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The River

Kreet awoke and immediately felt the previous days' exertions in her legs. Of course the others seemed to have little problems with having walked for a solid day, and she realized that her life in the city had been relatively sedentary compared to her new clan's life in the 'real' world. Every time she considered it, she began to question her original idea that she would lead these kobolds to a human town and try to settle with them. Damn that old Kras! Now she was more unsure than ever what her goal actually was!

She shook off her uncertainty as she began to change back into her traveling clothes. She caught both Sythe and Gart glancing at her breasts, but she couldn't find it in her to be offended. Instead, she turned to face them both. Oddly Fot didn't seem interested, and was engaged in drawing something..

"Oh stop it. I know you're both curious about these," she said plainly as they both looked away. "It's alright. I think I've got them because I lived so long with the humans. Or because I've been eating their food for so long. I don't really know for sure. I've gotten used to them though."

Sythe hesitated, clearly curious, but Kreet assured her it was okay and encouraged her to ask whatever she might be thinking.

"Do... Do you think I'll get them after we start living among humans?"

"Oh, I don't think so. I mean, I've been living a human life since I was very young. I doubt they'll just... appear overnight or anything. Are you worried about it?"

Sythe looked down at her own flat chest before replying, "I'm not sure I'd want them."

"You know, I was terribly happy when they started coming in! Among humans of course they're completely normal for females. A sign of sexual maturity actually, so the humans treat them almost like genitalia. Females keep them mostly hidden, yet at the same time they wear clothes that purposely highlight them. It's... complicated."

Sythe looked confused. "Humans are weird. Hey Gart, would you still get horny if I had breasts?"

Gart looked at her sideways. "I suppose I would," he started hesitantly, then grabbed her tail and laughed, "It's not your chest that I think about though!"

She pulled herself out of his hand and sighed, "Don't you have something better to do, Gart? Like get the camp ready to move?"

He nodded. "You're right. I should get them moving. But don't feel bad about those, Kreet! They're a little odd looking, but your tail is very sexy!!"

She smiled, a little embarrassed. "Yours too, Gart. See you in a little while. What about you, Fot? Do you like my chest?"

"Mmm?" said the other male, looking at her. "Oh. Your breasts? What about them?"

"Nevermind, Fot," Sythe sighed. "Lost in thought again I assume?"

"Oh. Yes. That river. It's had me thinking all night."

"You can tell us when we get there. For now, help me pack up this stuff!"

Though Sythe and Fot protested somewhat at Goldworm's ambassador doing menial labor, Kreet insisted on helping to pack up the tent. By the time the sun was fully up over the horizon, the camp was ready to move again and they began working their way down into the valley. They reached the river somewhat after noon had passed. However, no obvious method of crossing it had appeared and they settled the group for lunch while Fot, Gart and Sythe sat near the riverbank with some of the other higher ranking kobolds.

"The water moves slowly," Fot was explaining, "Yet I worry about the distance."

"Surely we have enough rope," said a smaller yellowish female named Lis. "We need only tie some together, right?"

"Oh, we have plenty of rope," Fot continued. "The problem is the weight. Obviously we need to get someone across with it. But that much rope is going to get heavy as they get farther out, and the rope is going to be going to be pulled downstream like everything else. It will take our strongest swimmer... and even then it may be too much."

Kreet looked back and forth at the leaders. Gart was the obvious choice, as the strongest of the kobolds. In fact, there really wasn't any discussion of who would go at all. It was his role.

"Gart, if it's too much... You have to let go with enough strength left to get to shore," Sythe told him. "Whichever shore is closest, you let go of the rope. Kreet says there's bound to be a bridge either upstream or downstream if we walk far enough."

"Um... hey, guys?" Kreet interjected.

All eyes turned to her.

"Kreet?" Fot responded with an eye raised.

"Look, I really don't know anything about these things, so if I'm missing something obvious, just tell me. But... why don't you have him paddle over on a log?"

"A log?" Fot asked, uncomprehending.

Kreet realized she'd used the human word. She sought for a kobold equivalent. "Wood? A piece of a tree?"

They all looked at her as if she was a crazy person but they hadn't the will to call her out.

"Kreet," Fot began soothingly. "A tree is very heavy. It's not like it's going to float on top of the water."

Now Kreet returned the same look.

"Sure it will. Wood floats!"

Now it was the yellow kobold that took up Fot's argument. "Kreet, sure a little piece of bark will float. Even a stick. But a whole tree would sink!"

