FFM 7.27.10 - Amphibian

Pasha stared down at his hand, at the tendons and muscles that rippled as he slowly flexed his fingers.  He shivered, the resemblance clear.  

"Pasha!" the teacher shouted.  "No no no," she said, rushing over to his station.  He'd painted his entire hands green, ignoring the children's canvas beside him.

At home his mother made sure he didn't hold his breath underwater when he bathed.  He would crouch in the water, huddling under the cup she used to pour it over his head.  The way it slipped off his arm was perfect.

In the backyard, Manu would arrive and look at Pasha the way he always did, copper-skinned, eyes serious beneath dark bangs, but Pasha was already crouching in the grass, hopping forward, bent on reaching the shade of the small outcropping of trees just beyond the yard.  

They never spoke.  Not even when they had first met.  The parents had introduced them in an entirely normal, conventional way, but the boys had stared at each other in an entirely abnormal way, not speaking, even to say 'hello.'  Both sets of two had thought that was the end of it, but Pasha and Manu became inseparable after that.  Silent, and inseparable.

There was a river beyond the woods, a river they never went to.  Pasha had been concentrating on climbing for many months, bare toes wiggling to grip the bark of "the big tree" as he always thought of it.  But the day he crouched on the upper limbs was the day he looked to the river.  Manu followed his gaze, and frowned.

He didn't say anything until they were at the edge.  "No!"

Pasha turned in a flash and stared at Manu hard.  

"Stop!  Pasha, you can't do this!"

Erasing Manu from his mind, Pasha turned and concentrated on the most important jump of his life.  He sprung.

The current grabbed him and squeezed, ready to take his life the instant he gave himself to it.  Struggling, he did the breast stroke, his stroke, but the river tightened its hold, ripping his own limbs away from him as though he were a marionette.  

Then came the real beating.  He looked up at the surface vanishing into a funnel and began to claw towards it, seeing his thumbs for the first time, feeling his lungs cry out.  

He hit the side, and strong arms pulled him up.  Manu's father pumped the water out his lungs, and he lay gasping, a newborn boy.