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Verk was frozen in place, his pretty blue eyes locked upon the glimmering glassy sky above as his fingers and hands didn’t obey his wants, heart hammering in his chest as it took all of his willpower to not breathe during this horrifying instinctive moment of stasis.
His fluffy wooly ears were pressed down with the overwhelming albeit numbing sound of the environment around him, his disorientation ever so much stronger because of it.
His tail flickered behind him slowly once or twice despite how stiff it was, trying to express fear but cursed to stand still with the rest of his being.
So his eyes slightly squint, why and how did he get here…?
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“You shouldn't, you REALLY shouldn't”
“Well why not!? You made it look so easy! You! With your speh’s forsaken bone body!”
“Ugh because I had PRACTICE ya bleating son of a stubborn lamb, like a lot of practice, and a lot of fear as well- so, if you want to learn so badly, I'll search around for lessons okay?, group lessons! So you have SOMEONE who knows how to teach you”
“i really really hate when you talk down to me like that, I'm NOT a fragile little thing for you to be coddling like this???”
“Verk it AINT like that I promise, it hasn't to do with you, it has to do with the flaws of your body! that isn't your fault!”
Such conversation ended with Verk taking a deep breath in and out, uncrossing his arms and turning around silently to ponder about such stress-inducing words.
Of course he couldn't blame Edward for being the way he is with him, so many things happened to him that has led him to be careful with all Venlil but… for once, he wanted to handle this fear head on, and it would have been nice to do it with him.
But because Eddie won't do it, he'll have to do it on his own, what a shame… and no, he wasn't going to ask Ketla, she would shake his shoulders, tap his forehead and call him Koo Koo crazy.
So he grabs the sliding glass door, opens it, then steps outside with all the calmness of another casual day in this massive plot of land.
His lower paws feel absolutely great as they touch the dry green grassy ground, each step has a weight that he didn't quite notice in the last one, his ears flattening against his skull and his pupils dilating to pinpricks.
So when he touches the stony edge of the deep, blue, tempered pool right on the house's backyard, his body stiffens up entirely in a fear response that he's not felt in a long good while.
Even as his flat teeth show in a growl to no one and his little claws dig upon his own arms trying to show some courage, he's not strong enough as to have his fear repressed, his toes curling as his tail wraps around his own leg.
But he breathes in deeply, his eyes focusing deeply into that blue hell below, trying to rewire his brain's train of thought: this was a chance to grow without having someone wasting their time on him without having to prove it to anyone but himself, no money or time wasted… all he had to do was to try, and jump.
He breathes out, placing a hand on his chest, gripping the wool there tightly as he focuses on his health rate, he wouldn't let himself be frozen now, not here after everything.
He breathes deeply once again
Breathes out, his heartbeat goes down, his eyes close.
Then he breathes in, all the way to the very peak of his lungs, his chest puffing outwards as his eyes open, locked down to the water below.
Then he jumps.
---
Verk’s eyes sting from the chlorine, but it's that alongside the sudden lethal realization that he has indeed, after all, jumped into a pool without supervision or the knowledge on how to even move here.
The fear subsides for the slightest and smallest of moments because he knows this is his chance to change himself!... Which makes him realize that he has indeed, sunk aaaaall of the way to the bottom of the pool, two and a half meters away from the surface above.
He moves his limbs clumsily, slowed down by the tempered water around him and the way his fluffy wool swung around here with his movements, his clawed hands graze the tile floor below and he manages to get his bearings on how the low gravity works right here, his knees land on the tile floor below as well, his cheeks slightly bloated from the air he's keeping in…
Then he kneels softly, noting how warm the floor below felt as he pushes himself back to his feet, causing him to float a few inches away from the floor below, causing him to have his heart sink in fear for a moment, his brain telling him illogically that ‘oh gods, I'm going to sink even deeper now, and I'm so alone and helpless, and I can't even-’ before his claws touch the bottom once again, his arms spread by the sides as they calmly floated there, unable to understand in his dazed seconds of confusion why was he remaining down here, and wasn't going upwards like the humans that he saw before.
