Beneath the surfaces of the freshwater out here, there are plants. They generate long fronds, that dance with the water's current.

Among them, lungfish sleep. For them, it's an easy long as their habitat is flooded. It's when their habitat ISN'T flooded that they need the energy of these plants. They'll need to slither around in surfaced mud for that long, before the next rains arrive.

Farther away and ashore, Spela is still a ten thousandth her normal size. To her, ants are like mammoths. Even so, she sticks to the shallows, and relieves herself of the trauma of her aerial accident. She honestly has NO idea how she's still alive...

Along some of the more open shores, fiddler crabs crawl. They wave their very large pincers at one another, communicating. To each other, their pincers are like signal flags. Most signals branches of most human armies would envy how they do that.

They don't seem vary wary of Spela. They shouldn't be. Alas, she is about the size of detritus... Hence, Spela'd better watch herself around them. She's sure her fiancé, back on Long Island, wouldn't be too thrilled if his fiancé got mistaken for detritus by a fiddler crab...if he even knows what that means.

It's starting to look like Spela's last story won't get written. Unless she's mistaken...and she seldom ever is, when it comes to her work...she's stuck out here. Alas, she usually seldom ever isn't mistaken because she researches everything thoroughly, and interviews reliable witnesses, before writing everything down as impersonally as she can, within her own soul's interpersonal limits. Hence, it might help if she did some research, before despairing.

She's...not sure how she's going to do that. Most of her new neighbors aren't talkative. And she'd be damned if they had a library anywhere near. She sighs, and keeps washing herself. She's just going to have to tough this impossible as that still seems...

From offshore, a wave rises...and zooms in, towards where Spela washes. She doesn't spot it until it's too close...

She screams, and leaps away. Over her, the wave's cause breaches, flies, and lands ashore, on its side.

It's a mudskipper. Its fins are is its gaping mouth. He lands on his side. He takes a while to flip back up, but he does.

Spela lies on her own side, trying to catch her breath. She doesn't think the monstrous fish has seen her...

He turns towards her...and opens his mouth wide...raising his dorsal fin as if it were a mainsail.

Crap; he's seen her. Spela screams, stands, sprints out into the water, and dives in.

Underwater, she watches as the mudskipper splashes down in front of her. To her, it's like an asteroid falling into the sea.

The fish turns his huge head. He fixes his eyes on her...and opens its huge mouth again. To Spela, it's like a cave. And she does NOT want to go spelunking inside it...

Spela knows it's hopeless...but she tries diving. This fish seems to prefer land over depths. If she can use this to her advantage, this chance will serve her better than doing everything he does. She's not exactly his size.

She swims along the bottom, diving out. Behind her, the fish flops against the bottom, stirring up silt. To Spela, most of these silt particles are as big as boulders. She narrowly avoids getting broadsided by a lot of them.

Alas, her path is soon obstructed by a pair of other mudskippers. This is it; Spela's surrounded. They don't know what she is...but she looks good, and smells good. Spela's not sure how. She can't smell anything. But then, first of all, one almost never smells one's self, and second of all, she can't smell anything when she's holding her breath.

Spela closes her eyes, and curls into the embryonic position, prepared to be swallowed by one of her three hunters. She'd hate to miss her wedding with her fiancé...but sometimes, life happens. This just...isn't the life Spela expected to happen to her.