[imgleft]https://matope-swamp.com/images/araucan ... uncert.png[/imgleft]The winter this year in the swamp was dark, and on the grey horizon, he sensed more powerful storms yet to come. But that was, unfortunately, irrelevant.

He sloshed his usual path towards the swamp's obelisk in exasperated silence. It had been two seasons now since he had descended the mountain. And every time the half-moon began to wane, the trembling feeling of anxious anger and overpowering scent of iron began to consume him again. And so he was uprooted from whatever he had been doing at the time to make a journey to the obelisk once more.

Some of the other Totoma from their obelisk had taken to living there full time, he'd heard, but... There were so many other places in the swamp he could be more productive, he'd found. Maybe it was because of that nervous buzzing, but it felt wrong to settle down for good. As if his nerves told him there was always unfinished business from him to attend to elsewhere, even if he didn't know what it was.

He tested a hoof on a frozen-over pond, but found it punched right through the ice when he put any weight on it. With a heavy sigh, he glanced around the area, hunting for a way to avoid getting his wool soaked while still making it to his destination.

[imgright]http://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/image ... uncert.png[/imgright] It was a miserable, melty sort of day-- the sort of day that had Fathomless gummed up with icy clay mud up to the knees, shivering in misery. She'd always known that frozen ice would melt at some point, and that the water from summer would flow freely again, but she hadn't known the process would take so miserably long. Each step she took had to be dragged out of the mud she was in, and it sucked and pulled at her as she did so, leaving her legs increasingly encased in a disgusting, solid mass of pure weight.

The few times, at first, that she'd stopped to scrape her legs off, seemed to help, but to little avail: after only a couple more bodylengths, the sticking mud was caked around her limbs like it was trying to pull her into the earth.

She grunted, focused on keeping herself walking in a straight line. If she kept making sure her hind legs hit where her front legs had been, she'd avoid veering too heavily, and could focus on simply wading her way free and dry... or that was her hope, at least.

Nobody had ever died from getting stuck in mud, right?

...right...?

[imgleft]https://matope-swamp.com/images/araucan ... uncert.png[/imgleft]The distinctive schlop-schlopping noise of a kin utterly stuck in mud broke his concentration. (Common occurrence with heavyset Totoma unused to walking on swampy ground.) And though it pained him to think of anything but getting on his way to his destination already... He couldn't help himself but turn around to investigate.

It was a Zikwa, an elegant-looking one. Lightning Caller hesitantly took a few steps backwards to get closer to them, his mind still a bit torn between getting where he needed to go and his natural desire to help others. Well, maybe they would be going the same direction, and he'd feel even worse if he just left them to suffer.

"Do you, uh..." He shouted, before realizing he was a bit too close for shouting to be any more effective than just talking. With a nervous exhale, he continued at normal volume- "Do you need some help?"

A strange voice. A stranger. A stranger had caught Fathomless in a helpless, embarrassing situation. She took in an indignant breath, intent on brushing them off, before a large clod of mud came off and sent her reeling a little bit.

Remember your manners. "I-- I wouldn't turn it down," she called out to the kindly stranger. "Could you at least point me to whichever direction is, um, the shortest to dry land?"

He didn't dare get too much closer, lest he get stuck in the mud himself. Plus, thinking logically about it, he wondered how much he could actually help her. Caller was a bit too pointy to try to lift her out without jabbing her with a shard or two dozen, which would be about as unpleasant as the mud... if not more.

"Well, you're kind of along the bank of a stream that's leading into this pond here," though that could describe just about anywhere in the swamp, "so I think if you take about five paces to your left you'll be on drier land. The pond isn't icy enough to walk on, though." Maybe a lighter kin could manage it, but it would be incredibly dangerous if the ice broke far from shore. All thanks to this deceptively-mild part of winter where things were melting and refreezing unevenly, making the trek ever more inhospitable for less fluffy kin.

Well, there she was. "Thank you." She hauled her body up, rearing on her back legs, and reached out as far as she comfortably could without slipping or getting her belly even more caked than it already was... and then began the laborious process of pulling out first one hind leg, then another, then a foreleg, and then another.

It was slow going, but with a second redirection she was facing directly to what had been her left, which meant that the mud was, for one, not as deep, and that each step took her a little further away from the wettest part.

