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Chapter 3: A Stick in the Mud

"Welcome to Tidemarsh; Gateway to the Ocean". I'll be honest; I kinda' expected a sign that was gifted such a picturesque location to advertise would be in better condition than the one at the foot of a path branching off to our right. I guess its faded white paint and weather-chipped wooden post was a side-effect of just how remote we were; certainly, the cluster of picturesque, if slightly mismatched houses lining the coastal path slightly further inland were the only signifiers of civilisation for miles around. At least, they were to the untrained eye; the coastal path, separated from the mainland by a foreboding body of mud and perched atop a small, steep bank down to the water, felt like it'd been designed by someone with a hard on for rulers.

"Ya' know what this feels like?" I quipped, partially to start a conversation, but secretly to distract myself from the backpack's itchy straps clawing into my fur, "It feels like we're in the map of one of those old adventure game maps; you know the sort, right?" From his adjacent, leftward position, the periphery of my vision saw the beginnings of a smirk form around Nath's muzzle.

"Yeah; I'm the brave leader t' player controls, and you're...what, the damsel in distress?"

"Oh stop it ya' dork" I giggled, knocking my curled paw against his bare shoulder; I would've half-heartedly kicked him, but goddamn, these rubber boots sewn onto my chest-waders were seriously not made for walking; my paws were beginning to complain from even the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, to the point where I could _forget_doin' anything besides tentatively making forward progress. The houses of Tidemarsh slipped further and further behind us, leaving the sound of nothing but the salty sea whisking against our fur as we zigzagged along the planner's pathway nightmare...well, that and the _crunch_of minuscule pebbles as they were squeezed between the quintuplet of rubber soles that sounded remarkably like the freshly extended gravel driveway I navigated every day to reach our house's front door.

"Been here before?" he quipped, snapping me from my brief thought-train diversion into destination daydream, but now I think about it, he was bound to ask it at some point; I dunno' why it took me so by surprise. What_did_ irk me somewhat, I'll admit, was his seeming obliviousness to the fact that I'd never even been fishing once before; if the fact I'd tried to grab the rob from the wrong end as we unpacked the car wasn't a clear-enough signpost, I struggle to think what was!

"Um, no; not really, I...I" I stumbled, "I've never been much of a hiker myself...oh, you mean the beaches? Well, not here; sand isn't exactly in large supply, is it?" Nathan flicked a jagged piece of flint off the toe of his boot, where it took flight before crash landing onto a bed of supple stones lining the coast.

"Pfft; your parents actually took you out at all? I kinda' had t' make my own fun when I was a little cretin, bein' an only child and all t'at. You're lucky you even have a brother." Before I could stop myself, I'd tipped my head back and burst into ironic laughter.

"Yeah right; if there's one person here who's lucky, it's you, Nath; little brothers are just...ugh, I swear his sole reason for existing is to piss me off on a daily basis! At least you could hog whatever console you had without a...a tiring little _jerk_clawin' at the controller every five seconds."

"Not that it'd've mattered" he quipped, hiding a snort, "there's only so much fun y' can have with an NES; me Ma' only lemme play it an hour a day when I was a little 'un."

"NES?! Oh cool, you're into the old-school stuff? Your Mom sounds pretty overbearing!" Naturally, I expected either an agreeing nod or a quick decline, but the ever-so-subtle downward tilt of his head was certainly not one of them.

"Yeah" he mumbled, "I guess...I guess you could put it that way. I wasn't really into the old stuff, it was just all I had." His muzzle quickly returned to a warm smile, but even that brief oddity had sent an unexplainable shiver down my spine; it was so unlike him to do that.

"So anyways," I frantically changed the subject, "what's there to know about fishing? I've read one too many books where a character gets a hook stuck in their neck!" The colour returned in waves to Nathan's face; he tipped his head back and let out a distinctly cocky hah!

"Well, where d'ya wanna start? T'ere's always a t'ree hundred-page book back home if me' lecture doesn't cover everythin'".

?

It was becoming ever-more apparent to me that the designer of the Tidemarsh to Lime Beach coastal path not only jerked-off to rulers, but he'd taken the phrase of "aim for the horizon" a little too literally; every _single_section comprised the same flat, long path with absolutely no change in surface or vegetation, which was hardly helping my attempts to stop the inevitable groan of "how much longer?" that would've put an unwanted damper on the whole situation.

"Oh...well, I guess we're here" he announced broadly, stopping dead in his tracks. Strange; I was sure I hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary just before we'd stopped...

"Erm, we're fishing by the sea?" My nose came perilously close to being taken clean off as his arm shot across my line of vision, extending an outstretched finger perpendicular to my right...had the heat got to him? All that met my eyes were clusters of reeds, flanked by snaking rivers of dark brown tidal mud stretching back to a line of trees; if he thought we were fishing in that, then he...though actually, now I looked closer, a pair of trees formed a natural pillar aside a small gap that separated them, and at the bottom of that gap stood the mountings of a wooden bridge. There was only one, tiny problem...

