Prosaic.

Bad Ideas.

Huan seemed rather confused, and also terrified, and yet, waddled from one end of the boat to the other in order to reach Felicity. Felicity peered down in the water again, admiring the small splashes that the heavy creature made. Then, carefully, she tenderly reached a shaking hand down to touch the edge of the murky water. Her fingers made a small few splashes, then raised about a foot above the water. The scaled beast glared at her with large yellow eyes from beneath the water, slowly rising to the top, motionless, until its snout broke through the surface of the water and huffed aggressively.

It was so close to Felicity. She couldn't let herself freeze, not now, not yet. Adrenaline pumped through her like a fresh surge of electricity, pushing her onward, forcing her to react.

As if catching a fish, she whipped the net into the water, liquid splashing and soaking her entire front. Then, she lifted the net, placing pressure on the bottom of the beast's bottom jaw, which was now caught in the net. Huan reacted equally as fast, and with precision. He leaned over the boat and pulled the crocodile upwards by its thick neck. It thrashed, the boat rocking back and forth as it whipped its tail, water spraying from beneath it. Kiui cried out from somewhere behind them. Felicity gripped the blade tightly in her free hand, and then, seeing as the beast's head was still as its body thrashed, she plunged the knife straight into the beast's skull right behind the eye, penetrating armoured flesh. It thrashed, snapped, to which Felicity quickly removed her net, and Huan dropped the bleeding creature back into the water completely. It swam, using its body and tail like a snake, deep underneath the surface of the water, leaving behind a dark trail of blood.

A heavy silence ensued, and then Tati asked, "What now? That didn't work."

"It got it far away from us for us to row safely, I think," Felicity said, staring at the blade in her hands, which was drenched with blood that had begun to run down her arms and drip at the elbows. The red shined like gold under the daylight. She as she felt a hand on her shoulder.

Huan, "You're shaking. Are you alright?"

She nodded, "Fine." Not the first time I've had blood on my hands, is it? The incidents, both with the crocodiles and the one with her family, played in her mind on repeat, making sleep nearly impossible that night. The adrenaline rush had worn her out, and she was utterly exhausted and suffering the low.

The group decided to row as far as they possibly could from that area, enhanced with a new fear of crocodiles. The sky greyed and clouded, and eventually it began to rain, slowly filling both their exposed pots and pans, and the bottom of the boat with freshwater. It rained for a good few hours, collecting several inches of water. Felicity and Kiui used a water bottle to pull water out from the bottom of the small boat, filling it and then pouring it out into the ocean. Despite the rain, there was beginning to be a noticeable change in the surroundings of the group as they travelled farther and farther for days and days. Kiui and Huan worked together and caught minnows, and then actually managed to catch a decent sized fish of some sort, although nobody knew what kind it was. It was several inches across and silvery, and truly just looked like an overgrown minnow. Still, the group was ecstatic, and unlike the minnows, was willing to eat what little meat it had raw. After a couple of more days, accompanied by on and off rain, the group had to live entirely off of the tiny fish that they managed to catch, having run entirely out of safely preserved food to eat.

The environment change was extremely subtle, especially at first, but then more noticeable the closer that the group got to the dark silhouettes of the canyon. Despite the dark murky water, below the surface, house roofs and occasionally the top of trees could be seen. The water was becoming shallower here, or rather, the land growing higher. In fact, it was a rather eerie scene, aching the group badly enough to render them silent for most of the time. The houses were buried beneath the water, consumed by it, reminding everyone on that small row boat just how fragile the world had been, and just how badly they missed it. But aside from this, there was the new, unrelenting stench. Occasionally, the group would find a body or two floating along the water. Most of the time, however, the bodies remained under the water, trapped in homes where they used to live, trapped in cars during a failed escape. The water here seemed murkier than the waters that they had travelled through before, and thus nobody dared to get out and swim in it.