focus on the girl. Focus on the river.
Every time she made a new leap his stomach leapt with her, waiting for her to fall. But her feet, this time, were sure enough to handle the jumps, and her hands and knees balanced enough to scoot her along the curve of the fallen log. The sight of that great dead tree reminded him again of the past, again of his boy. Of their separation. Before the need to turn back and search for his lost one was too great, he shucked his pants, molded them into a blob of material, and then shifted in a bright flickering of light that went perfectly with the glance of the sun off the rushing river.
Now he was a coyote, picking up the balled pants in his mouth. Though he was not precisely clumsy in his human-form, he was less-experienced; most of his life had been spent as an animal. His coyote-form was better, then, for what was needed now. And if he fell in the river, he felt more legs might be better for swimming.
His planned approach to crossing was much more like what the girl had done at the end, leaping seamlessly from one to the next in a fast, almost uncontrolled motion. The coyote would jump better --longer-- if he had a run-start. He scrambled back up the wet bank, no doubt brushing his belly against the mud and dirtying his paws, and then trotted back a ways. Before the girl could get too nervous that he had deserted her --before he could desert her in favor of finding his long lost boy-- he turned and started a measured run towards the river and its makeshift bridge.
At the edge of the bank he leapt, and made the first jump easily. Claws clicked against stone, though the sound of it was not audible over the rush of the water below. Without slowing, he moved and leapt to the next stone, skidding a little on mud-slick paws, but he recovered and kept going, picking up speed as he went.
As a coyote he was small compared to the giant water-soaked log; it was wide enough across to fit a human easily, and a coyote was much littler. He loped down the middle of it, the soft wood better for getting a grip, and then braced all four feet at the end and pushed off towards the last rock.
Maybe he was overconfident after clearing the others. His paws hit the stone and he expected no trouble, happy to be near the girl again and have the rest of the river behind him. But he was not paying enough attention, or maybe he was just not as good at balance as he thought. His paws, still covered in mud, hit the wet stone and he was not agile enough to stop himself from sliding right off into open air.
He had been going fast enough that his front hit the opposite bank, but his bottom half landed in the water. It was surprisingly deep and thick, trying to pull him down. His paws scrabbled against the mud, unable to get a grip, and he felt himself sinking lower, splashing around. Fear came, and he worked harder to keep himself up.
A noise soon met his ears. It was nothing like he had ever heard, a sort of beeping-bugling. In the water, something nudged his tail.
His back feet touched against a hard mass that had not been there before. There was an overpowering smell of fish. He risked a look back, and saw something large and scaled and ugly looking back at him with filmy eyes as big, no, bigger than a human's closed fists.
A fish monster, much like the monster bird.
Not thinking, he shifted back to human-form, only wanting to be bigger. Only wanting to be big enough that it might not eat him whole.
Whatever the thing was, it knew he was there and was nudging into him. Kyo dug his fingers into the bank, pulling up only handfuls of muck and sparkling rocks. "Huh-Help!" he puffed up to the girl, and she might have already been helping him for all he knew in his panic. He just wanted out of the river, now!
The fish-thing bumped him again and he beat his feet against its flat face, hoping to poke an eye, maybe get it to retreat. His floundering kicks only seemed to encourage it; now it rushed in with its full bulk, ramming him from behind, wrenching its huge, neckless head up, the thick body bending to accommodate the motion. Suddenly he was not only out of the river, he was propelled from it. He flipped up into the air, knocking into the girl, and they both flew over the edge of the bank and into the grass. They landed in a pile with a whump.
Kyo scrambled up, trying to do too many things at once. He tried to put more distance between him and the river and the thing. He tried to see if the girl was alright since they had crashed together. He tried to wipe the mud from his face-- he was absolutely covered from head to toe. He tried to empty his hands of the rocks and mud that were still clinging to them. Mostly he tried to get a good look at the thing that had thrown him from its river.
By the time he looked, though, it was already sinking back into the churning water, trumpeting once through a blow-hole in its powerful head-- or was that its back? Then it was gone. Kyo remained staring for a moment, and he thought he saw feelers and tusks sticking out of the water, looking respectively like strange rubbery reeds and pieces of submerged rock.
All he could do was turn towards the girl and look at her open-mouthed in shock. What had just happened? What was that creature? Was he still alive? And how?
Gasping, he said something much like the girl had said before: "I don't like river." Then he had to bend forward and gulp breaths and keep his head down for a moment.
OOCKinda long, but long posts are cool, right?
INFOBtw: The fish-thing I imagined sort of had a body-shape like this pic
only it's even bulkier. It has more well-defined scales (which are a more brown-grey color), has four strong fins on the side that are like pseudo-legs that allow it to push and almost walk through heavy mud. It has sort of feeler-things on its nose/snout that it was nudging Kyo with, and rather large, hollowed tusks connected to the sides of its mouth that are upward-pointing. And its eyes are really big. And it has a blowhole because blowholes are fun (it probably breathes air).
Not that I want to be too specific or anything.
And the second part of this info-thing is that I wanted to say I imagined the stones stuck to Kyo's hands as gemstones (perhaps collected and stuck into the mud by the fish-monster, hehe). I imagined them as "small" and numerous (dime-sized diameter at most) and hard and blue like sapphires, but like... real sparkly sorta like how mica is.
