It had been a few days since his emergence. Intelligence came slowly to the boy; he was apparently destined to be mostly feral. The marsh was home to him and he did not feel confident enough to leave it. The chrysalis had been consumed by the mud pretty quickly, but Methuselah lingered in the vicinity of where it had surfaced - mostly because it was familiar but also, his bed was here. He had to journey through the marsh to feed himself and that alone was quite the trial.

Where the mud had dried some, any passerby would find his puny pawprints trailing through it. He tried to keep to the sands and sleep through the hottest hours, falling back on his species common practices: active primarily at dusk and during the night, or whatever the equivalent was. He'd sleep until it was cooler by a degree or two, then lurk through the grey haze of dimmed light to seek nourishment. It was a tough life; without knowing any better, Methuselah couldn't complain.

Floods in Hydra were a rare occurrence, but they did happen from time to time.

The warning was little: a distant roar, a chaotic crash here and there, and the sudden surge of water from the Crucible into the Dead Marsh itself. It was most dangerous in the Crucible's ravines: whitewater rapids that suddenly surged with inescapable power some ten or twenty feet through the narrow canyons, picking up dirt and rocks and dead branches and sweeping them in muddied eddies, irresistable in its strength.

By the time the water reached the Dead Marshes, it was less intense--though it still held the potential to be deadly: a spreading surge of a foot or two of water that would carry smaller Gembound in a sweeping tide deep into the marsh.

If a Gembound were not careful, it might drown, or be swept into a pocket of lung-searing, eye-burning air, or wind up struggling in a pool above the quicksand.

Such a surge was coming now: a marsh-wide tide hurtling forward, spanning the breadth of the Marsh, with little respite for one caught within except to scramble up the length of a dead tree, or ride the tide and hope for the best.

Methuselah must roll to avoid being caught up in the oncoming flash flood. Failure to do so will result in further danger.

@Methuselah

Water in the desert? How unfortunate that he be subjected to this! The rush came from the crucible - not that he'd be aware - and as it frothed and tumbled through the marsh the water level rose around him, but then surreptitiously swept away for a moment. As anyone that is familiar with tide dynamics will tell you: that meant a big one was coming. It didn't need to be a massive surge of water to destabilize Methuselah; he was already puny to start with, so when the water came rushing back he had to put all of his other motives aside and run for high ground. In this instance higher ground was a piece of debris floating by in the form of a snaking tree limb.

His claws were not designed for climbing, nor was any other part of himself. But he was light on his feet and invested with that live-now-think-later aspect of any wild animal; he grappled with the branch as it bobbed and used every bit of his miniscule strength to hold tight, les he fall in and drown. It was doubtful a small sand fox would know how to swim, at any rate.