Once Protecter and the water Snipe - February 27, 2011

"I'm gone. Did you hear me Tom?" Grimmid muttered, waving his hand he threw a round-about rock so that it belly skidded on the rivers tranquil surface. His patince had finally run out like the water would soon within the river.
He was three years older than me and basically who I wanted to be.
I looked up and pinched my lips, the red fishing pole that was an extension of my wrist, that lacked justice without the cool grip-feel handle, flapped rubberishly in the gentle wind.
"If you leave she'll be here." I said hauntingly in full seriousness.
Yet, I had not moved an inch from my square of hard damp earth to follow my best friend. All these hours, all day he'd been looking out for me because I told him there was something in the water-but I wanted to fish. So he stayed, striking up offhand talk while his bright yellow eyes followed a bobbing pokemon ball. That's what I called it.
Grimmid simply starred at me.
He had the kind of face that made you think he was always mad, though he couldn't help that. His mother said he was a handsome boy. It was why he always got beat up at school. His eyes were alien yellow and very focused, red
freckles fell down his face like water droplets. His hair was red too, and arched up on his head like crazy ocean waves, his eyebrows fiercened focused eyes. Put together all made a look of a crazy kid ready for a fight.
"First of all, I never believed you. I only stayed because you were scared. But my little sister's sick with the flu and she wants her big brother." He frowned. "She thinks if I'm there I'll make it better. Well, I'm gonna try. Besides, it's getting pretty dark. Last chance."
I didn't move.
Grimmid hesitated, truly looking regretful. "Sorry Tom."
That's how it went.
I stayed to fish, trying to look at the rushing depth water, my heart beating abnormally. I imagined there was an angel in Heaven had asked God to pardon me. To let the old sun hang there a bit longer. It got darker.
The fishing light snapped tight between the loops, the pole nudging out of my hand. I blinked wide eyes gripping it with an energy. I had finally hooked one! The pole flapped with every watery stroke.
The pole pulled me, suddenly, throwing me to the ground. It dragged me headfirst. Nearer and so much nearer I got to the lake, till I was barely at it's edge, where I rolled over sinking my feet into water and mud pushing myself back.
The tugging stopped.
"Phew~!" I smiled.
And got pulled into the water.
The water was blurry but clean, full of strange dying plants. It was barely the temperature to be cold. Dancing bubbles jiggled away, floating to the surface while I scrabbled, arms frozen, to move back up there. It was deeper than I could have imagined it.
But then I saw a shape. It was a round face and curious eyes of blue sorts that were just starring at me, fresh inoccent as if they didn't know of innocence. Small dog claws for hands and fins attached to elbows. A long shirt displaying
80's music Stars that waved in the water, the rest of her body like a snake.
Ahhhh! My braid said numbly.
I was frozen in the same possition, clawing my hands at the water to come up.
She put her claws on each side of my face, starring kindly.
And electric surged there, me opening my mouth to scream from the pain.
Her long tail moved and I was hit by my fishing pole, my old friend I'd never see again. Fishing line was broken and it sank to the dark unseeable depths.
Her face went to my stomach and pushed me up, up, ever so lightly. It's hard to explain the kind of emotionless feel you get when you're in water and something kind and strange it swinging you up to your home. Or at least to the dirt and air.
I  broke the surface, gasping for air, pushed onto dry hard goopy-muddy land. Welcomed there, I collapsed.
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The door opened to Grimmid's house, but the residents were not there. A boy walked across the room, squelching much mud off his dripping carcass and overflowing out of tattered small shoes onto the carpet. It wasn't even his house.
His face was impassive, acctually it looked grimmly set. His shirt was tapped to his skin and his pants hung off him. He went into the room where he could hear fiant whispers. With a gentle curled hand he simply pushed more open the opened door. There was a mother and a boy, both leaning over a frail girl who was asleep.
The boy looked up.
"Tom? Tom what-Why're you covered in mud?" He asked.
The boy didn't answer. Didn't chance a look at Tom.
He walked over to the child on the bed that obviously must be Tom's sister by the air of protectiveness around the room. The mother looked from the two boys, to the damaged trail of ravenged mudd leading to this room, back to the
boys. She had nothing to say.
The boy leanded over the tiny sister and laid his hand against the right side of the girl's fevery face.
The boy who hadn't budged from his possition at her side grabbed hold of the other one by the arms and shook him.
"What're you doing? Tom?"
He gasped, pulling his touch sofly away, his eyes hollow blue. His hair soft tender crimson as if the sun had played with it. He dropped right there on the floor of that house as if deprived of sleep for a week.
The brother shook him, panicked now.
"Tom? Tom!" He shook him.
"Shut up." Came a hiss without the cracking of an eye.

When he would finally wake he would appear as a younger different boy similar to his best. It seamed in some odd strange way he'd managed to get his wish, but still remain his-self. But his face would be kinder, rounder, more childish and sweet.
He would meet a tiny girl who was five, carried out and introduced in her tiny robe by Grimmid. She with her round childish eyes would claim him as a hero the second she spotted him. She would touch an odd sea-shell mark dimming on his forehead and wonder about it. And the two would become the best of friends, Kirna and Tom. He would be her adopted brother. And the trio would be inseperable for so long.
Tom however would never see his plain inexpensive fishing pole again. But he never missed it much except when he did, badly. Somehow he would know what happened to it-that it had sank in the water.
Never would he remember that once he'd fallen in the river, which that month dried over.
The water Snipe would be a murky memory lost in its depths.
Things were done that wouldn't be undone. And that was not the same boy, a fact that seemed so scary, who kissed his mother good-bye as he ran off to school, whose mother still touched her boy's hair in confusion. However would be fine: he was, afteral, a protector.

-Pinquill girl