"Wait, where's the bridge?!" The thought-process spilled out of my mouth, but it had good reason to; the 'bridge' in question was merely a few, solitary planks of wood joined onto the edge of a small path, with the final plank of the structure dipping downwards into the mud. The gravel crunched under my boots as I spun back around for a second opinion.

"Hmmn; must've been t'at' storm-surge we had last week; I doubt a rickety wooden bridge could survive it."

"Oh don't remind me of that; I was awake all night...you would've liked it; I was sweatin' all over!" As if to materialise the image now in my head, I felt his warm breath waft against my ear.

"What, t' keep ya' safe? Scared of a bit of t'under, are we?"

"No!" I yelped abruptly, hunching my shoulders to hide a rose-tinted blush spreading across my cheeks, "b-but anyways, how are we going to get over..." The significance of our attire had just hit me as strongly as the rank stench from the mud before us, and as if I needed any further clarification, Nathan buffed out his chest and purposefully marched forwards, treading carefully down the small, grassy bank before launching the soles of his waders into the shallow, brown goop lining the edge of the marsh.

"You've cleared shit outta' animal's cages before; t'is oughta' be no problem" he chuckled, stretching his lanky arm outwards and beckoning me towards him...my slackening jaw told him exactly how I felt.

"Are you serious?! At least in the Zoo I didn't have to worry about a freezing cold death six-feet under with my throat full of mud!" were the words my brain ordered my mouth to shout, but they quickly got lost on their way to my jowls; I could only nod my head meekly in response.

"I...I guess, I mean-"

"Look" he cut in, "would I ever put you in danger, now, Tommy-boy? Come on, you'll be fine; we'll get through this together. Do it for me." His eyes, relaxed yet somehow firm, locked dead-set onto mine; I should've bounded right up to him right there and then, but...I don't know, something was holding me back. The heavy, precise separation of those final four words, perhaps? No, it...argh, I knew if I chickened out now I'd never live it down; oh, he wouldn't mind, but I sure would. It was time I showed him what I was made of.

"Alright, alright, I'm coming" I responded tentatively, treating the ten-tonne load strapped to my back as nothing more than a pile of feathers as I sauntered towards him.

"Right, just follow me' tracks and we'll be fine and dandy; stick as close t' the reeds as ya' can, take the third right, and you'll arrive at your destination." The chuckle on his muzzle disappeared as he swung back around to face our direction of travel, filling my vision with a black mass of fabric, plastic strings and buckles covering his backpack as he lifted his right boot upwards before thumping it back down into the incrementally thickening layer of foul, deep brown muck below it.

"You're gonna' regret this, I know it- shut up, brain!" I hissed out loud, angrily coercing my leg muscles forwards, but to no avail; as the olive-green soles of Nathan's waders rose and fell before completely disappearing in front of me, he passed the point where he was better off pushing_the physical weight of mud aside rather than wasting energy lifting his legs out of the mud...should I tell him now? No, it's _way too embarrassing, I couldn't possibly-

"Well come on, we haven't got all day" he called back, gesturing into the mud as if it was a community pool...though even if it had been one, I...

"Nath, I...I gotta' tell ya' something; I...I never learnt to..." A frustrated sigh replaced the final word of the sentence; I was not letting it be known.

"Not one for the water, are ya'? T'at's alright; look, bear wit' me a sec-" turning back around and powering through the bow-wave of mud around his torso, he strode out of the goop and sandwiched his wonderfully warm paws around my faintly trembling left one, "I'm not lettin' you drown on my watch; lemme' make it a bit easier for ya'" he reached around my shoulders and tugged at the hook-strap of my backpack.

"What are you..." I let it slide free from my arms, but instantly I felt a surge of guilt as he flung it over his shoulder.

"No-no, you really don't have to; it's fine, I can carry-" I hadn't even finished my sentence before he turned on his heel, clasped my wrist like a hawk, and practically dragged me down towards the marsh. Realising there was no way out of this, I took a gargantuan gulp of salty air, shuddering as the soft, rustling grass underneath my waders gave way to a steadily deepening, wretch-inducing mass. The squelches turned into the soft ambience of stirring, swashing mud as the foul substance crept further and further up my waders; my nose was turned as far away as possible from the putrid stink engulfing my senses, but the first part of the journey was rather short lived. Even before I knew it, we'd scrambled as athletically as our baggage would allow onto the mercifully solid foothold of damp reeds that gave absolutely no resistance as we pushed them aside like the red sea; thick, clinging mud falling in swathes down our waders.

"I'm gonna' warn ya' right now; you might wanna' move fast at t'is next bit."

