Open Zith on a Lake (Aranta)

[Scorn]

47 Winter, 513 Scorn was starting to go a little bit crazy. Not only had she been suffering a broken leg, but now she was trapped in caves that stank of not-Zith. She longed for the freedom of the skies, and the fresh air of the wilderness, but she had access to none of those things. The only good news was that her sister seemed to sympathize with her misery. One of Scorn's primary sources of misery lately had been her sister's inexplicable attachment to the stick men, and the natural fear that her sister would drift apart from her, becoming less Zith and more... stick. The thought of losing Scourge a second time was almost more than she could bare. Luckily, there were a few other Zith also trapped in the caves. Not many, and they were all independent, but it was enough to form a very small colony if they were all together. The proximity of other Zith seemed to be good for Scourge too. She was still overly fond of the stick men, but Scorn spied her looking with interest at the other Zith as well. For the first time in seasons, she began to have hope that she really could bring her sister home. Today, Scourge had dragged Scorn down toward the bottom of the stick-men's caves, to something called, a "lake." Scorn wasn't interested at first, but when Scourge explained it was a body of water, it piqued Scorn's curiosity. She followed Scourge to the underground lake, a place she hadn't know existed before. Scourge almost immediately spied some of her stick-man friends and went to play with them, hunting fish apparently. Scorn was more interested in the water itself. The lake was not like the ocean. It did not have treacherous currents that could drag her out to sea if she were not careful. She stepped gingerly into the shallow edge of the water, limping a little on her bad leg, taking her time to acclimate herself to the still-disturbing sensation of wetness crawling over her feet and continuing up. When the water reached up to her waist, she crouched into it, spreading her wings across the surface of the water as if it were slightly more solid air. Experimentally, she pulled her feet up, so that there was nothing supporting her but the water. In the worst case, she could always put her feet back down and stand up again; definitely much safer than in the ocean where currents would pull her into deeper waters. She held her breath nervously as she bobbed lightly up and down. When she did not immediately sink, she exhaled in a sigh of relief. As she breathed out, she began to sink a few inches into the water. Panicking, she gasped and clawed at the water as if she could pull herself up. She felt herself rise again, and relaxed a little. Every time she began to sink, she reflexively took a sharp breath, and began to rise again. She began to notice a pattern. Breathing in caused her to rise, and breathing out caused her to sink. She couldn't very well just keep breathing in forever, but she started breathing out and in quickly, and then holding her breath a little longer. It wasn't the most comfortable way to breath, and certainly not as relaxing as flying, but for now it let her keep her head well above water without focusing all her attention on the matter. Now she just had to figure out what to do next.