Just as she thinks she is can walk out the water something grabs her at her ankle.
Jewel shrieks before she remembers that Clara had tried to sneak into the water. She holds her breath expecting to be pulled under and starts kicking frantically.
Her kicking and thrashing have no effect as she feels a pain in her hip, possibly pulling a muscle with her wild flailing.
The grip on Jewel is released and Clara emerges from the water in a kick-safe distance, laughing and pointing at Jewel.
Once Clara pops up Jewel moves to block Tarjun. Secretly she is very glad that her brother rushed to defend her.... "It was just Clara Tarjun. And she hasn't learned how to shape change into a crocodile yet...."
She starts moving back to the shore. "Your turn now Tarjun. I'll push to start you."
"Yes... yet! You wait until I can turn into dangerous animals. MUHAHAHA!" Clara tells practicing her evil mastermind laugh.
"Ha Ha Ha. Are you going to be the evil villain that we'll have to hunt down and stop once we're adults? I had really just wanted to stay here and really be a Guardian of Erastil for my life. I know you think that's boring...."
"If you learn how to turn into a dangerous animal, would the magic let you speak the language of that animal? I wonder?"
"Of course, and then I could rally an army of dangerous animals to lead them ... to do something dangerous." Clara loses her pose and ponders what options of evil-doing she actually has that would be fun.
|
"Well, I don't think I can tell the difference between your annoying self and a regular beastie," Tarjun waves his club at Clara. "So I'd be careful not to take a whacking if I were you!"
"Okay, now, my turn," he sits on the swing, still obviously a bit pissed. The slow swinging mollifies him somewhat, but after a few minutes he gets bored, and tries to put a little more strength into it.
Jewel tries to help Tarjun swing. Then she glances over to Clara.
"You know, leading a group of marauding monsters might be harder than working with a small group of people that try to help others."
"Why? I just need to rile them up and point them in a general direction. Chaos will rule!"
"And when one of them decides to challenge you for the leadership position? Like we did on that pirate ship? You're going to be constantly watching for somebody trying to stab you in the back...."
"And leading a group of dangerous monsters? To do what? Kill people? That isn't chaos, it's evil!"
"And what would it be if the people I feed to the crocs are evil? Is that still evil?"
Jewel gets a perplexed look on her face. "I never thought about that. I'm not sure the double negative argument works. But...." Her voice fades while she thinks....
Eventually she just shrugs. "Have you asked your mother? I could ask Dad, but I'm sure you don't want the 'Erastil answer'."
The more she thinks about the issue.... What defines an evil person? Aren't there different levels of evil? The more she realizes that she doesn't have any "real world" knowledge to answer any of them. Are all goblins evil? How about pirates? They hadn't all seemed evil, but the followed an evil captain. Or were they trapped on that ship like she had been?
Jewel realizes that she's just giving herself a headache so she stops thinking about evil....
Clara looks at Jewel and laughs. "Giving the do-gooders a headache is a good start." Then she splashes some water in direction of Tarjun on the swing. "You're coming down anytime soon? We didn't move here for you to do grandpa style rocking."
Clara gets on the swing and daydreams of becoming a dragon. She swings higher and higher and finally jumps off the swing, does a somersault and dives with almost no splash into the water.
Jewel watches Clara's incredible performance, diving off of the swing and into the water. Definitely worthy of praise...
She waits on the side of the stream for Clara to pop up from the water, and claps. "Perfect dive Clara. Couldn't possibly be better!"
Clara spits out some water. "Why into a duck? I'm jumping into the water so I'd turn into a shark!"
Swimming back to the shore, once she got ground under her feet she adds "Of course if I'd turn into a bird, I could fly away."
"Isn't it your turn to take a dive?" she asks Tarjun.
Jewel shakes off the water from Tarjun's splash. "Thanks Tarjun. I figured you'd get swinging higher before you jumped! But we're all wet anyway."
"My turn!" She jumps onto the swing before Clara can and starts swinging.
Her initial push barely gets her moving so she starts swinging her legs and body to increase the arc of the swing.
That doesn't do much better but she keeps trying....
With no chance to improve on her performace clara states "This is gettign boring. We need to build a ship, and then we be pirates and enter the ship by jumping from the swing on deck!"
"As a pirate captain I don't approve of that idea. I see right through your evil plans!"
"But we could really use some practice entering. Last time most of us ended up in the water."
Jewel thinks about Clara's idea. It isn't bad, but maybe....
"So for practicing crossing from one ship to another, like when they had grappled the ships together? We could do that. It would be safer to do it over the water, like here.... Put a starting platform in a tree on one side, and another on the other side of the river. Then connect a rope between for crossing."
"And Tarjun can do a little carving on the tree across as the Captain so we can whack him when we get there!"
"Well, if we go one at a time we don't need to build a platform. Just use a good branch. But we do need a good rope, long enough to cross the river and tie tight on both ends."
"We should build a raft! That makes it more realistic with all the rocking." Clara suggests.
"Why a raft? And then we'd need to anchor it or tie it to something on shore. Would you want a swing on the raft? Or some sort of mast so you aren't trying to swing across to the other surface right at the water level. One the ships we were several feet above the water."
"Next you'll want to summon some sharks!"
"Can't you have the beaver do most of the work?" Clara inquires. "But having a mast and stuff to be able to throw the hook at might be tricky."
"Could we build two ships like hammoks between trees? Then the ships would be rocking and we could use the trees as masts."