"Sorry, I didn't quite-" I hadn't even got halfway through my request before the final strands of reeds were pushed aside, but the old saying of "a picture speaks a thousand words" was about to come glaringly true...actually, scratch that; this picture only told two words.

"Oh...shit." The terra firma of woodland was now tantilisingly close, but in between us and it lay a body of pure, unfaltering mud that there was absolutely no way to avoid; a frantic glance to the right revealed a wire-mesh fence adjacent to us that rendered that direction obsolete, and the left-ward boundary of the marsh was so far away it may as well have been in another time-zone. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I goddamn wish it'd been at my disposal during the next few seconds.

"Come on then, let's just get this over with." Nathan had only just opened his mouth to respond when I stormed ahead; my narrow, piercing eyes dead-set on the line of trees as my leg muscles pushed for all they were worth. My brain had shut out any distractions as best it could, but the frantic words of "wait", "very", and "unstable" from behind me found their way through. It was already too late; my mud-caked knee rose from the mud before plunging downwards once more...and kept going; the bottom of the marsh decidedly absent. With no foothold and my entire body tilting forwards, I became a slave to the laws of physics as I stumbled forwards, arms flailing as my body impacted the soft mass of sediment and instantly went under. Gritty, ice-cold mud hurled itself towards the brow of my waders, seeming to take on a physical entity as it began to swallow me whole.

"Nathan!!!" Was all I could yelp in amongst my cries for help, scrunching my eyes tightly shut as I plunged downwards in slow motion. A sustained series of gloopy sucking noises emanated from behind me before I peeked through a barely opened left eye, catching the final stages of his determined bunny hop across the trench-deep section to firmer ground just a few infuriating steps in front of me.

"Gimme your paw!" In desperation, I readily adhered, thrusting my left arm forwards and locking paws on the first try. Time was running out for the both of us; Nathan's ankles were now submerged, and the more I thrashed, the further he began to sink-

"Tom, for the love o' Christ, move! C'mon, kick!" With what seemed like several tonnes of sediment either-side of my already heavily-cladded feet, I could only move my submerged boots a few centimetres each, so with that tactic well and truly futile, I twisted and writhed my body as violently as I could, arcing forwards as I did so.

"It's working!" I yelped excitedly as the merciful feeling of the mud's angrily retracting grasp slipped down my waders; Nathan tore his right leg from the bog and stomped backwards, roaring through gritted teeth as this grotesque game of tug-of-war between him and the bog tipped to his favour. With a final, thick, defeated squelch, my ankles, and finally my boots were pulled free, and without hesitating a second longer, I lunged forwards with such ferocity that Nathan almost fell backwards, clawing my way through the mud before, with firmer ground now underneath me, swinging my free arm underneath his and heaving the pair of us towards the edge of the marsh. It was then, with a final, determined yelp, that I finally lost my balance, muzzle-planting onto the beautifully soft grass and pulling Nathan down with me.

"Ya bloody idiot!" he snorted, playfully punching me on the shoulder before stumbling to his feet, "_never_take on Mother Nature; she'll kick your arse!" I was already in fits of joyful, relieved laughter, not caring that practically the entirety of my attire was indistinguishable under a viscous layer of stinking tidal mud.

"Just one plea," I quipped as my laughter subdued to a chuckle, "please don't take me back that way?"

"Whatever ya' say, sheep-derp. Now, are we gonna' go fish, or what? We didn't just go through all t'at just to lie on a patch o' grass, now; it's just up the path from the bridge. You go on ahead; I need t'...*pant*, catch me' breath." Of course I agreed; he'd pretty much just saved my life; a hero of that calibre needed a rest, for sure! Stumbling under my own body weight in mud refusing to let go of the nylon underneath, I meandered along the heavily-cambered bank, clasping onto the weather-beaten support of the beginning of the bridge, as if to reassure myself of its solidity; really, I still couldn't believe I- we'd made it. Sure enough, I could already see a clearing at the end of the archway of oak trees stretching into the forest beyond me, though what exactly lay within that clearing remained to be seen.

Splat. Suddenly, a freezing, solid mass impacted the back of my neck, mingling with my fur before sliding down my torso and into my waders.

"Aaargh! What the..." With a shiver, I spun back around...only to see Nathan in a baseball thrower pose; a sadistic grin on his face, and the last remnants of putrid mud dripping from the tips of his outstretched arm.

"T'at's for leapin' into a bog like an eejit and not payin' attention!"

"You...." Two could play at that game; I sprinted back towards the edge of the bog, with Nathan already having caught on to what I was doing. I plunged my paw back into the slimy mud, clutching a foul, dripping mass between my paw-pads and leaping to my feet as he sprinted down the path, yelping like a petulant child at the thought of what was coming to him if I were to have my way.

"C'mere, jammy bastard!" I set off in hot pursuit, my eyes dead-set on giving him the taste of his own medicine he so thoroughly deserved as the trees ushered us into their warm embrace.