"Once," said Iimmi. "Yes, once."
"Do you realize how long you've been in the water?" Geo asked.
Iimmi looked up.
"Over two weeks," Geo said. "Come on, see if you can walk. I've got a lot of things to explain, if I can, and we've got some hunting to do."
Iimmi steadied himself once more, and together they started up the beach.
"What are you looking for?" Iimmi asked.
"Friends," Geo said.
Two hundred feet up, the rocks and torpid vegetation came down to the water, cutting off the beach. Scrambling over boulders and through vines, they emerged on a rock embankment that dropped fifteen feet into the wide estuary of a ribbon of water that wound back into the jungle. Twenty feet further, the bank dropped to the river's surface, and they both fell flat at the edge of a wet table of rock and sucked in cool liquid, watching blue stones and the white and red pebbles shivering six feet below clear ripples.
There was a sound. Both sprang back from the water, turned, and crouched on the rock.
"Hey," Urson said, through leaves. "I was wondering when I'd find you."