Eddylines

waterfall

Daszé stared at the pebbles underfoot as water began to course through them, sending icy fingers of cold through the thin neoprene booties and up his legs. All around him, fresh trickles were pushing downstream as he tugged his boat up toward the rough beach for another run at the currently underwhelming rapid called Hangover Helper. Although running the tiny, bumpy flow was fun at first, this was not what he'd had in mind.

It just felt silly now, and the inevitable stares from the raft tenders and float fishermen hadn't helped.

I must look so fucking dumb, he thought, sheepishly gazing upstream to avoid their eyes.

He didn't even know where to start. The only helmet he had that fit over his 'oyar ears was a shitty old piece of battle armor he'd swiped from a friend's closet back on Laosora, in stark contrast to his bright red PFD and the ratty purple river-runner he'd found on Craigslist. Marek had told him it was a good boat, though, and so far, it had treated him well enough.

But he couldn't be sure, because this wasn't whitewater, not really. It-

He paused the thought, then looked down.

The flow between his feet gurgled, growing into a flood, and he suddenly realized that Hangover Helper had begun to roar.

"Grab your shiiiiiiiiiiit," Marek cried in a joyful sing-song as he climbed out onto the bank, his boat scraping madly as he dragged it ashore and stomped toward his friend. "They're turning on the taaaaaaaps!"

As if summoned by the river itself, a fleet of plastic and Royalex had begun to descend from the woods in a riot of laughter, scraping noises, and clatters as a group of paddlers picked their way down the sharp scree slope to the river's edge.

And bit by bit, his reservations began to dissipate.

He stared as the circus of gear and boats and colors fanned out along the water's edge, his eyes soaking up the mad mix of new and old. The muted thunks and thumps of hammered, round-hulled canoes and numerous kayaks of all different shapes and sizes accented the gregarious chatter of several generations of humans, gesturing, chuckling, and hurrying to account for their gear in preparation for setting out.

But most interestingly, the same blank, faintly suspicious stare the raft tenders had given him and Marek was now applied to the horde filling the spaces at the water's edge, and Daszé had an epiphany.

It wasn't so much because he was an 'oyar.

It was because he was a kayaker.

Well, almost. That still remained to be seen.

"It's a shitshow, right?" Marek laughed, nudging his best friend's shoulder and making his way up the small incline at the top of the rapid. "C'mon, let's go put in and meet some people so we can get you down Hangover Helper proper."

As they filtered into the mass of boaters, a few glanced at him in surprise, but there was no malice in their smiles or utter disregard of his differences, and Daszé felt a small sense of relief. His shrinking anxieties left more room for the nervous excitement in his chest that swelled with the roar of the rapid, and he welcomed it as they set their boats down at the new edge of the river. All across the flowing surface, people were warming up, ferrying back and forth across the standing ripples, or stretching and backpaddling in the eddies.

"It's gonna be different now, obviously," Marek noted as he slid into his boat and set the sprayskirt. "But it's real simple. Just remember all the stuff we practiced, lean downstream, and when in doubt?"