Team two: Untitled
Lol this isn't even a finished piece, more like one third of a finished piece. But as my girls reminded me, it doesn't actually have to be a finished thing for Shiritori. So here, a tiny piece of a 9-years-old Shintaro in my fantasy fic.
“Indeed, these are trout hatchlings,” Mitani-sensei says, his eyes warm under his bushy, grey eyebrows. “You’re quite correct, Shintaro.”
A dozen of children from the village, Shintaro along with them, have gathered around him, all standing in the knee-high water by the Midorigawa riverside.
“They are so small,” Shintaro enthuses, careful to stand still so as not to move his feet and scare the tiny little creatures away.
“Once they grow, they will be big,” Mitani-sensei says.
“And delicious!” one of the other boys points out, and everyone bursts into laughter, even Mitani-sensei.
It’s always like that when the old men from the shrine come down to the village. They must be ancient, at least as old as Shintaro’s grandparents, but they really get children in a way that some grown-ups just don’t. Mitani-sensei often walks around by the riverside, and usually he lets children join him whenever he has time, glad to teach them whatever they want to know about the river.
The Midorigawa river streams from northeast between the Border forest and the Midorigawa village, until it meets the Southern river at the Rivercross. It’s not too far from the village, but Shintaro’s mother still doesn’t like him to wander so far alone. That’s why he’s always thrilled when Mitani-sensei agrees to accompany the children. The Midorigawa river’s stream is slow and quite shallow, while the Rivercross is much more exciting. The two rivers coming together creates small underwater whirlpools that catch the boats he makes out of leaves and sticks, and the faster stream makes his water wheels spin much more swiftly.
And of course, there’s fish. Shintaro loves fish. He likes to fish as well, but mostly he prefers watching alive fish in the water along with crabs, frogs, and turtles, newts and salamanders, and water skippers and dragonflies. He loves land animals too of course, especially the new white-and-orange puppy dog his father just brought home from his latest trading trip, but there’s just something especially thrilling about aquatic creatures of all kinds.
thesecretdoor your turn! The last sentence ends "--there’s just something especially thrilling about aquatic creatures of all kinds."