Yeah, okay, joining him in honorable combat it is, she guesses. Stabbing! Stabbing with her oar-spear! Stabbing that she's actually not great at because she's distracted by other things, but she's trying, okay!

(Somewhere, she wonders how they're supposed to keep within range of a fish that is actively moving in a completely different direction? If they stab it twice and then get swept away and never see it again, that's not really a victory, is it. It's just a mildly inconvenienced fish.)

Who said this was supposed to make sense? Either the same fish keeps going back downriver and then up just to fight them or they're fighting the essence of fishdom instead or something, but it is definitely the same salmon every time.

Oh. Uh. Okay. She would have expected to come up with some kind of system to attach the leaf boat to the fish with a harpoon-alike or—actually, stop thinking back to stabbing.

Is it bad that she kind of wants to just jump off this damn boat and directly stab the fish? Grappling a fish is a bad idea, probably. She'll just. Stay on the boat and try to stab it. She guesses. For now.

The salmon, which definitely came from further downriver and is definitely not the same salmon from before except for how it looks the same and has the same minor wounds they've inflicted, bumps against their leaf boat, sending it rapidly in a direct collision path towards a rock.

"Coward!" exclaims the fairy once more.

Oar time, it is oar time, it is oar time and she is going to do her very best to steer the boat away from the rock! No rock! Rock bad! Rock is very bad!

Rock very bad! They have picked up enough speed by now that the water is splashing them and if she's not drenched she soon will be.

They dodge certain rocky death, but the swirling currents make them bounce between said rocks at a rather alarming speed. Collision paths seem unlikely given that they're still light enough that the leaf can just be carried by the currents between the rocks, but the encounters are very much terrifying and there's always a chance...

Mrrgh to stab or to steer, that is the question.

Steer them, and watch for an opening for a really good stab? Not these dumb minor stabs that barely hurt it, something that would have a lot of leverage and may or may not involve jumping off of the boat entirely. And onto the fish. Not that she's, uh, planning to do that. Nooo, definitely not.

Reverie is definitely doing the ineffectual stabbing while shouting imprecations at the fish. Who does seem to be acting smarter than fish usually do.

Maybe that "do not anthropomorphize animals" advice from earlier is smarter than expected.

This is so stupid, he's doing this on purpose, isn't he.

"Stop calling it names that imply its intelligence!" she shrieks, and then she loses all patience with this dumb nonplan, and does her extremely dumb half of a plan. Which is: leap onto the fish, pointy end of spear first, and stab it. Preferably somewhere vital, she'd like an eye or maybe the gills.

She can hear him cackling from behind her as she lands pointy-end-first onto the fish's eye.

It absolutely makes a noise that fish were not meant to make, and starts thrashing about.

His cackling is just more proof that she’s been kind of set up, and she growls a little under her breath. This is infuriating even if stabbing this damn fish is exhilarating, and damn it, but that just makes her even more angry. So she twists her spear deeper into the salmon’s eye, at an angle, both to do as much damage as possible and to keep from being flung off before it’s dead. Is this smart? No, absolutely not. Is it very viscerally satisfying? Oh, yes.

Well, it definitely has not evolved the opposable thumbs it would need to get rid of her, so after some more increasingly feeble thrashing it... dies.

Except now instead of on a leaf boat she is on a dead fish.

This was perhaps something of an error.

“Fuck,” she says, and then she’s absolutely caught up in the rushing rapids and thinking that, actually, dying to kill a small insignificant salmon was really, really dumb.

"Yeeeeehaaaaaa!" says her fairy companion, leaping from the leaf boat just as it gets lifted up by the currents close to the fish and just before he would have been smashed against the rock. He sweeps her into a bridal carry and, as the fish conveniently approaches the river bank, jumps off its carcass onto it as if Calendula weighed nothing at all.

But he doesn't manage to make the landing graceful, and they land in a heap.

She takes a moment, to be an angry, soaking wet heap.

“You were playing with it,” she then accuses, crossly.

He giggles and pushes himself up into a kneeling position. "Yes! Wasn't it fun?"

She wants to petulantly say no it wasn’t just so he can’t win, but that would be lying, wouldn’t it, damnation.

“I don’t appreciate being set up!” she says instead, because that is definitely completely true.

That stops him. "Wait, set up? Who set you up for what?"

“You! You were playing with it and, and ineffectually stabbing, and calling it anthropomorphic names to see what I’d do!”

"Oh! Yes, I was. It wasn't that ineffectual though! And I do not think the anthropomorphic thing works like that..."

“I consider that setting me up! I’m not a, a toy for you to poke and prod and watch for interesting actions!”

"...you're not a toy, you're a person, and a very fun one at that. Are you angry?"

She has to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying something bitingly sarcastic that would probably be taken as lying. In her head, she counts to five, and lets out a breath through her teeth.

“Yes. Obviously. What, do you think I just start yelling when I’m perfectly fucking calm?”

"Well, no, I guess not. Just—confused. I thought you were having fun."

“….Rrrgh!” she hisses, and then she turns away and pouts. “I am having trouble expressing myself right now because all of the ways I know how to are bitingly sarcastic and may or may not count as lies!”