💾 Archived View for uncle-altoid.flounder.online › story.gmi captured on 2023-09-08 at 15:36:20. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
ⓣⓗⓔ ⓡⓘⓟ
On a phone call with a few friends she sat by the river. This was a temporary place that she was holding for others while they were away. Almost as if house sitting, but with no house. Just the edge of the river and there must have been a chair. The type of setting that begs for a bonfire past dark. Reeds lined the muddy churning water of the Maramec. The river was flowing fast, so fast that a passerby might not recognize it as the Maramec if they didn't have a strong sense of where they were.
Upon gaining the jealousy of her friends she decided that she should go on a short kyack ride down the river. She would drag the big heavy red boat to the edge of her spot and drop it in only to pick it out of the water in less than a minute. She didn't want to walk the boat back up the shore very far. Just a quick ride down the river--a deeply non-commital action.
She got in the boat among the stringy wet grasses at the edge of her spot. As soon as she entered the water she realized how out of control her boating expedition would be. In that moment an artificial calm washed over her. Feeling supernatural as it did the calm became another agent of chaos. The boat flipped and her legs stayed attached to the bed as if she was in a kyack that had a shield above her legs. She didn't know if she had flipped the boat or not. Regardless of the cause she was underwater upside-down with her legs trapped to a open faced kyack.
She had known what to do in this situation from summer camp. With all her might she would have to tork her body around the surface of the water in a great arch and flip the kyack back to upright with the strength of her midsection.
She thought through this sequence of actions and willed her body to follow her mind over and over again. She felt resignation well up inside of her. She was too calm. With the water flowing through her hair like the leaves of an aquatic plant and the current pushing her she felt peaceful. She wanted to stay under the rip forever.
Upon realizing that she may die of this calm she threw herself into a thin panic. Eventually she felt her body thrash and turn the boat right side up. She fought to shore and made her way back to the spot she was guarding for the night.