Submerged in a river with little hope of rescue, I had plenty of time to reflect on my many mistakes leading up to now. Shapeshifting afforded me a new degree of agency that I'd squandered, instead relying on the decisions and schemes of others to take me in all the wrong directions. I should have convinced Janine to hide me in a tree, or I could have embedded deep into a rock where nobody but Janine could pull me out, and let everyone try and tire themselves out for a week. The vault sounded so secure and simple, though. I'd wanted to believe that Galen's heart had changed, or at least that he'd weigh the odds versus his biases and see the benefit I provided to the town.
I couldn't do anything about the past—the murky waters ensured I could do little else as well, obscuring my view beyond a few feet in any direction. For much of the winter, I had the waters to myself, alone with my thoughts. Memories would sneak their way to the fore, haunting me with the specter of better days. But has spring arrived, the ice receded and the currents shifted, bringing visitors to my corner of the river.
Fish would gather around me, drawn to this strange green beacon in the water, congregating at the tree as if it were a temple and I was their object of worship. These fish would sometimes stare for hours, eyes wide and mouth open in a perpetual gasp of awe and reverence. That may have just been how fish looked, I suppose, since their faces looked identical to the ones on ice at the market.
I don’t know what they found so fascinating about me; I thought of them as a nuisance, disrupting my concentration. I struggled to focus on memories of the Denholms with scaled creatures taking the occasional nibble at my neckce.
...It did give me an idea after a while, though. Despite only a cursory knowledge of hooks and lures, my incandescence already seemed to do most of the work of attracting fish. Forming an approximation of a treble hook, I had to hope that one of these mesmerized creatures would dare take a bite and tear me free from the branches. After that, who knows? This was all improvisational. Maybe I’d remain with the fish until it swam upstream in the spring where an angler from Quinn’s Peak could reel me in.
Or maybe I’d be stuck in the branches with a dead fish. Or it would swim downstream, taking me further from Quinn's Peak. Or we would get eaten by a bear. But the odds were better than if I did nothing, so I took my chances.
Anglers must have infinite patience, because the moment I wanted them to actually start biting, they backed away to gawk at me from afar until I found the right combination of attractive shapes to entice them closer again. Different hooks, little spoon shapes to gain their interest, most attempts failed to make an impression. But the days continued to lengthen until the trout began their springtime trek upstream. With plenty more candidates to work with, there had to be one fish more hardy or foolish than the rest to take a chance!
Enter... The Behemoth.
It was a magnificent creature, multiple times rger than any fish that came before it and therefore deserving of an appropriate moniker. Those who brag about the size of their catch would have envied The Behemoth, perhaps the biggest fish that ever lived in these waters! But I didn't care about the gargantuan size of this record-breaking trout—what mattered is that it made me its lunch, and I could not have been happier.
The Behemoth swallowed me up and thrashed hard enough to break the branches that snagged me, tearing me away from the tree with ease before swimming away. I’d solved one problem, and created many more, but I'd still call that progress!
Riding about in the mouth of a fish may not be luxurious, but it afforded me the hope that I’d see Janine again before the next winter season. I hoped she was okay. I knew she could handle anything the mountains threw at her, but I worried all the same. Once I was back in her hands, nobody would separate me from them again—especially not duplicitous captains with anti-relic agendas. I could envision the moment I revealed the truth, the town gasping as I shapeshift into a sword with the words it was Galen etched into my bde before they tossed him out of town. ...I hoped I knew how to write. I hadn't tried it before, I made a note to practice ter so I didn't make a fool of myself during such a pivotal moment.
After maybe an hour of swimming, The Behemoth started to fil about, tossing me around deep in its maw as it snapped its head back and forth. This didn’t seem like normal fish behavior to me, unless...
...Unless something else caught it!
Thud. My traveling companion stopped its violent thrashing after a minute or so. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear five distinct voices chattering with one another: two adults, three children, all discussing lunch.
"You just cut into it," a woman's voice said, "and then pull all the guts out. That's what my father used to do, I saw him do it all the time."
"If you saw it all the time, maybe you should do it then?" said a man.
"Honey, guts are slimy, slime isn't really my thing. Besides, you're the one who wanted to have this 'authentic outdoors cooking experience' on our trip instead of packing more meals. Isn't there a de-guttification spell in one of your books? Hurry up, the kids are getting hungry."
The two went back and forth for some time about which would be less inept at deboning a fish until the children started to chant "fish guts, fish guts", demanding that their father stop stalling and start cooking. With an exasperated sigh, the man cut into the The Behemoth, creating enough of an opening that my viridian glow spilled out.
After adjusting his gsses, the slim-faced father of three grinned in delight, turning to his wife and pointing to me. "Honey, look! Our meal came with a prize!"
