Feznatch returned, cutting off Lance reverie by dumping a deer in front of him. Feznatch drew a large dagger, and started to skillfully skin the deer, and in no time the hide was laid bloody side up apart from the main body, yet to be jointed and gutted.
'Take off your shirt.' said Feznatch, scraping the blubber off his dagger and replacing it in his sleeve-sheath.
Lance took off his shirt and shivered slightly at the chill evening air. The sun's bottom was millimeters from the horizon, casting a red, orange and purple palette onto the few clouds present. It was a beautiful sunset, if only the sun cast it's heat as well as the colors, Lance thought.
'Pants too,' said Feznatch, who continued when Lance hesitated. 'Unless you want to sleep in wet trousers, I suggest you take off your pants, and if you'd like to remain free of frostbite and hypothermia, rub this deer fat onto your torso. There might be enough for your thighs but it wasn't the plumpest of deer.' He finished, rubbing his hands into the blubber and smearing it onto Lance's chest. There was enough fat to rub onto Lance's thighs, for which he was eternally grateful.
'Walk onto the platform, and don't get knocked over. It's harder than it looks to climb back up.' said Feznatch to the very greasy Lance.
Lance would've liked to have said that he waded into the river, that he caught a fish overhanded in the first twenty seconds, and that when he did finally fall over, he dived so majestically into the pool below that the nymphs just gave up their fish, and he and Feznatch ate well that night. In reality, none of things happened, except for the majestic dive.
Lance's lower half instantly went numb, the deer blubber extending still the debilitation and refusal to move any further in his legs. Lance didn't doubt that the river had a mountainous route, but now it was confirmed. He had chosen to wade in, acclimatize, and then try balancing, but the ground just before the platform was just as treacherous, algae covering it like a fine, brown film of grease. Or half-diluted detergent. Many bowls had been smashed on the floor because of the slippery traits of detergent.
He, even in his evergreen spearfishing career had never felt water as cold. Even when his wetsuit was still to arrive, and he went out rockin' boardies in mid-winter. The water had been eight degrees then, he had had warm, wet-suited Nat get a water thermometer from the life-savers, who were stunned that Lance had actually stayed in, let alone catch the three lobsters that he did. He could remember rubbing the sixty dollars hard in Nat's face on the train home.
This water however, was nothing like that. It blocked out all else, the objective more than obliterated from his memory, Lance turned and started getting out, stiff-jointedly. Feznatch then did the most malicious thing that had been done to Lance ever since he had arrived in Avalon. Lance saw it coming to, but his half-frozen brain could do nothing to impede Feznatch's incoming hands. Both palms hit Lance in the sternum. That coupled with Lance's sluggish legs and treacherously algal footing meant that he had no chance of not falling backwards. Two of the aforementioned plights and Lance might have been able to retain his footing, if not his dignity, but all three, not a chance.
Lance splashed backwards, his sea career building an instinctive inhale, just before submersion of any form. This may have saved Lance's life, for as he splashed into the more-than-icy waters, the cold robbed him of all sense of direction, bearing, and replaced with the overpowering need for oxygen. Oh, Lance could go another minute at least before he really started needing that oxygen, but that cold, that obliterating, overpowering freeze robbed him of than knowledge too. Lance was washed over the lip of the platform in less time than it took him to realize it, so he found himself on the first of many voyages down the slope. Oh, he knew he would be okay, drop wise. Cold wise he wasn't sure if the deer blubber worked miracles, but Feznatch was confident before, and Lance had made the decision to trust the bear.