She grunted as she lifted massive chunks of mud with her, waiting until the limb was free to shake off the worst of it, then stepping forward and repeating. One whole cycle she did this, and then two, and on the third set, she found the mud shallow enough she barely had to wiggle to get her feet free of the sucking mud.

And she could feel it now, solid ground at the edge of what had felt for a moment there like a possible death sentence, and now she was... well. Still lost, and still absolutely filthy. "Thank you. Um.... may I ask your name?"

"They call me Lightning Caller." The way he phrased it was rather Totoma of him. Not 'my name,' but 'what I'm called.' He lowered his head out of respect as he took a few slow steps towards her, though he did realize in the back of his mind that she probably couldn't see the gesture at all. "But, you're welcome. I'd have felt guilty if I didn't at least try to help." At the very least, he was honest with himself.

He glanced over his shoulder at the pond, then at the other ways around it. Clearly crossing the river hadn't worked out for her, so he doubted it would work for him... Maybe there was an easier way across on the other side. "I'm trying to make it to the Obelisk, but it seems like I'll have to take a longer way around today. Even a Totoma could drown in icy water like this if they aren't careful."

(Counterintuitively, he knew still water like this was more dangerous when it was a bit warmer than when it was brutally cold like up in the mountains.)

Lightning Caller. How lovely a name! She stayed quiet as she shuffled around for a moment, used to lapses in conversation around when introductions happened-- seeing kin were so attached to their visual cues. She listened patiently as he explained his predicament, pausing for a mental note of surprise when she heard him mention Totoma-- weren't their names all about acts of valor? How could one have been named after a celestial event? It boggled the mind.

"Ah. I crossed this river a couple days ago, and I'm trying to get back now... maybe we can find someplace to cross it together?" she suggested. Certainly his eyes were better than her one, semi-functional one, obscured as it was by hair... and he could warn her of any upcoming pitfalls she might miss.

"Yes, that's probably better. Even if we have to cross somewhere unpleasant, it would be safer in a pair in case one of us gets dragged under." Or have one act as a water break while the other was a support, though... as he thought of himself and then took a look at her, he grew more and more certain that leaning against one another like that seemed like it would leave one or both kin with a couple extra holes in them.

He traced his eyes around the pond's perimeter, noting through the trees that the streams on the other side seemed a bit shallower, though there were more of them. "We may have to go around, unfortunately."

Oh. Of course they would have to go around-- her attempts to blindly ford this river had failed thusfar, so why not continue to befuddle her? The doe shook her head a little, then straightened abruptly. "By the way, I. Forgot to introduce myself, before asking your name. Terribly impolite of me." She paused for a moment, before realizing she'd stopped again without sharing it. "It's Fathomless. I'm Fathomless. Not 'It's Fathomless'."

She cringed internally as she reoriented herself to walk, taking a moment to scrape off a few clods of drying mud from her legs.

He dipped his head again in response to her introduction. "Not a problem. I'm used to not expecting a name every single time. But, it's nice to meet you, Fathomless." Once more, he smiled, taking up a position by to her side to walk, slowly at first, keeping himself between her and the pond just in case. He was closer now, not touching her of course, but close enough she could probably begin to feel or hear the soft crackle of static electricity in his wool. It wasn't helped by the nervous jittering that, while not yet constant, seemed to wash over him when he stood perfectly still. He still had some time to go before it was insufferable, but it was still fairly obvious something was starting to bother him.

"Looking on the bright side, at least it's not too big of a pond..."

Oh, of course he didn't. Totoma needed to earn their deed names, after all... and they were as much about showing what was uniquely them as it was about impressing others. A feat someone else could perform more handily wasn't likely to earn a name, especially if there were others. Instead of saying anything else potentially ignorant, she decided to limit herself to a simple "It's nice to meet you, too."

Her ears swiveled as she began walking next to the buck, letting him and his noises act as a general guide where she should be walking... and feeling the unmistakeable feeling of a charged pelt. While it was rare to experience, and rarer to build up like it was, her youth had primed her for the very special game of 'roll around in the dry pelt cave and trade shocks' as much as any other of her friends growing up.

Still, it begged a simple question-- just how was he crackling like this? Would it be rude to ask?

She almost started as he began to speak again, shocking her from her train of thought as surely as if he'd just given her a jolt from his own fur. "That's good," she responded, mostly by reflex.

"By the way..." she started, before trailing off.