Luna stared at the underside of her tent roof listening to the pounding rain. Or not really listening, more like living through. It was so brain-numbingly loud, terrifying, blood chilling, cry-inducingly loud, and it had been raining since yesterday. Hours. Hours and hours and hours.

So she tried to Go Bird. Like her mom had told her when she was little, Go bird little Luna.

Her mother had said that birds lived joyful lives, but they had to live through terrible weather sometimes — just like Waterfolk. To get through, birds folded their wings around like a hug and hunkered down. And they weren’t scared. Birds weren’t anything, because they turned off their ‘what ifs’ and went completely still and quiet. The whole time. Blank.

Then, after the storm had passed, those birds flew again, joyous and energetic. Because they could turn off their ‘what ifs.’ That was key.

So Luna tried to Go Bird, but the problem was, there weren’t any other birds on her branch. She couldn’t turn her brain off because she was in charge of her own survival. When she was little, she could Go Bird because her father and mother were in charge of her safety. Not now. Not anymore. And that sucked.

Crack!

Her heart raced. What the hell was that? Something above her tent (tree branch, tree, rock?) was cracking. It would crash down.

She curled up into a ball and huddled, hard.

Her breaths were ragged and gasping.

WHOOSH, a terrifying falling of something crashing close. A scraping on the fabric of her tent. The deafening rain.

She huddled harder. No pain though. No pain. No pain.

She opened her eyes. The tent roof was an inch away from her face. Outside roared.

She shoved up on the roof, crawled from under it, and unzipped the door. Water rushed all around, over, under, and through. A raging river had formed and she was in the middle of it. She checked the tent corners. Her tent stakes were barely holding on, pulling up from the mud, releasing their grasp.

“Shit shit shit.” She withdrew and held up the roof, while she frantically wadded up her bedding and stuffed it into a sack, counting one, two, three, four — forcing herself — faster, faster.

Because her best guess was, three minutes.

She leapt from the tent into the muck and water — ankle deep. Below: the hill had rushed away in a slide. She yanked a front stake. The tent pulled furiously. She twisted up the other front stake, the tent slid to the right. She waded upstream through the rushing water to the back end of the tent, and dislodged another stake — the tent pitched and spun, fast, down and away fast. Luna dove after it frantically trying to grab the last corner of LITERALLY EVERYTHING she owned in the world. “Crapitycrapcrap.” She caught it.

She clutched the tent in her fist.

But it didn’t want to stay in her fist, stupid tent. It struggled with all the power of gravity, weight, force, and dramatic natural storm surge toward — Away. Like a jerk, a bona fide jerk. It wanted to leave her. Alone on this stupid island with rain pouring down. Alone without anything.

Luna dug her heels in, gathered the tent, hauled it up on her body, scream-begging the universe to help her keep her stuff, wondering — what kind of idiot takes the stakes out of a tent in a raging river with everything they owned inside? If her brothers had been here, they would have called her a Stink Crawler because that’s what they called everyone too asinine to know how to survive on water. Stink Crawler. She deserved the name. Her brothers wouldn’t have been surprised. This was exactly the kind of thing she did. Not thinking shit through.

She dug her heels in deeper and pulled and pulled, heaving with all her strength. Rain pouring down, visibility at — freaking zero. Maybe a foot if she wanted to open her eyes. She didn’t. Holding everything across her body, she reached over and twisted up the last stake in the final corner.

The tent yanked downward, causing her to lose her footing and slide for ten feet, like a boat, a slippery, sliding, perfectly dynamic, floating watercraft. Her tent wanted down in a torrential slip-slide river of mud and water. And it wanted out to sea.

Leaving her. Just. Like. Everyone. Else.

But Luna’s hand, without any conscious thought, scrambled and caught a branch. She strained, screaming from the effort, digging her feet under her, keeping the tent, she dragged and pulled, slipping and struggling, until finally, gratefully, her feet found firm ground on the river’s bank.

Luna dropped to her knees, let go of the branch, but then slid down the river bank, the weight of the tent dragging her down through brambles and branches. Did it enjoy her desperation? Was it mocking her?

Finally she slammed into a tree trunk and held on. She fought against the slippery downward pull of the torrential down rush, gathering, heaving, straining, until she had the bulk of the tent and LITERALLY EVERYTHING she owned safely on the fern-covered bank, not rushing away.

She dropped back in the pouring rain and muck and mud and yelled, “AAAARRRRGGGGGGH.”

And then only after the ordeal did she begin to sob. Tears rolled down her face mixing with the rain and matching the river rushing by her feet. She cried because that sucked, because she almost died, but also and mostly, because she wasn’t dead yet. It was going to happen. Death was just toying with her first.

She wiped her streaming eyes with her sodden wrist, sat up and clutched her knees, head down, and tried to calm herself.

She took stock: This area looked like it wouldn’t rush away, but the last place seemed safe three hours ago. She couldn’t trust these ferns and trees to protect her. And the rain was unrelenting. A rain like this would last for days.

She held onto a corner of the tent, refusing to let go, while she scanned the hillside. Visibility sucked. The only way to survive was up. She hoisted the tent’s corner to her shoulder and dragged it, and LITERALLY EVERYTHING she owned inside, through the underbrush. It caught on roots and twigs until she stumbled to a spot that would work for what she needed — collapse. Despair. Dramatic despondence and dismay.

She staked the bottom down, arranged the tent poles (one bent awkwardly, so the roof caved in) and attempted to stretch the loops and panels over the poles — the fucking last hook wouldn’t hook on the final — she dropped it, banged her feet up and down, and screamed at the sky. This was so freaking frustrating she needed to — she gulped a deep breath, picked up the hook, and forced it around the pole.

And dove into the tent.

She was sopping, drenched, wet to her core.

The tent was wrecked.

The roof bowed down filling with water. If a pool collected, it would begin to seep in. She knocked it upward and it immediately filled again. Great. There would be no sleeping tonight.

The rain was relentless, the sound terrifying. And that — that river, that catastrophe, that near death experience — had been really close. Too close.

She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around and cried. The rain didn’t let up for twenty more hours.