Welcome to The Family (INVADER ZIM)

Part One: Adventure

How perfect. A storm. 

Ignoring for a moment the thick, heated words her parents were exchanging, Ivy raised her gaze to the sky. Nickel and copper sunlight sheered her vision, hurting her eyes. Clouds like decomposing gray fists rumbled, and the birds fluttered from the trees, cooing warnings to one another. 
Behind her, the extremely buff park volunteer who did tours every summer for his tuition money grunted and sighed. Her parents had pushed the guy beyond his "Hello, my name is Axl and I'll be your park guide" manners, and she didn't blame him. Her mother and father were wearing everybody out - both Ivy and Axl, who had the bad luck to be the tour guide on a scientist's nightmare vacation. Of course, Ivy went came along to all her parent's work trips. Being an only child had it's disadvantage of having nobody to watch them while their home, and Ivy is an only. But it also came with its advantages, for example, Ivy had her own room in their suite.
 Ivy sighed miserably as the sound of her parent's angry voices rose over her own thoughts.
"-not going back early," Ivy's father hissed.

"You never told me." That was her mom.  "You should have told me..."
Jesus Christ, Ivy thought. Tension eddied between them, and a fresh wave of anxiety washed through her. Something was basically, fundamentally wrong, and if she got really honest with herself, she knew it had been wrong for over a year.
Her dad broke eye contact first and her mother and her mother quieted down,  two territorial animals both dissatisfied with the outcome of their face-off. They were both good-looking people even though they were in their forties. Dad was tall and lanky, with straight black hair and very dark brown eyes. Her mom was similar, her hair so straight, it looked fake,  her eyes a hazel that reminded Ivy of fall. Everyone always thought they looked so good together, TV parents. Few besides Ivy knew that their conversations were more like dialogue from a horror movie.
"Okay, be careful," Axl interrupted her thoughts- and for a split second, the arguing. "We're gonna start hiking the mountain. Remember, stay left." He looked up at the lowering sky and muttered, "Damn."
Ivy cocked her head up at him. His face was dark. 
"Gonna be a storm, huh," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the thunder and the clanking of their equipment. 
He glanced at her. "Yeah. We'll stop early tonight." He glanced at her parents. "Tempers are getting kinda short."
"They're not usually-" she began, then shut her mouth, nodded, and got back to walking, gripping the sides of the rocks for support.
White water tumbled below like a kettle put on to boil, and she stood a little straighter, getting ready for the steep, nerve-wracking hike downward. Ivy had had enough. She wanted to go home.
The sky rumbled once, twice,  and cracked open. Rain fell immediately, huge bucketfuls of it, completely drenching them. It rushed down so hard, it slapped Ivy's shoulders painfully. She flailed for her black raincoat wrapped around her waist. Everyone was startled by the downpour. 
Axl yelled, "Be careful!"
Rain came down like waterfalls; the river waters sluiced to either side of a giant boulder, and Ivy remembered rather than heard Axl's admonition to stay left. Everything around here, stay left.
A huge granite towered above them. Its face was jagged and sharp, not rounded with erosion as one would have expected.
The rain fell even harder, pummeling them, and Ivy worked frantically to pull her hood back up over her head as a bracing wind whipped it off. The torrents blinded her. She couldn't see anything.
"Jesus Christ, stop!" Axl screamed.
Ivy ducked, peering through the rain. 
There was a millisecond where everyone froze, shocked brains registering what was happening. 
"Keep calm!" Axl bellowed. "Go left!"
Lightning struck and rock fell. The river below was a maelstrom now; everything was gray and cold and unforgiving and treacherous; gray stone and gray water. Ivy held onto her harness. It was useless now, but still she held it, hands frozen around it in terror. Someone, she had no idea who, was shouting her name.
Then Axl's voice rang out. "Jump! Now!"
His command broke her stupefaction. As she tried to unbuckle her safety straps and jump, more rock fell. cold, unforgiving water surrounded her, cresting above her shoulders, her head; she waited for it to recede, but it just kept barreling over her. She panicked, unable to breathe, and began pushing frantically at the restraints. She couldn't remember how to undo them.
I'm going to drown. I'm going to die.
The steel waters thickened, becoming waves of blackness. She couldn't see anything, couldn't feel anything, except the terrible cold. Her mind seized on the image of the huge face of rock; hitting it at this speed would be like falling out of a window and splatting on the street.
Her lungs were too full; after some passage of time she could not measure, they threatened to burst; she understood that she needed to exhale and draw in more oxygen. She fumbled at the belt but she still had no clue how to get free. As her chest throbbed she batted at the water, at her lap and shoulders where the straps were, trying so hard to keep it together, so hard. 
I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die.
The ability to reason vanished. She stopped thinking altogether, and instinct took over as she flapped weakly at the restraints, not recalling why she was doing it. She forgot that she had been hiking with the two people she loved most in the world. She forgot that she was a teenager named Ivy and that she had hair and eyes and hands and feet.
She was nothing but gray inside and out. The world was a flat fog color and so were her images, thoughts, and emotions. Numb and empty, she drifted in a bottomless well of nothingness, flat-lining, ceasing. She couldn't say it was a pleasant place to be. She couldn't say it was anything.
Though she didn't really know it, she finally exhaled. Eagerly she sucked in brackish river water. It filled her lungs, and her eyes rolled back in her head as her death throes began. 
Struggling, wriggling like a hooked fish, her body tried to cough, to expel the suffocating fluid. It was no use; she was as good as dead. Her eyes fluttered shut.

Ivy woke up. As far as she could tell, she lay on the riverbank. The sound of rushing water filled her pounding head; she was shaking violently from head to toe and her teeth were chattering. She tried to move, but couldn't tell if she succeeded. She was completely numb.
"Mmm..." she managed, struggling to call for her mother.
All she heard, all she knew, was the rushing of the river.
Her lids flickered up at the sky.
Then she lost consciousness again. Her coldness faded, replaced by soothing warmth.
Again, the sound of rushing water. Again the deathly chill.
"No!" Ivy cried into the darkness.
She was shivering with cold; and she was alive.
A brilliant yellow light struck her full force in the face. Ivy whimpered as the light moved, bobbing up and down, then lowered as the figure holding it squatted and peered at her.
It was a heavyset woman dressed like a forest ranger. She said, "It's okay, honey, we're here now." Over her shoulder, she yelled, "Found a survivor!" 
A ragged cheer rose up, and Ivy burst into frightened, desperate tears.