Boom Said Thunder [Open]

For a moment, I was worried that I had thrown Sampson too hard, because it took him a minute to resurface, hair soaked flat against his head as he coughed up some of the water. I never meant to be too rough with younger kids, but sometimes I forgot the extent of my own strength and ended up pushing it a little far. I’d given Tobias a bruise that way once, when I was a few years younger. I raised my eyebrows at Sampson, my eyes asking, ”You okay?” but thank Ripred no harm seemed to have been done.

I jumped about a foot in the air when I heard Tessa scream, my sudden movement sending ripples out into the waves around me. Her tiny arms wrapped around me from behind and she managed to hoist herself up enough to hold on with her legs as well, latching onto my torso like the ticks that Adrian, Desmond, and I used to pick off our skin after wrestling in the summer grass. Tessa hardly weighed as much as a feather, and it wasn’t hard for me to keep my footing while she was holding on to me, but I played along anyways, just to be a good sport and have some fun. Laughing as she cackled out something about a ‘water-hole-witch-moster thing haaaaaaagggggggg’, I swayed and spun like crazy as if I couldn’t keep my balance—I wasn’t a bad actor, I thought proudly—before I fell backwards into the murky water, carrying the younger girl with me. For good measure, I flopped around helplessly under the water as if I really were trapped by a water monster rather than a teeny little blonde girl.

Although couldn’t make out her words, I heard Asha holler something from the surface, and my skin prickled as I felt her small, soft hand wrap around mine, attempting to pull my 175 pounds out of the water. It would have made me chuckle, if doing so wouldn’t have put me in danger of breathing in the murk. Then the connection between our arms went slack for a moment, and I realized she had probably slipped or something. Wondering if she was alright, I stopped messing around and stood up to check on her, forgetting to pay attention to whether or not Tessa was still on my back. But Asha emerged soon enough, coughing and sputtering and laughing all at the same time. I smiled; the girl seemed tough. Then again, you had to be tough if you wanted to be able to live a happy life in this country.

”Okay okay! The water monster wins!” Asha surrendered, laughing. ”You’re the best water monster ever!” I nodded in agreement and laughed along with her as I coughed up a bit of water, too. I’d snorted a little too much of the stuff as I’d gone under, and now it burned from my nose all the way down through my throat to the back of my tongue, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. I spit into the water beside me when I thought Asha wasn’t looking.

Sampson broke in suddenly; he had been silent for a while. ”You ain’t no powerful monster,” he said. ”Besides, she’s the dirty one around her.” he grinned in Asha’s direction when he said it, and I sensed something deeper beneath the expression, like he actually meant it. I could tell she and he had known each other before today, but I hadn’t realized until now that maybe Sampson wasn’t too fond of her. Maybe I had just been too caught up in all the fun to notice. Anyway, I didn’t want the comment to put a damper on the mood, so I lightened things up just in case.

”You know, Sampson, I think you’re right. Maybe she is the dirty one,” I said. I caught Asha’s eye and waggled my eyebrows at her, wondering if she’d catch my double meaning. She had just about accidentally grabbed my goods, after all. ”In fact—” I continued, grinning goofily at Sampson, ”Maybe we should clean her off!” With that, I slapped the surface and sent a wave of water at Asha, hoping she would realize I was only doing it to keep the morale from drifting, and not to get more of the bitter water in her mouth.

{ooc- sorry this kinda stinks}

thinking, doing, hearing, ”saying,” other