Reverie opens his eyes. "Hmm?" He sits up immediately. "Why, what happened?"

"I think we might be ever so gently floating towards a couple of charming rocks."

He jumps to his feet...

...and beams hugely. "A struggle for our lives navigating the waters of the rapid! That's more like it!"

"Uh huh," she says, retrieving her knife and getting to shortening a hem of one of her skirts. Screw that mess. She's going to try to turn this pointy stick into an oar.

"Did you know salmon lay their eggs upstream of falls and rapids?"

"Mhmm," she says, getting to work trying to split the non-pointy end of her pointy stick with her knife. If she can get it split into a 'V' shape, she can string the orphaned bit of hem through it, and that'll possibly work as a better oar than just a stick...

The sounds get louder. Reverie starts swinging his pointy stick in swift, practised motions, readying himself for a fight.

She checks to make sure if there are salmon and rapids up ahead, or if it's just rapids. While carefully pulling the bark off of a section of her stick so she can use it to wedge open her newly created 'V.' She can look and tie knots at the same time. Briefly.

What luck that she chances to catch sight of something silvery disappearing just under the surface of the water.

Oh. Great.

She pokes more holes in the orphaned section of fabric, so she can string the halves of the stick through them. Then she can... tie that securely with more bark, yes, that sounds like a good way to make this hacked together monstrosity a bit more sturdy...

"Come on, cheer up! We're going to fight some salmon!"

"I'm not unhappy, I'm just busy," she snorts, eyeing her makeshift monstrosity. She experimentally dips it into the water; does it hold?

Perhaps a bit better than could be expected, if that's saying much.

Wow, she's impressed with herself. It didn't immediately disintegrate upon contact with the water. She tries to make it a bit more sturdy with what little materials she has, but, yeah this is probably the best she's going to get before it's fish stabbing time.

The rapids are now visible in the distance. It would have been generous to call them that if they were big, but at this size? Very, very much.

And there's a whale—no, just a fish, jumping there upstreamwards. "Ha!"

Oh, boy.

"Okay, so it seems like the best thing to do is I try to steer our leaf towards the fish, and you do the stabbing?"

"You ruined your pointy stick so I suppose!"

"Excuse me, the pointy end of my stick is still quite pointy, it's just talented at multiple things now!"

Okay! Steering! She has maybe five minutes to get a handle on this before she'll be dealing with rapids, she'd better learn really quickly! Where is the nearest salmon, can she steer them towards it?

The nearest salmon is swimming upstream in their direction. A couple more jump up the rapids and start swimming, too.

She, uh, attempts to steer towards the nearest salmon. Is she helpful towards this goal?

Hard to say, but probably? Especially given the

huge

whale salmon

that leaps over them, soaring majestically through the air and dripping water onto their leaf then splashing back into the river right behind them, creating a wave that pushes them forward.

"Come back here and face me you coward!!!"

"Reverie, we do not need the fish to turn around and face us, there are other fish available," she says, a little faintly, trying to keep their leaf balanced and steady from the salmon wave. Okay, so, not that salmon, since that salmon is behind them and they'd be fighting the current to follow it. What about some other salmon for her to steer towards so Reverie can face them in fair, fishy combat?

There's other salmon for them to fight, and Reverie grumps a bit but concedes this point by turning back around and facing the closest one.

Great! She can steer them towards the closest one so Reverie can fight that fish with honor or whatever. Is the steering, uh, helping, or should she join him on the honorable combat front for lack of a better idea, she really should have planned this whole thing out a lot better, maybe she should stop expecting the fairy to have literally any kind of plan.

The fairy literally has no kind of plan whatsoever.

"En garde !" he exclaims, swinging his stick in the direction of a salmon that's just close enough to be hit by it. It makes a noise. Do fish make noises? Unclear.