This water before her eyes was so powerful that her insignificance did not even matter. The weather went from worse to whatever. Chira could hardy keep herself on the raft as the wind and the buckling water harshly tried every possible way to push her over board. The strange man held the child within his arms as he held on to one of the broken legs of the boat. The child unaffected by the danger, squealed and looked at everything with excitement. The small crystal on the belt glowing bright with the magic the child could not contain. In the weather where she could not see anything, it was like a beacon.

Then it happened. The man with the animal eyes, suddenly became alert to the surroundings. He peered keenly at the passing savagery, and suddenly kicked on some bypassing rocks. Chira was shocked! Had the man suddenly gone mad?

Chira could hardly see because of the rainy deluge, and the concentration of magic that wove around her, the man seemed to have no such problems. The raft seemed to spin out of control, and Chira was terrified that man had gone mad and was trying to drown them all. Each kick was precise, until with a resounding thump and a loud crack the little table raft lodged itself between rocks, a bit of its side dented and cracked. The river tried to dislodge it immediately and persistently like a six-year-old with a loose tooth that just would not come off.

While she was dazed by the sudden impact, that nearly threw her over board, the man had already leapt out of the raft into the rocks, so lightly, that Chira did not know until she saw the hooded figure and a glowing light of the child as they slowly started to fade into the storm in front of her eyes. She rubbed her eyes in astonishment at the sudden exit of her rescues, her mouth open in astonishment. The word deserters…and traitors formed in her mind. Her original plan had been somewhat similar, with each going their own way, but being left in the middle of goddess knows where, at the mercy of a raging river without her opinion, left her spluttering furiously.

Hey wait!

She furiously yelled into the storm and she hopped out of the raft to follow them. For the man, such a feat had been effortless but for Chira, it was not so graceful or easy. The table wobbled with the raging currents and her awkward balance, before dumping her gracelessly half on the rock and half on the water. She scrambled and got on the rock cursing all the ungrateful and crazy people who get off a raft in the middle of a bloody flood.

She had not taken a few steps when a wooden log that had once been an unfortunate tree rushed toward her at great speed and impaled her little table raft, and causing it to explode into sad little bits. Her knees turned to jelly in shock. If she had not got off…… !!!!

Her feet scrambled off, and she hurried in the direction the hooded man and the child had gone, without bothering to reason with her brain. The rock she climbed on, turned out to be a small island, that had formed impromptu thanks to violent waters. Huge trees, flood debris, rocks, and land mass that got pushed into the violent waters during a rock slide, all wedged together like a blocked drain. This small island trembled in the violent waters, threatening to become undone any time.

At least the two of them had gone in the direction that made her back face the wind. The rain no longer tried to assault her eyes. She could not find the man or the child any were on the small island. As she stared in the direction the man and the child disappeared, she saw land and swaying trees, vaguely amidst rain and raging magic.

Land! Finally,! Beautiful stable and constant land! The only down side was that it was far away from her by more than three body lengths. The man and the child had definitely gone there, either that or….she shuddered to think otherwise. She would definitely not be able to jump that far. Her master had once described her as having the persistence to live like that of a swamp bug (similar to a cockroach). If only she had the wings of a swamp bug, that could fly even when her wings were wet and heavy. Sadly, she did not have the wings of the swamp bug but her instincts of the swamp bug were screaming at her to get of the island, that looked like it would disintegrate at any moment, before she becomes river debris. She had to choose between land or staying on the wobbling island. Between land and river, she chose land. If the man with a child made it, perhaps she could too.

On hind sight, she should have realized that, that line of thinking was what caused the idiots of the world to move toward extinction. But the thing about hind sight was that it occurred only after the deed was done. Chira took a running leap toward land, stretching herself in the hope that with her tall figure she would at least be able to grasp the edge of a bit of land, and pull herself out of the water. It was at the nick of time as the little island she had been on seemed to be coming apart.

It was an impressive leap for someone who had been in chains with only basic mobility for nearly 5 years, but sadly not enough and, she splattered stomach first into the swift currents, at least two body lengths away from grabbing anything, and was swiftly carried away by the strong currents that violently crashed her to a tree that was stubbornly clinging to land by its roots in spite of the rest of its body trying to part ways and party in the floods.

That hurt!!!

She was sure her ribs were cracked or broken, and may be her shoulder too. She hurriedly held the branch to stop herself from being swept away ,whimpering as the pain shot through her. The very little magic in her rushed to heal, leaving the rest of her feel like the invasion of flesh eating ants. She would have taken another pill, but she did not have any more lefty, and she was fighting to stay conscious.

Ironically the thought that came to her, was of a traveler dying of thirst just a few inches short of the oasis. That was what a sane person of the desert would think even when drowning in a flood. And she felt an ache in her soul for hot solid land, that had the scent of baked clay and Lear trees. She was this close to land…and she did not have any strength to grab it. She was so unwilling.

As her vision darkened she felt the drift wood from the impromptu little island rush toward her. She failed weakly and tried to pull herself up and felt a hand grasp her failing wrist, and pull her up in to land in one go effortlessly, like a ragged doll. A hand then was roughly placed on her spine and magic was forcefully inserted into her, making her recoil in shock at the invasion. A healer! An instinct of self-preservation and fear made her kick and scratch and hit wildly at the person as she screamed bloody murder. She was dropped on the ground unceremoniously and she scrambled back in fear, trying to get far away from her rescuer, until she hit the roots of the unwilling tree.

As sanity rushed back to her along with regret, she saw a pair of emotionless glowing animal eyes and anxious child’s eyes look at her through a curtain of rain and wind. The child was riding piggyback on the man and was peering anxiously at her , glowing gently. The first emotion she felt was relief. Those two were alright and reached land. Before she could word in a sorry or a thank you, the man had turned away and walked into the tree line that danced wildly in the wind and rain, the child’s big anxious eyes following her as they disappeared.

Her body was a bit restored by the magic injected into her, but the foreignness of the magic left her feeling uncomfortable. The corner of her eye caught the flooded river and her body recoiled in fright as the feeling of not knowing if the land was moving or the river was moving left her with jellied legs. She immediately got up on her unsteady legs and got as far away from the river as she could. She was going to follow the two in the hope of thanking them. She was good mannered like that, she decided magnanimously. She refused to accept that she was scared. No! It was not because she did not want to be alone. No not at all. After all she had planned to escape all by herself. She was only following them in order to repay the gratitude. After all a storm like this would let her play the hero too.