Lamia had heard many fish and creatures speaking of excitement. Those that had swam through Polaris reported strange going ons, the setting up of a tourney. Olympics, they called it. They, of course, were not interested. Frightened, even, for the more gembounds that came near the more chance that they would be fishing. Not that a fish could understand these concepts. They simply swam from the gathering and when Lamia asked, they told what they had seen.
She, on the other hand, was quite interested in this tourney, this Olympics. She wanted to test herself. She'd been living on her own for some time. She wanted to meet others. The land dwellers or maybe other water-bound friends. She wanted to see it. But the only problem was the river, the river that Tenzin had warned her about. The currents were strong and fast and, while she had been getting much stronger herself since hatching, she wasn't sure she was ready for it.
But she was a growing fish. Already, she had doubled in size and her muscles had grown lean and powerful. She could at least try.
She was swimming through the tunnel, the one that opened into Polaris's quick-moving river and she tried to calm herself. Deep breaths. Preserve strength. Get ready. At one point during her journey, she felt the water around her begin shifting and she knew she had reached the edge of the current. As she continued on, it became faster and faster, more powerful then before. She was going faster and faster, something that scared her a bit so she forced her body to slow down. Start fighting the river a bit.
But it took too much energy as she struggled against the current. No, she could not fight the river. She needed to ride the river. Allow her body to steer itself through the current instead of fighting against it. She straightened herself out and began to flow along with the water. It was difficult at first, but as the current went on, she felt herself growing more comfortable with it. It was hard work, keeping herself in control, not letting herself be completely taken, and her muscles started to burn, but she was doing it. She could do this!
At last, she reached a point in the river where it began to slow and she was able to move more freely. She immediately darted towards the shoreline where she grabbed at the rocks and curled her tail inwards, which wound its way around a rock, holding her in place. She took a breath and lifted her head above the water to see where she was.
To her great surprise, she saw it all happening, right there. Still being set up, it looked like, but there were a lot of creatures mulling about, talking excitedly, and an occasional spell went off as the set-up team worked. She was in the right place.
But, unfortunately, it didn't look like any of it was in the water. She would need to be on land, probably for a while too. She needed to prepare for that. She opened her gills as far as they would go, as well as taking in water through the air, absorbing as much of it into her skin as she could. She felt her body begin to shiver in protest at the amount of water that it was getting. Like breathing in too much air into lungs, although her body could hold much, much more water then a land-dwellers lungs could hold air.
When she felt she had enough water to hold her off for a while, at least if she took short breaths, she cut the magic and held her breath. The second spell began to hold the water around her inside, allowing her to breath normally the water she already had. She didn't want to waste time now. She didn't have a lot of it, as much time as she had water in her gills. So she grabbed forward and hoisted herself out of the water.
She flopped onto the stone ground and began to wriggle forward, using her arms to crawl as her back tail pushed her forward. Moving on land was so difficult and tedious, for a second she questioned why she was doing this, but kept going anyways. The obstacle course was right there. No matter how awkward it would be, she was going to go for it.
*exit