"can i open my eyes yet?"
Curiosities 𒌐 Accepting
“Not yet…! I’ll tell you when!” Jim giggles, small, anticipatory hands barely managing to keep his brother in the dark— literally— with how they tremble in his excitement and delight.
He is less so walking behind than he is waddling around, guiding each footstep of the younger’s by bracketing his shoes with his own. Both are painfully worn, but the sight of fraying seams can do little, in this moment, to do more than dully sting, as the sound of a babbling creek comes into sharper focus and tears away anxieties best applied later than now.
The water is silvery and decently clean, all things considered— at least, it is in this spot, where the rapids run too shallow for good fishing, and the shade from the willows makes it too cold to comfortably wade, even in the mild months.
“Mind your step; I’ll keep the brambles off.” Jim assures, even though his pants expose his ankles ever since he’d grown another inch last month. It’s no matter, though; switches and callused hands will always render small scratches from Mother Nature a tolerable, and nearly welcome, punishment for treading upon her beauty.
“Alright, and stop! And kneel…” He guides his brother down, in a small break in the tall embankment grasses, and finally, he grants him his sight back.
“Look…!” Jim’s voice is hushed as he bends to peer at the water. “Remember the eggs we found a few weeks ago? This is what’s left!”He points. “And…” He beams. “What’s hatched!”
True to his words, there are only a handful of stragglers still clinging to the mossy creekside— the rest, instead, have dissolved, as their incubating contents have since outgrown the need to wait any longer in their larval cocoons.
That is— a veritable army of small, funny-looking tadpoles flits chaotically through the shallows, every which way possible, taking their first proverbial steps into the wide world that will be their new home to yet again one day outgrow, as legs begin to form, and air becomes necessary.
For now, however, they are new, and young, and barely familiar with the instinctual process of swimming in water, and Jim, for one, can’t help but coo.
He gently cups his hands beneath a number of them, and most of them manage to preserve themselves, escaping his slow human grasp, but two stay behind, as yet unsure what to make of this new development, this strange and smaller pool in which they find themselves now.
“Aren’t they adorable?” He shows his brother, gasping slightly as he feels the flick of a tail on his skin, a product of the water slipping between the cracks in his fingers. He quickly returns the pair back to the creek, as a result, wiping his hands on his pants and rubbing them together to warm them back up, and he grins wide and askew as he sits back on his knees. “I know it’s just how life progresses, but I dunno… I think there’s something fascinating about it.”
He eyes Luka somewhat nervously, though he believes he’s doing well to hide it. “Do you like them? Did you enjoy the surprise?”
