Once the whole curse thing is debunked and some time has settled, does Fish Dion allow Raz to move him around with hydrokinesis?
“Dion, the curse isn’t real.” Raz tries, “It was just a suggestion put in Dad and Nona’s heads by Ford.” Which means Dion doesn’t have to be stuck in the basin or the kiddie pool all the time.
Dion huffs, still looking away. “So what? Go away, Raz, and do your little traitor things.”
Raz frowns. Why does Dion have to be so… so… Dion?! Stubborn and surly and he’s not even listening, he’s just sitting there acting like the rest of the world doesn’t exist in that stupid pool where he can’t swim or do anything—
They’re near the part of the river past the waterwheel, so it’s impossible for Dion to get pushed into it. Raz calls upon his telekinesis, lowering the hand towards the middle of Dion’s tail…
The sound of the water rushing up the cliff side should make Augustus uneasy. And it does, long-ingrained fear not so easy to shake. But he’s been up here for a few hours, now, and he’s no less drowned than when he first climbed up alongside the waterrise. He can almost ignore the sound, now, letting it fade into the background as he stands and sorts his thoughts.
The faint shouts from down below, less so. Augustus cracks open an eye at the sound of his eldest, and opens the other when it starts to get louder. He peers over the edge, down to where—
“RAZ, PUT ME DOWWWWAAAAAAA—!”
Where Razputin has just flung Dion into the water with telekinesis, splash just loud enough for Augustus to hear over the waterrise. He watches Dion breach, go under, and breach again even closer to the waterrise—
Augustus doesn’t even have the time to panic before Dion’s swept right up like dust in a vacuum, tumbling end over end up the waterrise until he’s shot into the air—
“Well, I suppose we are the flying Aquatos…”
“Ughhhhh,” Lizzie makes it up to the next branch. First goats, now squirrels? She’s not a pine marten! The stupid things keep darting away before she can grab them, flitting through the trees too fast to catch, like acrobats on crack or… something…
“Now that’s an idea…” If Gisu can get Raz to do her homework, then what’s stopping Lizzie from getting his help on this? She won’t make him do everything, she has standards, but two minds are better than one…
Lizzie looks to the next branch. Doing so gives her a clear view of the reverse waterfall, and of—
Gisu looks up at the top of the waterrise. “Whoa…” Now that’s some impressive airtime!
The switch from lungs to gills and gills to lungs isn’t instant. It takes a moment, of holding his breath as he goes under, a moment of breathlessness when he comes back out. Moments that Dion doesn’t have when he’s being flung up a reverse waterfall—!
Is this what it feels like for the clothes Mom takes to the laundromat? Dion only gets a few moments to think that before he’s clear of the water entirely, soaring up up up into the air completely breathless—
He breathes at the apex, the whole world seeming to slow to nothing. It’s almost calm up here, achingly familiar in a way Dion hasn’t felt in months—I missed this, he realizes, as his tail twists in an attempt to control his path. I missed this so much!
What goes up must come down. Dion slams face-first into the water, current bashing him along as he twists, breathless, water up his nose and in his mouth down his throat—no no no—his gills open, water rushing through—but he can still feel it burning in his chest, in his lungs—
Dion realizes, just before he’s slammed into a caught log, that he can drown. And then the log hits, and Dion’s a little too busy being stunned to think about anything, even as flailing arms latch onto a branch and pull him from the current—
Breathlessness, and then burning, dirty river water rushing back up his throat and out his sides and he’s hacking and spitting onto the dirt and he’s just
Water laps over his tailfin. The sunlight is warm on his back.
Ugh, Raz is gonna pay so hard for this. As soon as Dion summons the energy to get back down. And... figures out how.
