Blurgh...

Splash!

It was dark and difficult to open his eyes. He did not dare breath since he was aware that it will just worsen the situation. However, he cannot hold on any longer...

A light was seen from his squinting eyes...

He breathed through his mouth and immediately closed it...

Then, there was a splash again and he went under the water...

He kept rolling and rolling until he got dizzier..

The current was too fast, that he didn't know how long he was in the water. Some time ago, the current turned him and he was able to raise his head a little. The forest was still in sight but he wasn't able to see any people catching up to save him. Right now, he didn't know where was the surface again.

He thought of curling a little and protecting his head with his arms so the rocks wouldn't hit his sensitive parts. Since he experienced a few mishaps before, he learned how to best protect his body.

There were a lot of jagged rocks in the river that kept hitting him and he kept getting wounded. However, if anyone was observing, it could be seen that the wounds kept healing at a fast rate, making it seem like he was not wounded at all for a few seconds.

Still not sure where the current was taking him, he thought he might be sent to the ocean if his father never managed to catch up to him. He heard the current was too strong that even the adults don't swim here so he kept thinking it's possible.

Because of his dreams, he always wanted to have an adventure in the sky but it was also fine for him now to have his first adventure in the ocean. This time, he will really have a lot of things to brag about to his sisters. Maybe he can even go to that city his family was talking about where his eldest sister was at.

These thoughts kept churning on the boy's mind, stopping himself from thinking of the worst that could happen.

___

Meanwhile, outside the village, an old man with straight, long white hair and beard was sitting near the river, fishing. To not disturb his activity, his hair and beard were tied. He was always here after checking the village's protections and still stayed outside to pass the time.

As one of the elders, there was not much he usually does except to guide the younger generation. The meetings of the council was not often enough since there were no important news for the village in the past years. These past few days, it was still the speculations on the status of the volcano that was on the minds of most of them.

Like any other fishermen, he was here for the quiet but was not expecting to catch anything. However, since the place where he stayed at to fish was where the strong current usually passes by, there was already a pile of different sizes of fishes at his side.

The fishes in this part of the river were really strong, able to withstand the current but the old man was still stronger.

His line was still in the water but he was not concentrating until something caught in the line. He stood up, feeling that this might be the heaviest he had caught yet. When he pulled the line, what was revealed in the water shocked him but he still put his might to pull the line faster.

The one caught was gasping once the old man put him back on land. Crouching beside him, the old man noticed that the little one was wounded, which was not surprising with the how sharp the rocks in the river were. What was more surprising was that there were not more wounds... and, upon closer inspection, the rest were actually healing at a really fast rate! This should be a boy?

"Boy?" the shaman asked once the kid was not gasping anymore, "Whose son are you? Can you tell me your name?"

"Let me catch my breath more, old man." As if just remembering, he kneeled properly while bowing slightly, "And thank you for saving me. I thought I have to start my adventures in the ocean."

The old man did not know if the kid was joking or he bumped his head really hard on the rocks that his power to heal was not enough to cure it. He touched the kid's still bowing head to make sure but felt nothing wrong when he checked his 'nerves'.

"So can you now tell me your name? I was just checking in case you have hit your head hard and forgot."

The boy raised his head fast, as if remembering something, and looked at the old man with horrified eyes, but he didn't open his mouth.

"Is it that you cannot remember?" The shaman was confused since the boy's vitals were normal.

Thinking for a few seconds, the boy looked at his surroundings then leaned a little to whisper at the old man, "My name is Ling. But father told me not to talk to strangers and I forgot. But since you saved me, it should be fine, right?"

Looking at the pleading look of the boy, the shaman could not think of what to say. It was not that the boy was wrong but...

That was when they heard a shouting from a distance in the direction of the river upstream, "Liiiiiiiiing!"

When he saw a slightly bearded man running to them, the shaman remembered the previous year and thought, 'Ah, so this was another child of Bobo and Mahina. I wonder how a man this stupid and a woman that weak can produce exemplary offsprings. But I can understand where the child got his unusual attitude just now.'