"Look, just do this for me. Get a big log. I mean, a big part of a tree. Not the whole thing. Just enough you can lift and throw it. Throw it into the river and see what happens. It won't take long, and if it sinks... Well, Gart can try swimming without it like you planned. Just try it. Okay?"

Lis shrugged and looked at Fot. "Can't hurt."

A half hour later the kobolds were impressed. The log had not sunk as they'd expected it to after all.

"Look, you don't have a lot of experience with trees and wood," Kreet was saying. "They don't grow in the caves. It's not important."

"Oh, it is very important!" Fot protested. "You've got to let us know when we're doing something stupid Outside, Kreet. We've been living Outside for quite a while, but there's still a lot of things we obviously don't understand!"

"Well, anyway, I'm glad I could help."

Fot turned back to Gart, who had stripped off his clothes and looped the end of the rope around his waist. Kreet caught herself staring again and looked away.

"You know, though. There is another concern..." Fot began.

Gart nodded and turned to Kreet. "Do you know what sort of animals might live in the river?"

"Oh!" Kreet said, grimacing in the kobold manner of showing unexpected surprise. "I... don't really. Fish of course."

"Any I should be wary of?"

Kreet looked worried. "I really don't know Gart! I... don't know much about such things. I've lived most of my life in cities and towns."

Gart hugged her. "Don't worry so, Kreet. We'll just have to trust in Goldworm's wisdom." At this he pulled a long, metal hand blade from his belt. It was one of a very few metallic weapons the clan owned and a badge of his office. "...and my knife!"

This caused a flurry of laughter from the leaders to which Kreet added her own nervous chuckle.

"Okay. Let's go log-carriers!" Gart laughed, and he walked off upstream along the bank of the river. A couple other kobolds in charge of the rope played out the slack nearby as the two log-carriers and Gart headed upstream.

Kreet looked across the river. As Fot had pointed out, the water was peaceful and moving slowly, but the distance across was daunting. Fot had tried to estimate the distance upstream Gart would need to go so that he would - in theory at least - arrive at the far bank approximately parallel with where they stood currently.

They heard a splash as Gart threw the log into the river - and himself after it. He had entered around a slight curve so they couldn't really see him enter, but soon enough he swam into view, already a significant distance out into the river, riding on top of the log.

"DOING OKAY?" Sythe shouted.

"IT'S A LITTLE SLOW," Gart shouted back. "THIS PADDLING ISN'T AS FAST AS SWIMMING. I'M GOING TO TRY SWIMMING WITH THE ROPE TIED TO THE LOG INSTEAD."

All eyes of the kobold clan were on him as he slipped off the log and began to truly swim while pushing the log across.

"It does look faster," Fot said to the others. "But I overestimated how fast it would be. He's going to overshoot the beach straight across. You on the rope, be ready to send him more. He's going to need it."

"Will there be enough?" Kreet asked.

"Oh, plenty of rope. I think," Fot said, eyes still rooted on where Gart was swimming who was now at least halfway across.

Kreet began to breathe a little easier. Then she looked across to the far bank, still a good way downstream from where Gart was.

She saw something moving. A big something. She squinted to try and make out what she was seeing.

"Um... Sythe?"

"Hmm?"

"Look over there," she said, pointing to where she'd seen movement in the brush at the far bank's edge. "Can you see that? What is that?"

Sythe looked away from Gart and to where Kreet was pointing.

"I see it. I can't tell what it is..." she was saying, when suddenly whatever it was slid into the river.

Kreet's eyes grew large and looked at Sythe's, who surely mirrored her own expression.

"Maybe he scared it away?" Kreet asked hopefully, looking back at the river.

They both saw the ripples of something just below the water, but it wasn't heading away from where Gart was swimming.

"GART!" Sythe screamed. "SOMETHING IS COMING AT YOU!"

Gart's head turned and then back towards where Sythe was pointing. The clan's gaze too was now fixed at the ripples slowly approaching Gart.

"I SEE IT!" he called back, and Kreet saw a flash of metal in his hand.

Yet he didn't stop swimming towards the far bank, though he kept his eyes turned towards the ripples.

A splash came from behind where the ripples continued their approach, and for an instant Kreet saw a strong, powerful break the surface of the river before it submerged and resumed its steady approach.

"Fot, we have to do something!" Kreet yelled.