His gaze goes to the side then the other, even with the sting of warm pool water he's able to keep them quite open- and the barren sight of this place puts him back into proper sanity because: right, yes, he needs to get all the way up there now, to the precious surface.
So he crouches down slowly, gazing up to the surface with his trembling skyblue eyes “hgblg…” a small noise of effort escapes him alongside a couple of bubbles passing by his maw before he jumps with all his might!... And as he does so, and he reaches the peak of his little jump, he begins sinking yet again, his paws making grabby motions to the surface above as his waterlogged wool brings him back down alongside his dense bones…
So he realizes, something isn't quite right, he should be moving further up there!... And of course, in the next second of his second minute of being down there, he understands that to move here, he has to move himself, it wasn't going to be enough with the low gravity alone here and he would need to use those exact movements Edward and Samuel did back then.
Hands go upwards, as if digging into something with the tip of both of his palms, then he spreads them apart forcefully, moving them all the way to his hips- and he moves! A small movement but enough to stop his own endless sinking, so he does it again, again, and again “hrglbfg-” more bubbles escape him, feeling the scary and terrifying burn and tightness of his chest seeking for air that isn't quite there.
not because he's oxygen starved, unfortunately, his feddie poor brain has been confused this whole time, and all of what was supposed to be intrinsic instinctive fear towards large bodies of water were suddenly turned off from the intense amount of fear he felt the moment he submerged himself here.
So, as his claws breach the surface, and he sees himself splashing around in it, he makes one final effort to breach the surface- this time, using his thighs to prop himself the smallest bit up there with a small spread, and clenching of his somewhat useless legs.
Then his snout feels the air, and his heart SPIKES with horrifying fear and realization as EVERY SWITCH OF FEAR turns back on inside his brain, oh God he WAS about to die down there wasn't he?! What was he THINKING? “GAAAAAAASP-” his maw opens desperately to suck in the air he was wanting in his body so much, his arms now aimlessly flailing around and splashing at the surface as the change of environment has him once again going through a terrible fear response- but he couldn't see a thing, his spongy fur now turned into a soaked and heavy mass that blinds him and weighs him down
His poor pathetic legs kick and try to do something about this, to push him upwards or something, but he's sinking once again, even as his knees almost brush with each other with the level of desperation he's doing all of this- and his chest inflates and deflates with the level of horrifying effort he's trying to keep his head above the water here.
Fortunately for him, as he loses his energy to keep himself above the surface, a pair of hands he doesn't see comes in, grabs him by the scruff of the neck, then drags him upwards and away from the pool in a single, violent movement.
He rolls on the stony border of the pool, all the way to the dry grass by its side, leaving him breathing deeply in and out with exasperation, his eyes trembling with fear, his tail curled right around his thigh, his hands curling around the wet heavy wool around his chest- the horror that he's gone through makes him cry right there and then, and his eyes are locked up on the blue sky above.
“GOD FUCKING DAMNIT VERK!” Samuel screams in relief and horror as he hurries up by Verk's side, kneeling by him and placing a hand on top of his forehead “What were you doing?! Why did you do that without anyone there?- you CANT swim!”
Verk, even when he's so worriedly shouted at, keeps breathing hastily and deeply in and out, not quite looking at the glasses human by his side so concerned about him, his voice shaky and soft “I was just… j-just… curious about how it felt…”
Samuel places a hand on top of his face clenching his glasses tightly as he tries to brush the nerves out from his face “Golly good god… and that's why you almost killed yourself? because you were curious?, because you wanted to prove yourself or something?” His tone isn't mocking, he's legitimately concerned about his small wooly friend’s mind.
Yet, his eyes widened when the silver wet Venlil turned his skyblue eyes to his own, even when they were trembling, there was an off-putting fire there that was just lit up in him “I-i don't know but… I think I really, really really want to try that again, I think I know how to proceed”
Samuel smiles
Samuel then proceeds to smack Verk’s wet head “Not now” and the wet noise of the slap echoed through the hills.
“ow” Verk dryly chirps.