Fot looked at her, but his eyes showed only worry.

"YELL!" Sythe exhorted the clan. "DISTRACT IT!"

Kreet nodded rapidly and ran a short way into the water, yelling at the top of her lungs and splashing as much as she could. Soon the entire group of kobolds was doing the same.

It was not without effect. The ripples turned, heading straight for the river's edge where the kobolds were.

"IT'S WORKING!" Sythe laughed. "IT'S WORKING! KEEP IT UP!"

"Um... Sythe?" Kreet said as the ripples began to get nearer.

Sythe turned around and looked at the other kobolds, still splashing and yelling at whatever it was.

"Oh! Hey, stop! Stop everybody!" she called.

The yelling stopped. The splashing stopped. But the ripples did not. It was getting close enough that Kreet could make out a huge dark shape under the surface.

"RUN!" she cried, and clambered out of the water as fast as she could. The other kobolds came along with her and they were soon well back from the edge.

Except for Fot and the two rope-workers.

"Fot! Get out of there!"

"Kreet, we have to keep paying out the rope! If we stop and the rope gets tangled, this will all be for nothing! Gart will have to leave the rope to save himself."

One of the rope-workers looked back to the river, saw the dark shape that would break free into the shallows any second, and bolted from his post in raw terror.

"Go," Fot said to the other, and he joined his partner, far from the riverbank.

The top of its head came out of the water first. It was long and flat, the two eyes on top emerging first along with its snout, but less than a second later its head emerged. And then it opened its mouth, casting left and right to see where it's quarry had gone.

"FOT RUN! FUCK THE ROPE! RUN!" Kreet screamed.

Fot had taken up the rope and threw one last round of slack towards the river when he saw the thing's maw. Any heroics were lost at that sight, and Fot began to run with just as much abandon as the others had. But his sudden movement caught the monster's eyes and it turned towards him.

For a moment, Kreet half-hoped it might be water-bound. As fast as it had been in the river, maybe it would balk at the land. Unfortunately, she was wrong. With a powerful last kick of its tail, the bulk of the thing flew towards Fot in the blink of an eye. Though it's stubby feet seemed ludicrously small for its body, they were deadly efficient for a short burst. Fot had waited too long.

Something whizzed past Kreet's ear and she turned to see nearly the entire clan screaming and hurling stones from slings at the thing. One hit Fot's leg, and he stumbled to the ground, closing his eyes and instinctively covering his head in fear of the terror behind him. Another lunge and it would have undoubtedly swallowed Fot whole, but the rocks had their effect on it too. It hissed as they pelted it, but it turned away from Fot and began to scramble back towards the river.

The clan chased it, continuing to hit it with stones and anything else they could find, but Kreet stopped at Fot's curled-up body and began stroking his back.

"Fot? Fot? You're okay Fot. It's gone," she assured him.

One frightened eye emerged from under his hands, but it held no sanity.

"Sythe, come and help me!" she called.

Sythe came up to her and knelt beside the terrorized Fot. "It's gone Fot. Back into the river. It went deep. No telling where, but it's gone!"

The eye rolled over and Fot's body went limp.

"What's wrong with him?" Sythe asked Kreet.

"Extreme stress. He needs time to recover. I'll watch over him. What about Gart?"

"He made it. He's climbing a tree on the far side to tie up his side of the rope. Then we'll tighten it up here and we can cross. Will Fot be okay?"

Kreet looked up at Sythe. "Hard to be sure, Sythe. He was inches from certain death. That can really mess up your head."

An hour later Fot was somewhat conscious again, and seemed to be relatively normal given the trauma. His leg was bruised, but not broken. But he couldn't bring himself to even look towards the river - let alone cross it on a flimsy rope.

In the meantime, the rope had been tied high in a tree near the river, so that even the lowest point was well above the waterline and kobolds had begun to cross.

"Don't think about it right now, Fot. Just take it easy," Kreet said.

"I... think I'll take a nap here. For just a little while," came a timid reply, uncharacteristic of the kobold.

"You do that. You got it done, Fot. Remember that. It worked."

"It worked. Yes. That's good. It worked."

Sythe came up from the river where she had been directing the crossing.

"How's it going?" Kreet asked, putting a blanket on Fot.

"Going good. We should be done in another hour or two at most. But..."

She paused, looking at Fot.

Kreet shook her head. "I don't know, Sythe. I don't know if he's going to be able to face it."

"Let me stay with him. He's got to go. Not just for him, Kreet. We need him! I need him. Kreet, I know Fot. I know what he needs. Don't look back here for a while, okay?"

Kreet tilted her head, not understanding.

"Kreet... we're not humans. He needs confidence. He needs to remember he's not a frightened child. He needs... me. Go on. If you need me, just call. We need a little privacy."

Kreet nodded and headed to the tree, where kobolds were climbing a makeshift tree-ladder to get onto the rope.

It was on Kreet's watch that they did lose one kobold, despite the fact that the monster never showed itself again. Kreet thought she remembered her from the previous night's language lesson, but she couldn't be sure. They had maintained a limit of only three kobolds at once on the rope, each spaced far apart. But one of the kobolds had simply lost her grip on the rope that had gotten slippery. Her tail had tried to wrap around the rope but it too slipped and she fell into the river.

To everyone's horror, she appeared on the surface again briefly, gasping for breath, but then submerged and was never seen again. The doomed kobold's look of horror pierced Kreet's heart in that last glimpse. Kreet was supposed to be this clan's destined savior, but the look in those eyes in that last second before she went under again felt accusatory. For her, Kreet's arrival had meant only death. At least, that's how Kreet felt after it was over.

The jubilation of thwarting the monster and at crossing the river died after that of course. The remaining kobolds crossed in near silence and with much more care, until only Kreet was left.

She turned and walked back to where she'd left Sythe and Fot, being sure to make enough noise so that they would know she was coming.

They weren't exactly hidden, and while Sythe had surely let Fot sleep for a good while when the kobolds were crossing, it was obvious that they were not sleeping now.

"Um... Sythe? Fot? They're all across," Kreet said before she realized what they were doing.

Sythe nodded back at her from on top of Fot. "Go ahead," she said between breaths. "We'll be along later."

"We'll make camp straight in from the river. We'll be waiting."

Sythe laughed, and it was good to hear laughter again. "It won't be long now!" Sythe promised, and given the energetic movements of the couple, Kreet laughed back, suspecting she was right about that..

"Okay. I'm going over. Have a good... well. See you later."

Sythe waved a hand dismissively and turned back to her lover.

Kreet didn't mention the lost kobold of course. That news could wait untill later. Her own crossing was uneventful, though she couldn't help but glance at the river below. Gart met her in the tree at the far side. They both sat side by side on a limb as they awaited the last two.

"It happens, Kreet. You can't make this kind of journey without knowing that."

"What was her name?"

"Lama. Her brothers were... well, I guess you know how they would be."

"I suppose I do," Kreet said. "But I saw you go in after her. It was stupid of you to go into the river so far, you know. Especially with that thing still out there somewhere."

Gart shrugged. "Couldn't help it. I had to try. You understand that don't you? I had to. What if one more stroke in the water would have found her? I had to do the best I could. Anything less..."

"I know. You're a good person, Gart. I know in your role you have to take risks. But you looked like you almost drowned yourself. Those two that dragged you back, were those her brothers?"

Gart nodded, a strangely human response but his eyes showed pain.

Kreet turned and looked up into those eyes. In another life...

But she had only this one now.

"Could you hold me, Gart?"

She felt his arm wrap around her shoulder and she wrapped her tail around his.

"I... just need to be close to someone, Gart. I think she looked at me. That last time. Before she went under again."

"I think she looked at me too, Kreet," he said, and she looked up at him again, hearing the crack in his voice.

"Lama."

She laid her head against his chest and he held her to him. She began to cry then, and she felt his chest heaving silently too. He really did take that poor female's death hard. As much as she had. It bonded her to him, in a way different from the bond she had with Kallid, but a bond nonetheless. It wasn't the intimacy of sex, but it was another kind of intimacy that she could feel deeply. The intimacy of shared grief. She would miss him when finally she found Kallid and her children again.

They both looked up when they heard the rope creak. Sure enough, Sythe and Fot were on their way, Sythe only a little behind Fot.

"They really should be separated more," Gart said, releasing Kreet.

"After the last I saw of them, I don't know if they can be!" she laughed through drying tears.

"I hope they haven't used all their leg-strength!"

Kreet suddenly felt a wash of fear flow through her.

"Oh, I was just joking, Kreet!" Gart reassured her.

Fortunately the two crossed without incident.

"Let's not tell them. Not till they get back to camp," Gart said as they approached, and she nodded, returning her head to his chest.